Only weeks after the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization concluded in Incheon, South Korea, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is about to announce plans to carry its next General Assembly in Seoul from Oct. 27-31, 2025.
Even before the official announcement ceremony scheduled for this Friday, nevertheless, the news has been met with criticism by several Christian groups within the country who’ve called for the plans to be placed on hold.
According to reporting by Korean Christian media, the groups have taken issue with what they described as secretive planning, which excluded the representative Christian member bodies in South Korea that the WEA used to work with. They also point to long-standing unresolved theological concerns amongst Korean churches about a few of WEA’s leaders, which they are saying should be resolved before planning for a General Assembly can begin.
Concerns about months of discussions behind-the-scenes
According Christian Today Korea (CT-K), the Rev. Junghyun “John” Oh, senior pastor of SaRang Church in Seoul, is predicted to guide the preparations for the following WEA GA with support from Yoido Full Gospel Church, the biggest Pentecostal church on the planet.
In a note to Christian media on Sunday, SaRang announced a thanksgiving worship service to mark the launch of the “2025 WEA Seoul General Assembly Organizing Committee” to be held this Friday, with Yoido’s Senior Pastor Younghoon Lee delivering the sermon.
The official announcement and ceremony follow what CT-K describes as months of “behind-the-scenes negotiations” between the WEA and SaRang.
Initially, Bp Efraim Tendero, former secretary general and current global ambassador of the WEA, along with then-Secretary General Thomas Schirrmacher met with Lee to see if Yoido would host the WEA GA in South Korea. When these discussions failed to guide to an agreement, the 2 WEA leaders reportedly approached Rev. Oh of SaRang with a request to supply “a venue and financial support,” which was met with a positive response.
CT-K points out, nevertheless, that the choice to work with an area church without the involvement of its national member body didn’t follow WEA’s regular procedure and will open it up for criticism.
As a worldwide association, the WEA is comprised of nine regional and 143 national Evangelical Alliances, with international denominations and ministries as affiliate members. National membership with the WEA is often reserved for a single representative Evangelical association made up of denominations, churches or ministries. Individual churches and national denominations cannot directly be a part of the WEA, based on its bylaws.
In the case of South Korea, the Christian Council of Korea (CCK) became WEA’s member Alliance in 2009. Just a few years later, internal divisions led to the formation of the Communion of Churches in Korea (CCIK), which was officially recognized as WEA’s member body in 2022. (It was the division inside the national member body that led WEA to cancel its General Assembly that was planned in Korea in 2014.) Additionally, the Korea Evangelical Fellowship (KEF) has been a long-time affiliated member of the WEA.
However, CT-K reports that “sources indicate that neither CCK, CCIK, nor KEF have held official discussions with the WEA on hosting the assembly, and that talks were exclusively between certain WEA leaders and SaRang Church.” It cautions that excluding these organizations from such major decisions may lead to “significant backlash.”
Some have reportedly also been critical toward Rev. Oh’s “premature decision” to push ahead with the hosting of the WEA GA given the prolonged transitional leadership within the WEA and questions surrounding the financial support expected from the Korean church.
After Schirrmacher resigned from his role as secretary general on March 31, citing health reasons, the WEA announced that the chair of its International Council, Goodwill Shana, would take over leadership of the WEA as executive chair for an interim period “not exceeding six months.”
On Sept. 18, nevertheless, the WEA announced that Shana would proceed in his double-role as board chair and acting secretary general/CEO for multiple 12 months longer, up until the GA in October 2025. Meanwhile, the WEA has yet to announce the seek for a latest secretary general.
“The uncertainty surrounding the WEA’s leadership and the financial strain raise further questions on the feasibility of hosting the event,” CT-K reports, adding that Rev. Oh’s term as senior pastor of SaRang is ready to finish inside a 12 months after the proposed GA.
Resolving theological concerns before hosting the General Assembly
At least since some WEA leaders, including Schirrmacher, participated within the World Council of Churches’ General Assembly in Busan in 2013, there have been concerns among the many largely conservative Korean Evangelical churches about what they perceived to be WEA tendencies toward liberal theology.
SaRang’s own denomination HapDong, the biggest denomination in South Korea and rooted within the Presbyterian tradition, has previously criticized Schirrmacher and other WEA leaders for alleged religious pluralism. While there have been moves inside HapDong to officially reject WEA’s perceived liberal tendencies, CT-K reported that the denomination’s General Assembly in 2021 adopted a proposal to “withhold a call on WEA until its stance becomes clearer, and to avoid unnecessary disputes.”
But it cautioned that “hosting the WEA assembly might reignite dormant controversies inside the denomination regarding WEA.”
CT-K also noted that the following HapDong General Assembly is due just before the planned WEA GA. Therefore, if the denomination bans any participation within the WEA, the fallout could turn out to be complicated for each the WEA and the Korean church.
Mere hours after the CT-K article, a gaggle of 1,000 pastors, elders and professors published a full-page promoting in Kukmin Daily, a Korean church newspaper, on Monday morning, with an announcement titled “Reasons Why the Korean Presbyterian Church HapDong Cannot Engage with the WEA.”
Authored by leaders from HapDong-affiliated Kwangshin Theological Seminary, the statement outlined the problems they consider incompatible with the Reformed faith. They specifically pointed to WEA’s close proximity to the pope and the World Council of Churches in addition to its engagement with Muslim leaders which they view as potential sign of non secular pluralism.
Just a few hours later, still on Monday, CCK President the Rev. Seo-young Jeong also went public along with his opposition to the WEA GA, saying the planned event risks increasing division among the many Korean churches.
The strongly worded statement called for all of the preparations to be placed on hold until the concerns about WEA’s theology and allegations of non secular pluralism could be addressed.
“When the CCK previously attempted to host the WEA General Assembly [in 2014], the WEA sought a united Korean church for the assembly, not one marked by division. With the WEA’s pluralistic tendencies now much more pronounced, hosting the WEA Assembly in a way that risks further church discord is undesirable, and we cannot stand by and watch as division deepens,” Jeong said.
Christian Daily International reached out to the WEA and to Schirrmacher for comment but has yet to receive a response.
Originally published at Christian Daily International
