Vol. 4 No. 1 (2023): Special Issue: Current Missional Church Perspectives in South Korea

It is with great joy that I can introduce our first ever special issue of Ecclesial Futures, focusing on Korean missional ecclesiology. As the guest editors, Bokyoung Park and Seonyi Lee write in the editorial, it came about as a result of the papers given at the International Association of Mission Studies Conference in Sydney in July 2022 in the “Christian Communities and Mission” Study Group track.

A number of these papers were from Korean scholars many of whom are younger and emerging – and wishing to present and publish in the English language. Our commitment in Ecclesial Futures is to broaden and widen the authorship of the journal globally and I trust this project goes some way to demonstrating what is possible.

It is important, in my view that we have seven articles all collected together in one place so that they can be taken as a whole – a significant contextual contribution from South Korea and its diaspora to scholarship in missional ecclesiology. I trust readers will be able both to delve into some of the helpful and detailed descriptions of missional working presented here and to learn from how Korean churches are responding, in the bigger picture, to how more traditional and attractional methods of Church growth seem to have had their day.

‒ Nigel Rooms, Co-Editor, June 2023

A print edition of this issue of Ecclesial Futures can be ordered from the publisher.