MELISSA LAUBER
Dir. of Communication, Baltimore-Washington Conf.
SEOUL, KOREA — Exactly 130 years ago — on a rainy Easter Sunday, April 5, 1885, at 3 p.m. — the Rev. Henry Appenzeller, the first Methodist missionary to Korea, set foot in Seoul. On Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015, Bishop Marcus Matthews and leaders from the Baltimore-Washington Conference walked in those footsteps, celebrating history and the miracle of Easter.
And Korean immigrants started the Methodist Church in America in 1903, which continues strong growth today. There are five Korean UM congregations in Michigan: Ann Arbor, Lansing, Madison Heights, Novi and Troy. ~Lansing KUMC Facebook
When he arrived, Appenzeller prayed, “May he who this day burst the bars of the tomb bring light and liberty to Korea.”
Matthews echoed that prayer. At Central Methodist Church, built to commemorate the Rev. John Goucher, the bishop called upon all people to “come and see,” to personally experience the transforming power of the Living Christ, and to “go and tell.”
The pattern of “come and see the glory of God” and then “go and tell the Gospel story,” summarizes much of the Methodist experience in Korea.
The Methodist Church’s venture to Korea really began a few years before 1885, when Goucher was traveling by train across the United States.
Goucher was the president of Goucher College in Baltimore. He also served as pastor of Lovely Lane Methodist Church, the mother church of Methodism, in Baltimore.
By coincidence, a delegation of Korean leaders, including the nephew of the Queen, were on the same train traveling to Washington, D.C., to talk with congressional leaders.
Goucher struck up a conversation with them and, shortly after disembarking from the train, sent a letter to the Methodist Episcopal Mission Society urging them to start missionary work in Korea. He enclosed a check for $2,000, or about $49,000 in today’s dollars.
This gift was seed money that sent Appenzeller and Dr. William B. Scranton, their wives and Scranton’s mother, Mary, to journey to Korea as the first Methodist missionaries.
In reflecting on the missionaries, Goucher said, “Every mission field presents striking examples of how the apparently impossible aligns itself to the purpose of God when a willing agent interprets that purpose through personal obedience. … Such obedience requires a vital faith in God; that is, belief in his teachings and reliance upon his promise.”
Appenzeller and the Scrantons and the people they met here, who gave birth to the Korean Methodist Church, were those obedient servants. Laboring in a culture shaped by war and oppression, they left their familiar worlds behind. And, believing in the promises of God, they rolled up their sleeves and offered the love of God to all they encountered. This love was made manifest through life-saving medical care, providing education to all people, and the preaching of sound doctrine that ushered in the claim of resurrection – that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven.
Among the Korean people, Henry Appenzeller started his family with the birth of his daughter shortly after he arrived. He began the first Methodist church here, established Baejae School, and joined in a project to translate the Bible into a language all Koreans could read. During his 17 years as a missionary, teacher and pastor, he lit a spark that would ignite the spirit of Christ throughout the nation.
Dr. William Scranton, a medical missionary, first treated patients in his house and opened the Universal Relief Hospital, Korea’s first modern hospital. At that facility, he hung up a sign that declared, “Anybody – man or woman – with any disease come and see the American doctor on any day. Bring an empty bottle.” The bottles were used to hold the medicines he provided. The first year Scranton was here, it is reported that he tended to more than 1,000 patients.
But Dr. Scranton is also well known for bringing his mother to Korea. At age 53, Mary F. Scranton was commissioned by the Methodist Episcopal Church to serve as the first Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society representative to Korea. She was the founder of the Ewah Girls School, which developed into Ewha Univesity. She and her son established The Salvation for All Women Hospital. She is credited with inspiring and helping to train Korea’s first female doctor, Kim Jum-Dong (Esther Park). The contributions of these three individuals were multiplied a thousand times as the love of God took root in people’s hearts.
The Rev. Dae Sung Park, pastor of a new church start in Ellicott City, Md., is a church historian from Korea who accompanied Matthews on the trip to South Korea.
According to Park, the missionaries who came to Korea kept their agreement with the Korean government to concentrate on education and medical missions. These schools and hospitals became an indirect pathway to spreading not only the Gospels, but they were also the leading facilities for improvements in education and medicine in modern Korea.
The schools and hospitals that were run by the missionaries benefited the lower class people called the “sang min” and “chun min,” rather than the upper class people who had prejudiced views toward Christianity, Park said. As a result, Christianity was accepted more full-heartedly by the lower class people. The missionaries started to expand their work by being willing to work with the Korean government. Instead of having large gatherings, they spread the Gospel indirectly through the schools and hospitals.
This approach echoed Goucher’s belief that “the sermon in action is understood long before the sermon in words.”
As they continued to serve in Korea, the missionaries expanded their approach.
In 1887, Appenzeller baptized students at Pai Chai School and by doing so began a more direct approach to his mission work. On Oct. 9, he set up Chungdong First Methodist Church under the name of Bethel Chapel.
Today, the Korean Methodist Church has 6,206 local churches, 1,461,772 members, and 10,326 pastors.
The Easter worship marked the first in a series of weeklong events that commemorates the first Methodist missionaries work in Korea.
Last Updated on February 2, 2024