Church leadership within the South Korean context

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is generally said that modern Korean church leadership has gradually lost its vitality. Sincethe 1960s, many Korean church leaders have implemented secularised, church-centred, andauthoritarian leadership. However, without noticing these fundamental problems, the leadershave identified the crisis with membership stagnation or decline. Such an inadequate or evenwrong diagnosis of leadership realities has led to a wrong way of addressing the problem. TheKorean church has focused on the development of a methodology for numerical churchgrowth to remedy this membership decline.This study thus aims to construct a contextual yet biblical leadership theology by which theKorean church can evaluate the realities of its leadership appropriately. This aim can beachieved by means of the methodology that is employed in contemporary practical theology.Chapter 2 provides a general understanding of the context in which Korean church leadershave provided leadership by discussing Korean church history from the perspective of the rolethat dominant leadership images have played. The result demonstrates that a sound theologyof church leadership needs to be constructed for the Korean church.Chapter 3 reviews the trends in contemporary practical theology from which the methodologyemployed by this study is derived. The chapter also surveys the historical development ofleadership theories in social science from which theoretical support can be obtained for thecritical analysis of Korean church leadership.Chapter 4 develops a systematic theological theory (base theory) for two concepts that play anintegral role in this study. PTA (practical theological anthropology) and PTE (practicaltheological ecclesiology) function as theological foundations for this study.The four-phased methodology that this study employs starts with an analysis of the contextualsituation. Chapter 5, as the descriptive phase, gives a statistical analysis of the realities ofleadership in the Korean church by using several reports of surveys from reliable researchorganizations.Chapter 6, as the hemeneutic phase, presents an interpretive endeavour of the empiricalresults from Chapter 5. Because of the inadequacy of mono-dimensional interpretation, thisstudy attempts to interpret the results of the analysis multi-dimensionally: religio-culturally,socio-politically and economically, and theologically.Chapter 7, as the nonnative phase, demonstrates some theological principles that the currentKorean church should develop in order to cope with the present leadership crisis and tochoose the right direction for its future. These theological principles can be derived from thestatistical analysis and its interpretation in the light of PTA and PTE. The principles are:spirituality, vision, and love.Chapter 8, as the strategic phase, proposes a model of leadership for the Korean church,namely, servant leadership. This model can integrate and reflect the three principles(spirituality, vision, and love) demonstrated in Chapter 7. The Korean church will be on theright path if the principles of a servant approach characterise leadership in the church.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University