In the 1960s, a diffident young Korean, who was an ex-refugee aspiring to be a pastor, knocked at the door of Swiss L’Abri. Cynthia Stanton, Edith Schaeffer’s long-serving worker, opened it and greeted him. In due time, they were to wed.
It was a chalk-and-cheese liaison, but it was to produce much unobtrusive fruit. She was a Londoner, her father running a fleet of black taxi cabs. His father had fled North Korea to Beijing, where he and his wife sheltered refugees. Both Kim’s parents were freedom fighters in a volunteer Korean army against the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). They suffered torture and witnessed atrocities. Kim was born in Beijing one year into that war.
But, aside from all that, Kim heard Francis Schaeffer’s sermons ‘No Little People, No Little Places’ and ‘New Testament Church Polity’ in the 1960s. The ideas in those sermons ignited a passion to confront the influence of neo-Confucianism1 on the Korean church.
Schaeffer expounded Matthew 23:8 – ‘But you are not to be called “Rabbi”, for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.’ ‘This does not mean’, he emphasised, ‘that there is to be no order in the church. It does mean that the basis of relationship between Christians is not that of elder and people, or pastor and people, but of brothers and sisters in Christ. This denotes that there is one Father in the family and that his offspring are equal. There are different jobs to be done, different offices to be fulfilled, but we as Christians are equal before one Master. We are not to seek a great title; we are to have the places together as brethren… .’
And again, in 1969, on the inauguration of a church in London, Schaeffer passionately expounded radical ideas on church government: ‘If the church is going to be a living thing, it must have the polity but it mustn’t end with the polity. This must only be a means to the end … with the people of God, in a relationship with God and in a relationship with others in a way that meets the needs of men in this present life, as well as in eternity… . Don’t you understand? The church isn’t just a preaching centre. It isn’t just an evangelistic machine. The church isn’t just to be a matter of having a proper power. Don’t you understand that the church is to be a community? [It] reaches absolutely everything in life…’
For 500 years neo-Confucianism had unlimited sway in the Korean culture. The church was not immune. Kim knew only too well that its subtle influences were double-edged. Its moralistic quest for virtue and education beckoned the phenomenal growth of the South Korean church. But the gospel declared moralism bankrupt, and education overlooked the depth and tyranny of sin in the human heart.
In 1929, George Paik, a Korean historian, whom Kim respected, surveyed the Protestant missions to Korea in the 19th century. He saw the ethical values of neo-Confucianism but deplored its results: ‘It nourished pride, it taught no higher ideal than that of a superior man … it encouraged selfishness, exalted filial piety to the position of the highest virtue and made this hide a multitude of sins; and it imbued every follower with a hunger for office which resulted in simony and sinecure.’
Neo-Confucianism engendered ‘the high view’ of church office. So, the tendency was for pastors, particularly in Presbyterian circles, to arrogate to themselves an unseemly place of supremacy over the congregation. In contrast, Kim was deliberately countercultural. He and Cynthia cherished and practised simple humility and hospitality. It was Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.
Only months before Kim’s birth, in a city not so far away, the infamous Rape of Nanjing took place in 1937. It was a genocide that lasted only six weeks. Yet the atrocities were far reaching and indescribably horrific. Kim was not a victim, but he knew children whose parents were. Shortly after birth, he was abandoned by his mother who fled Beijing. He was brought up by a refugee widow and her two daughters. They took him to church where as a young boy of nine he gave up his coat to a poor person.
In an age of unparalleled evil, Kim was drawn by the small salt-and-light effects of other Christians, not least of all the love of his foster mother and her two older daughters. He was inspired by Ranald Macaulay, Schaeffer’s son-in-law, and he planted many Korean churches in England. He also served as the President of a Bible Institute in Seoul and developed evangelistic works for missionaries in the UK. The Lord used him and Cynthia to reach many, including me in my early years as a Christian.
Mark is writing a biography on Kim, hopefully to be published in 2021.
1. Neo-Confucianism was a revival of Confucianism and was revered by the state in Korea, and deep-ly embedded in its culture from the 14th century onwards.
