Bible Baptist Church of Seoul Celbrates
It's their 47th Anniversary
By Keith Bassham

Bul Kwang Dong Bible Baptist Church sits amid hundreds of stores, shops, businesses, high rises, hotels, and restaurants. The street resembles a stream running through a narrow canyon, with the smaller buildings at the walkway's edge, and the buildings seem to grow larger as they progress and merge toward the mountains behind them. And in the stream, there are people. Twenty million of them in metropolitan Seoul — the Jerusalem Pastor Daniel Kim and Bible Baptist Church are touching as they reach out to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Each January, the church, one of the first few in Korea in fellowship with the BBFI, celebrates their anniversary with a large Sunday service and a mission conference. Some present still remember the church's first service, held January 1, 1961, in a small rented kindergarten building not far from the present location. Instead of the towering businesses and residences, a strawberry farm and rice field dominated the landscape then. Others have joined Pastor Kim and the 67 people who attended the first service, so that today more than 1,000 people attend the church weekly. More came for the special services when the auditorium filled three times Sunday, January 6, 2008, for the anniversary and mission conference.

As Tribune editor, I was invited to preach six times during the conference, three messages on Sunday, and one each of the following three days. Joining me were Korean missionaries presenting their ministries in the morning and evening services throughout the conference. Hyung Woong Do brought seven young people with him to represent the work in Mongolia. Missionary to Jordan, Sun Kil Kim, missionary to the Philippines, Kyungok Park, missionary to Cambodia, Choon Youn Sohn, and administrator of the Korea Bible Baptist Seminary, Jae Ok Jin, reported their progress and outreach to the enthusiastic crowds present in each service. Mrs. Shari Bassham also gave a talk Wednesday, encouraging the church to trust God for the results in their lives.

Monday and Tuesday, preachers from throughout Korea joined the church members for the services, bringing another level of excitement. There are over 200 churches in the Korean fellowship, many of which were begun directly or indirectly through the efforts of Bible Baptist Church in Seoul. It is humbling to consider myself ministering to those who could be my own teachers in the matters of faith, patience, and giving. Pastor Kim fills personal conversations with stories of pastors, missionaries, and church members who gave or lost all they had to minister the gospel — stories of outrageous acts of service and generosity are far outside how I would define normal. At one point in the meeting, Pastor Kim introduced me to some older pastors whom he said were "from the south," church planting pastors from the early days of the outreach out of Seoul. They had the look of war veterans — gray hair, a halting gait, a bit stooped — and their faces said they would have done it all over again, no matter the privations involved. As I say, their stories were the norm, and not the exception.

But the norm for this church could leave a typical church member in my own country breathless. Each February, Pastor Kim and church leadership has a special appointment service in which members give themselves to specific ministries. Last year, the church issued 556 appointment certificates to adult members, and this year they expect that number to be 600. The appointments range from teaching in the Sunday school to just being by another's side in a crisis and life-changing event. "Everyone in the church is a minister," says Pastor Kim. This is the expectation, and it is filled.

At the Bible Baptist Seminary, Kim teaches courses on leadership, and he leads by example. Besides the regular church services in which he preaches, the 70-year-old Kim also leads four Bible studies during the week, and records a daily radio broadcast, something he has done nearly 40 years. He believes strongly in a serving mentality, and anyone can observe how the attitude trickles down through staff, the countless volunteers, and the general membership.

I can think of no other place on earth where the philosophy and the rationale for the Baptist Bible Fellowship are better illustrated. Daniel Kim came to Christ because BBFI missionary Jack Baskin came to him in a personal crisis — Kim's home, the home he shared with his mother and sisters, was burning. Standing and shivering in the cold, watching the fire, the family turned to see Baskin and others with comfort and clothing. The current reality of Bible Baptist Church was a distant image nearly 50 years off, but a demonstration of Christian love was the church's point of origin.

Wooseang Kim (Baskin later chose to call him Daniel) was saved after hearing Baskin preach in April 1960, and a little later he responded to God's call to preach. Kim's own ministry rationale is simple and based on those earlier experiences, not only with Baskin, but with other BBF preachers in Korea — Ike Foster, George Patrick, and Onzy Whicker. He says he has patterned his own ministry of evangelism, missions, and discipleship training on what he learned from them.

Investing themselves in Daniel Kim was wise. Today, Bible Baptist Church, and all her sister churches, a seminary, a foreign missionary program, tent-making ministries, and other ministries to come are the result. In terms of finances, in 2007, Bible Baptist Church gave $400,000 (USD) to missions. The faith promise commitments made Wednesday during the conference, along with the commitments during the open period the next few Sundays, should exceed that amount for 2008. We can hardly wait to see what the church's 50th anniversary will look like.