How Korean youth pastors preach to care for teen congregants and their schools

Kim, Sunghyun

1 online resource (viii, 165 leaves)

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-165)

D. Min. Covenant Theological Seminary 2022

Includes abstract

Titolo

How Korean youth pastors preach to care for teen congregants and their schools

Ultima modifica

11/20/2024

Creatore

Kim, Sunghyun

Abstract

The new postmodernist cultural wave in Korea has gained legal standing but is still clashing with the country’s traditions, and its schools are now a prime battleground. People have embraced roles, statuses, and dispositions to fit the changing Korean culture, and in the schools, this shift has resulted in the Student Rights Ordinance. Educational administrations are providing students more liberty to become individualized and egalitarian people, and these new regulations allow students to reject teachers' orders and disciplines, the traditional understanding for sexual orientation, and rules for hairstyles, clothing, pregnancy, and religion. Due to the SRO, public demonstrations between the liberal and conservative parties have escalated. The purpose of this study is to explore how Korean youth ministry pastors preach evangelically to care for teen congregants and their schools amid cultural pressure from the Student Rights Ordinance. This study examines Korean pastors’ sermons given to those directly affected by the ordinance. Analyzing the sermons can help Korean pastors navigate how to care for their congregants and school evangelization amid the cultural pressure of the ordinance. This study utilized a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with six Korean pastors who served their congregations as part-time or full-time workers. The literature review and analysis of the six interviews focused on three key areas for sustaining a preaching ministry: the six pastors’ understandings of the Student Rights Ordinance, their preaching goals and tasks to care for the teen congregants, and sermons that share the gospel in the schools that the ordinance affects. This study concluded that there are three necessary preaching components to care for the teen congregants and their schools in the cultural pressure of the Student Rights Ordinance: building Christian identity, obedience based on the Bible, and Christian inclusiveness of others. This study explored the pastors’ perspectives and found that they welcomed the spirit of human dignity that the ordinance describes. However, they were concerned by tendencies to support the self-absorbed exercise of rights and sexual immoralities. Although each of the pastors used different preaching styles, fitting their personal values and beliefs, all of them sought faithful transformation and obedience to God’s Word. While considering the pastors’ preaching goals and values, this study identified the motivations and practices which contribute to care for the teen congregants and schools that are influenced by the Student Rights Ordinance.

Collaboratore