Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada, Calgary Korean Presbyterian Church
Sign Partnership Memorandum

Dec. 11/09

Front row, left to right: Rev. ChangSun Choi, senior pastor of CKPC; Hart Wiens, Wycliffe Canada board
chairperson. Back row, left to right: Rev. Munhyun Ryu, associate pastor of CKPC; Minju Yoo, CKPC elder
and mobilization co-ordinator of Korean ministries in Alberta for Wycliffe; Dave Ohlson, outgoing president of
Wycliffe Canada; ChangSeok Kang, national director of Korean Ministries for Wycliffe Canada.

Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada (Wycliffe Canada) and the Calgary Korean Presbyterian Church (CKPC) signed a memorandum of understanding on November 25 that will see Wycliffe and the CKPC working together to involve Koreans in Bible translation.

“The signing of this agreement with the CKPC is a historic event in the history of Wycliffe Canada in its efforts to engage the Korean Church here in Canada in the Bible translation movement,” said Wycliffe Canada President, Dave Ohlson. “My prayer is that this will only be the first of many such agreements as Koreans are increasingly showing interest in what God is doing in calling people from the Global Church to be part of Vision 2025, which aims to see a Bible translation project started in all the remaining languages that will need translation [by the year 2025]."

Ohlson noted that it was the first such agreement with a Korean organization. Even though Wycliffe Canada has signed many memoranda of understanding, this was also the first one with a specific local church. It means a closer cooperation between Wycliffe and the Korean church within Calgary and across Canada as well. The Korean church is very mission-minded in its outlook. This may be the first of on-going agreements with other Asian Diaspora communities as well.

Under the agreement, Wycliffe will provide missions training, consultation and ministry opportunities for the CKPC congregation; guide candidates recommended by CKPC through Wycliffe’s membership process; provide primary supervision for members and process their funds. CKPC, which has a membership of 400 adults plus 200 youths and children, will in turn be involved in recruiting well-trained and mature individuals who have a vision for Bible translation; commissioning them to serve with Wycliffe; providing ongoing pastoral care for them; and assisting Wycliffe members from their church financially and through prayer.

People involved in signing the memorandum (MoU) included Rev. ChangSun Choi (senior pastor of the CKPC); Dave Ohlson; Hart Wiens (Wycliffe Canada Board chairperson); ChangSeok Kang and his wife Sarah (National Director of Korean Ministries for Wycliffe Canada, based in Halifax). Joseph Park and his wife Joyce (Wycliffe’s mobilizer of Korean Ministries in Vancouver); Jacob Jung Suk Lee (Korean Bible translator with Wycliffe); Rev. Munhyun Ryu and Minju Yoo from CKPC and the incoming Wycliffe president, Don Hekman, were also on hand for the event, held in Wycliffe’s Calgary office.

The Korean Heart for Missions

Prior to the signing ceremony, both Rev. ChangSun Choi and ChangSeok Kang spoke. Kang then showed a film, produced by Wycliffe for use in Korean mobilization. This film traced the history of missionary involvement in Korea, starting back in 1888 when Korea was a closed country. At that time a Canadian, Rev. William McKenzie, first shared the gospel message in Sorae, Hwanghae-do, Korea, and he was the one who facilitated the first church in Korea. Over the years until 1940,184 Canadian missionaries were involved in the work in Korea. They have done a tremendous work there, according to Kang.

Today South Korea is a missionary-sending country, with 20,000 missionaries, second only in number to missionaries sent out by the U.S. However, most Korean churches—within South Korea or here in Canada—didn’t know about Wycliffe until the Korean Ministries Team made a great effort with their awareness program to promote Bible translation. The Kangs have been working for the past six years with the program. The Korean Ministries Team also works in cooperation with Global Bible Translators, the Wycliffe organization in South Korea, which promotes Bible translation there.

The Korean Diaspora in Canada is several hundred thousand, so there is great potential for Korean involvement in Wycliffe. Today 13 Koreans from Canada are active Wycliffe members, five are Wycliffe volunteers, and seven are currently in the process of joining Wycliffe Canada. The Korean Ministries Team expects that the numbers will double in the near future.

“Koreans owe a debt of gratitude to those Canadians who worked in Korea since 1888,” said Kang. “For me, personally, the desire to in some way help repay this debt has been one of the major motives prompting me to become a part of Wycliffe Bible Translators. I strongly suggest the Canadian people should understand God’s wonderful work in Asia. And we should continue to retell over and over again, the amazing stories [of God working through the early Canadian missionaries] not only from Korea but also from China, Japan and other Asian countries.”

CKPC’s Role in Missions

“We have three families directly involved in Wycliffe ministries,” Rev. Choi later explained. “Earnest Yoo has been volunteering since last year as a Wycliffe representative in Alberta area working with Korean Ministries; Sanghyup Lee and his wife recently volunteered for Korean Ministries, helping them manage web pages and edit Korean Ministries’ (KM’s) quarterly newsmagazine respectively. Joengseon Kim just got his aviation maintenance license here in Calgary and trying to be a missionary working with Wycliffe. He and his wife are now in the membership process with Wycliffe Canada.”

“As MoU manifests, we would love to go together with these candidates and volunteers with our best supports when they pursue their visions with Wycliffe Canada. To open our church for the various programs of KM of WBTC is another good way to follow MoU. We are going to co-host GLocal [Global +Local] Conference with Wycliffe between May 31 and June 03, 2010. Doing this, we will arrange the venue and various accommodation as well as recruit a lot of participants from various regions over Canada, working together with KM.”

When asked what his church does to promote missions, Rev. Choi responded: “To promote missions in our congregation, we ran some programs like the Journey and Missions 101 with Korean Ministries of WBTC, which were very successful in enhancing the awareness of world evangelism movements and got a fairly good response from the participants.

”We selected one country for each continent and picked one of the missionaries to work with, which means we support five missionaries financially and prayerfully. Small groups are assigned to each missionary so that they can pray for the missionaries whenever they meet together. Recently, we have been trying to have one focused area/ministry so that the church can be fully involved in the ministries.

Another focused ministry we recently developed is missions with a native people near to Calgary, the Siksika people. We worked with a native people located in the Edmonton area for the last six years, but [starting with] next year, we will start new a ministry with this Siksika people.”