Ju Gi-cheol: The Man Who Loved Only God for His Lifetime(Essential Writings)

The Korean Christian Church, having experienced phenomenal church growth and a great passion for missions wifhin its short history, is proud of its place as the leading representative of Christianity in Asia. During its brief history, the Korean Church has lived through a great variety of experiences marked by persecution and suffering, zeal and dedication, church growth and foreign missions—a breadth of experience unprecedented in 2,000 years of Christianity. These experiences have been conveyed in written works that include debates between Confucian scholars and Catholic converts, as well as meditations, sermons, essays, and poems that elevated persecution and martyrdom to reflections on the next world and true faith.
Through the publication of the Korean Christian Leaders Series, the Korean Institute for Advanced Theological Studies (KIATS) seeks to organize the inheritance of the Korean Christian Church and to share it with Christians around the world. This project will first involve selecting and compiling a body of manuscripts of religious or literary value— manuscripts that clearly present the characteristics of Korean Christianity from its beginnings up to the present. Our primary subject matter includes the writings of church leaders (theologians as well as pastors), and works by social leaders, politicians, thinkers, literary persons, and artists who identified with and served the Korean Church. In organizing and selecting the original manuscripts, we will first work with each author’s printed manuscripts, including sermon texts, theses, essays, poems, and written declarations.
The priceless writings of Korean Christian leaders—diverse works that have been buried until now—will become accessible through the publication of this series, which endeavors to re-illuminate the history of Christianity and discover in it the roots of our faith. Through this we will be able to appreciate again the lives and faith of our predecessors who lived and died with passion, as role models of faithful Christians. We will be able to reflect on our own age, and re-envision God’s great plan for the future of the Korean Church. Furthermore, this series will allow an appreciation of the characteristic warmth and ingenuity of Korean Christians, and a taste indigenous to Korean faith.