Mission life: THE KUKMIN DAILY

Recreating Korea’s First Protestant Sunday Service After 130 Years, as in Horace Allen’s Diary

2015-06-22 17:37

“Today at 8 o’clock in the evening we had our first Sunday Service. There were Dr. and Mrs. Heron, Dr. Scranton and his mother, my wife and myself.” (From “Allen’s Diary”)

So wrote medical missionary Horace Allen (1858∼1932) in his diary on June 21, 1885, about the first Sunday service he held in Korea. To commemorate the 130th anniversary of that service, a special worship service was held on June 21 at Namdaemoon Presbyterian Church (Rev. Son Yun-tak) on Toegye-ro in Jung-gu, Seoul. This church is rooted in the faith community of Jejungwon, the clinic founded by missionary Allen.

On this day, Rev. Deb Patterson (right, in photo) and six members of the First Presbyterian Church of Delaware, Ohio, missionary Allen’s home church, joined the occasion and witnessed the footprints of our ancestors in faith who sowed the seeds of the Gospel.

Rev. Son Yun-tak said, deeply moved, “That one service 130 years ago has borne 60,000 fruits today in Korea.”

Reporter Choi Ki-young (ky710@kmib.co.kr), with Yeara Ahn-Park (yap@kmib.co.kr)
Photo by intern reporter Jun Ho-Kwang


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[Prior to the commemorative service, on June 17, Rev. Deb Patterson and members of the First Presbyterian Church of Delaware visited Yanghwajin Foreign Missionaries Cemetery in Mapo-gu, Seoul, to pay their respects to the early missionaries to Korea.] Photo by senior reporter Kang Min Seok

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