The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 70, No. 5, Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 1, 2013 Page: 1 of 33
thirty three pages : ill.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Land of the mourning calm
Christians urged
BY BOBBY ROSS JR. | THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
I ’
A child skips near a family cemetery in Paju, South Korea, looking across the Demilitarized Zone toward the mountains of North Korea.
1
■ 1
r
%
Our mission: To inform,
inspire and unite
Vol. 70, No. 51 May 2013
An international
newspaper
for Churches of Christ
BOBBY ROSS JR.
Christians pray during the New England
Church Growth Conference, hosted by the
Manchester Church of Christ in Connecticut.
only for show, Yang says. Unlike the
lush vegetation around him, North
Korea’s landscape is bare, stripped of
trees by a people struggling to survive.
“I have my relatives right there,”
Yang says. “I don’t know whether they
are still alive or not.”
Of late, the words out of North
Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, sound
increasingly warlike. The enigmatic,
supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, has
MANCHESTER, Conn. — Roughly 750 miles
south of here, the Queen City Church
of Christ in Charlotte, N.C., started with
eight Christians meeting in a house.
On a recent Sunday, 225 people —
many learning about Jesus for the first
——time — attended the
church’s worship service
at a downtown YMCA
“We are in the Y
J to stay,” Queen City
minister Kent Massey
j/ told attendees at the
sixth annual New
aa^ccov England Church Growth
V Conference. “We will
never own a church building. ... Our
mission is to be able to grow so we can
already be thinking about where we’re
going to plant another church.”
Anybody who has spent any time in a
children’s Sunday school class knows
that the church is not a building, right?
But too often, Christians focus all
their attention on the place of the
Sunday assembly, leaders said during
the recent conference, hosted by the
Manchester Church of Christ, east of
the state capital of Hartford.
See NEW ENGLAND, Page 14
ordered his missile units ready to
strike South Korea and its ally, the
United States. Days earlier, U.S. forces
practiced bombing runs in the South.
Such threats — whether real or
merely “blustering,” as South Korea’s
government calls them — are part of
daily life in Paju. Here, workers produce
LCD televisions in a factory owned by
electronics giant LG. They shop at a
massive outlet mall miles from the DMZ.
And they dine on octopus as they
overlook the barbed-wire fences.
Every time he comes here, Yang is
reminded that the terrible conflict that
birthed the DMZ never really ended.
Nor did the spiritual war for souls on
this troubled peninsula. Yang asks God
to guard and guide his countrymen to
the north.
“We know, and we believe, God has
his timetable,” he says, “and I hope
and I pray God will open their doors —
hopefully in my lifetime — so that we
can reach them, so that we can spread
the Gospel to North Korea.”
See SOUTH KOREA, Page 10
PHOTOS BY ERIKTRYGGESTAD
With the Imjin River and North Korea's
foothills as his background, minister Sang
Yang talks about his prayer for Korea.
PAJU, South Korea
? are still at war. ”
Sang Yang speaks
softly — no anger or
defiance in his voice,
just sadness — as he
stares across the Imjin River into his
parents’ homeland of North Korea.
On a chilly Sunday evening, after a
full day of Bible classes and worship
in South Korea’s capital, Seoul, Yang
stands on a hillside next to a small, mani-
cured cemetery. Behind him, patrons
file into a restaurant that serves octopus
— a delicacy for Japanese tourists.
Here, “it’s only a river between
South and North,” says the Church of
Christ minister and Christian educator,
pointing across the two-and-a-half-mile
strip of land known as the “DMZ.”
The Demilitarized Zone, 155 miles
long, has separated the two Koreas
for 60 years. On the other side of the
barbed-wire fences is the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea. A small
cluster of plain, brick buildings stands
among its foothills — unoccupied, built
Share esus outside
the church walls,
$
Hie Christian Chronicle
AS NORTH KOREA threatens missile strikes, Churches of Christ in South
Korea lament families torn apart 60 years ago - and pray for
opportunities to spread the Gospel across the Demilitarized Zone.
BY ERIK TRYGGESTAD | THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
a ..
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
McMillon, Lynn. The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 70, No. 5, Ed. 1 Wednesday, May 1, 2013, newspaper, May 1, 2013; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1509328/m1/1/: accessed July 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.