In 2014, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) canceled its General Assembly due to “internal divisions among the evangelical community” in South Korea.
This year, as the ministry geared up to announce that it had once again selected Seoul to host its October 2025 gathering, divisions within the church have once again emerged.
Four days before WEA leaders signed a memorandum of understanding with the official organizing committee of the upcoming assembly, 1,000 Korean evangelical leaders published a full-page advertisement explaining why they and Hapdong, the country’s largest Presbyterian denomination, will not engage with WEA. The notice was published on November 11 in a church newspaper founded by Yoido Full Gospel Church—the world’s largest Pentecostal church and one affiliated with the Assemblies of God. Yoido’s senior pastor, Younghoon Lee, is on the WEA’s official organizing committee.
On the same day the advertisement ran, a former WEA affiliate, the Christian Council of Korea (CCK), also released a statement urging that the assembly be postponed until the issues the group raised are addressed.
The opposing parties challenged the WEA on three main issues: the “WEA’s emphasis on social responsibility,” its interactions with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Vatican, and its “theological ambiguities.”
“In principle, the WEA would like to stay above commenting on these different said controversies,” said Peirong Lin, the WEA’s deputy secretary general for operations, in a series of correspondences with CT. “We are grateful to work with the Korean churches for the upcoming General Assembly and would like to focus our energies and attention on making this GA an event that will unite the global church.”
Lin noted that although the groups are not directly involved in working with WEA for the 2025 meetings, the WEA is “committed to further communicate our theological position to them.” She also said the alliance is working with the Korean Evangelical Fellowship (KEF), the WEA’s current country affiliate, and clarified that “KEF does not have questions on our theological position.”
A report published in Korean by Christian Today Korea portrayed the selection process that led to Seoul as the city to host the General Assembly as involving “backroom negotiations.” “I am not sure what the accusation means,” Lin wrote to CT in a WhatsApp message.
“The WEA General Assembly is at its core a business meeting of different national alliances. The discussion on location has been ongoing for the past year,” Lin wrote in a follow-up email, adding that the WEA works “with the leads that we have in light of our requirements.” She added that the global alliance works with national bodies—in this case, the KEF—as they “broker for the unity of evangelicals in their country.”
“As a unity movement, the WEA looks forward to working with an organizing committee that represents the evangelical churches in Korea,” the organization said in a press release. With Lee of Yoido, Junghyun John Oh of the Hapdong denomination will also serve as cochair of the organizing committee.
Founded by David Yonggi Cho and his mother-in-law five years after the Korean War, Yoido counts around 800,000 members. Cho, who died in 2021, popularized the cell group concept, where groups of 10–15 people would meet weekly for Bible study and worship. In 2014, he was convicted of embezzling $12 million in church funds but avoided jail time.
Hapdong claims around 2.8 million members and 12,000 churches. A group of leaders affiliated with Hapdong ran the full-page ad with their statement, titled “Reasons Why the Korean Presbyterian Church Hapdong Cannot Engage with the WEA.”
In their published statement, the Hapdong leaders said WEA “superficially presents itself as reformed and conservative evangelical in theology” but its positions remain “inconsistent with reformed and conservative evangelical doctrine.” The Presbyterian leaders questioned WEA’s use of infallibility instead of inerrancy when affirming the Holy Scriptures in its statement of faith. They also cited the alliance’s and its leaders’ ecumenical interactions, including former WEA secretary general Thomas Schirrmacher’s endorsement of the WCC mission declaration during the WCC Assembly held in Busan, South Korea, in 2013.
The evangelical leaders, including pastors, elders, and seminary professors, went as far as to say their denomination must “sever ties with WEA due to its misalignment in faith and practice.”
For its part, CCK has released three statements raising similar issues as the Hapdong group while also alleging that WEA executive chair Goodwill Shana is part of the New Apostolic Reformation, whose tenets have courted controversy within the American evangelical movement. Shana “emphatically denies this accusation based on his beliefs and practice,” Lin said in an email to Christianity Today.
The CCK, pointing to several social media posts that characterized John Langlois, a lawyer and WEA International Council member emeritus, in a negative light, urged him to resign.
The CCK characterized John Langlois, a lawyer and WEA International Council member emeritus, in a negative light, noting unspecified social media posts on his son’s feed, and urged him to resign.
“WEA has experienced him as a legal expert with a heart for religious liberty,” said Lin. “We do not comment on personal issues.”
Noel Pantoja, head of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, attended the Fourth Lausanne Congress in Incheon, South Korea, in September. Pantoja’s predecessors include Efraim Tendero and Agustin Jun Vencer. Both have served at the helm of World Evangelical Alliance (which was called the World Evangelical Fellowship during Vencer’s time).
Pantoja said he witnessed a group protesting at Lausanne, which he believed was part of CCK.
“They say WEA does not have solid positions on some things, that it’s playing safe all the time, that WEA is becoming liberal,” Pantoja said, “but of course, that’s their perspective. I don’t believe it.”
In a 2014 analysis by Bong Rin Ro, who served as the international director of WEA’s Theological Commission from 1990–1996, he noted that the Korean church is one of the most theologically conservative worldwide.
“The church has been very sensitive to theological issues, especially the liberal theologies of the WCC,” he wrote. He explained that those within the Hapdong denomination would consider “any engagement with WCC liberals compromising.”
In addition to Schirrmacher’s 2013 endorsement of WCC, the opposing groups noted that WEA’s interactions with various faith communities, including the Roman Catholic Church and the Muslim community, indicate that the alliance is endorsing religious pluralism.
“The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) interacts with leaders of other Christian churches and non-Christian religious traditions in a variety of contexts in order to fulfill its goals and carry out the mission of Christ in the world,” Lin wrote in an email to Christianity Today. “WEA representatives work with these leaders to pursue common goals in areas such as social welfare and religious freedom, and engage with them in a diplomatic and respectful manner to effectively reconcile differences.”
She emphasized that throughout these interactions and engagements, the “WEA always affirms Jesus Christ as the way to salvation and consistently defends the central tenets of evangelical beliefs.”
Christianity Today reached out to CCK but has not heard back.
In CCK’s third statement, released on November 22, the group described WEA’s responses to their objections as “evasive” and “attempting to deflect with ‘false explanations.’”
“With respect to our theological position, the WEA has published books, an open access journal and also publishes our opinions as editorials,” said Lin. “Our intra and interfaith work is governed by policies approved by our International Council, our governing body.”
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