Million Souls Movement

Background

The revival fervor that had carried through the Wonsan Revival (1903) and the Great Pyongyang Revival (1907) gradually waned after the spring of 1907. During the same period the Korean Empire was losing its sovereignty, having undergone the Eulsa Treaty of 1905 and the forced abdication of Emperor Gojong in 1907. Against this backdrop, a movement arose among the Presbyterian and Methodist missions in Korea to carry the flame of revival forward into a nationwide evangelism campaign. The effort became known as the Million Souls Movement.

Development

Accounts differ as to where the movement began. It is generally held to have originated among the American Southern Methodist missionaries stationed in Kaesong (Songdo).

• July 1909: Southern Methodist missionaries, including M. B. Stokes, Gamble, and Reid, held a prayer meeting in Kaesong. They urged church members to win 50,000 new believers within their mission territory in one year.
• September 1909: The annual meeting of the Southern Methodist mission expanded the goal, adopting the slogan "Two Hundred Thousand Souls for Christ This Year."
• October 1909: The joint body of the evangelical missions working in Korea expanded the goal once more, to "A Million Souls for Christ." Depending on the source, this body is called the General Council of Evangelical Missions or the Presbyterian-Methodist Union Council. The missionary James S. Gale served as its chairman, and special promotion committees were organized within each denomination. In the same year, the American revivalist J. Wilbur Chapman and the song leader Charles M. Alexander visited Korea with their party and held evangelistic meetings in Seoul and elsewhere. Robert Harkness, a member of the party, is said to have composed the movement's theme song, "A Million Souls for Jesus," while in Seoul.
• 1910: The movement got fully under way. The council designated Sunday, March 20, 1910, as a national day of prayer. According to Japanese colonial reports, the missionaries divided the period from April 1910 to March 1911 into three stages. Under the plan, every believer would win one person in each stage, doubling the number of believers each time until the total reached 1.12 million.
• After August 1910: Following the Japanese annexation of Korea, the movement actually gained momentum. That September the Presbyterian Church directed each of its regional bodies, the sub-presbyteries (daerihoe), to appoint special committee members. The churches resolved to hold a week of special dawn prayer meetings beginning October 24. The movement continued until around March 1911.

Methods of Evangelism

• Meetings and prayer gatherings: Union prayer meetings, daily prayer meetings, and mass evangelistic rallies were held in many places.
• House-to-house evangelism: Believers visited homes one by one to share the gospel.
• Literature evangelism: Church members bought portions of the Gospel of Mark with their own money and gave them free of charge to their neighbors. About 700,000 copies of Mark are reported to have been distributed, though some sources give a figure of more than one million. Millions of tracts were also distributed.
• Day offering (nal yeonbo): A form of offering in which believers gave their "days" (that is, their time) to evangelism instead of money. In Pyongyang, 1,000 believers pledged 22,000 days. Nationwide, a total of approximately 100,000 days are recorded as having been pledged.

Results and Influence

Missionaries at the time estimated the number of Protestants in Korea at roughly 140,000 to 200,000. Measured against this figure, one million was a difficult goal from the outset, and some assessments note that the number of believers did not increase significantly.

The movement nonetheless had a lasting influence on methods of evangelism. The day offering had already appeared in some areas around 1902, but through this movement it spread to churches throughout the country. Thereafter it became one of the characteristic evangelistic methods of the Korean church. The practice of laypeople engaging directly in evangelism and distributing Gospel portions also became widely established. Some scholars hold that the system of lay district visitors (gwonchal) took root during this period.

Assessment

The movement is regarded as the Korean church's first all-out evangelistic campaign undertaken jointly across denominational lines. It is also understood as an extension of the Great Pyongyang Revival that channeled revival fervor into evangelism. Gale and other missionaries of the time believed that this moment, when the nation was sunk in despair, was the time to preach the gospel. Some church histories hold that the movement became a source of hope for believers amid the pain of losing national sovereignty.

At the same time, it has been pointed out that the results fell far short of the stated numerical goal. The fact that the movement coincided with the Japanese annexation is also part of the context in which it is understood. The Japanese authorities likewise took note of the movement's plans and recorded them in their reports.