Kim Joon-gon

Life

Kim was born in 1925 in what is now Jido-eup, Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, the fourth of eight siblings. Although his family register records his birth year as 1925, some accounts state that he was actually born in 1924. He graduated from the Muan Practical Agricultural School and is said to have begun practicing the Christian faith while working in Manchuria. In 1948 he graduated in the first class of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary on Namsan in Seoul, and in 1951 he was ordained as a minister by the South Jeolla Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in Korea.

During the Korean War, his father and his first wife were killed by leftists. Moon Joon-kyung, an evangelist who had been a spiritual leader in his home region, was also martyred during this period. Kim later graduated from the Department of Literature at Chosun University and served as school chaplain (a minister attached to a school) and principal of Soongil Middle and High School in Gwangju. He also taught at Hansung Theological Seminary, a seminary for Hansen's disease patients at the Aeyangwon colony in Yeosu. In 1957 he went to the United States to study at Fuller Theological Seminary. He died of age-related causes on September 29, 2009, and his funeral was conducted as a Korean church-wide funeral.

Ministry and Achievements

• Founding of Korea Campus Crusade for Christ: While at Fuller Theological Seminary, Kim met Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International, who encouraged him to take up the ministry. After returning to Korea, he founded Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC) in 1958. KCCC's stated goal was to evangelize the entire nation by reaching university students, the "leaders of tomorrow."
• Prayer breakfasts: In 1965 he began the National Assembly Prayer Breakfast, and in 1966 the National Prayer Breakfast, attended by the president and political figures.
• National Evangelization Movement: In 1969 he launched the Movement to Make All Soldiers Believers, which aimed to bring members of the armed forces to faith. As part of this effort he lectured field-grade officers on Christianity and anticommunism. From 1971 he led the National Evangelization Movement, and as part of it he began the Holy City Movement in Chuncheon in 1972, which sought to evangelize an entire city. He also led large-scale gatherings such as Explo '74 and the World Prayer Assembly.
• Other activities: In 1980 he was involved in founding the Korea Association of Creation Research. He served as the first chairman of the board of the Korean Organ Donation Program and in 2000 led a campaign to send dairy goats to North Korea. He also served as a standing representative of the Korean Sharing Movement.

Influence on the Korean Church

KCCC became a leading organization for campus missions. The number of university students he trained through KCCC during his lifetime is said to reach into the hundreds of thousands. The discipleship he emphasized is credited with raising up lay leaders active in politics, academia, and civil society, as well as pastors and missionaries. Scholars regard his National Evangelization Movement as having contributed to the growth of the Korean church and to the overseas missions movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Some studies interpret the 1972 Holy City Movement as having anticipated the direction of the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, in that it combined evangelism with social responsibility. In 1993 he led about 1,500 participants at a KCCC summer retreat to pledge to donate their corneas, and his own corneas were donated after his death.

Assessment

Those associated with KCCC and the evangelical community hold him in high regard as a leader of youth evangelization and national evangelization. In 2002 he received the Order of Civil Merit, Moran Medal, in recognition of these contributions. On the other hand, the National Prayer Breakfast he initiated and his military mission activities have drawn criticism for their close ties to political power during the era of military rule. His approach of promoting Christianity together with anticommunism has been controversial for the same reason. These issues are frequently raised in discussions of the relationship between church and politics. His support for the creation science movement is assessed differently depending on denominational and theological positions within the creation and evolution debate.