12 Unconventional Church Planting Principles From … North Korea?

An American pastor has set forth 12 unconventional – even seemingly counterproductive – church planting principles that he learned from a highly unlikely source – North Korea, where the Christian community is completely underground.

Pastor Eric Foley, who has worked for ten years with North Korean underground Christians, says the way church is done in America would get a believer in North Korea immediately killed or imprisoned. Yet despite having to hide their faith, North Korean Christians have a lot to teach American Christians when it comes to church life.

“The major difference that we note between the development of discipleship practices in the free world, in the West or countries like South Korea, is that discipleship practices really do rely on a freedom of religion that takes the form of being able to develop people in a specially purposed building, with a specifically full-time trained pastor, and an abundance of resources,” said Foley, who is pastor of .W Evangelical Church of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Seoul, South Korea, to The Christian Post.

“Those things are absent in the persecuted church mostly, but certainly specifically in North Korea.”

In North Korea, citizens discovered to be Christians are thrown indefinitely into hard labor camps without trial, and some have been even publicly executed for their faith.

Last May, North Korea reportedly executed three leaders of the underground church and jailed 20 other Christians, according to AsiaNews. North Korean police raided a house in Kuwal-dong in Pyungsung county, Pyongan province, and arrested all 23 believers who were gathered there for religious activity.To read more, click here.