One of the great highlights of our recent trip to Asia was seeing West Coast Baptist College graduates who are serving in ministry and planting churches across Asia.
Throughout Spiritual Leadership Conference Asia, we had the privilege of visiting with graduates who are involved in church planting work in the Philippines, Japan, Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, and more. It was such a joy to me to hear how God is using them in spiritually dark and needy places. Some are in places where there is tremendous persecution and others where there has been little previous gospel work. Yet, in every case, they are laboring together with Christ, preaching the gospel, and seeing the Holy Spirit bring fruit.
On our way back from Manila, part of our group flew through South Korea and took a one-day layover to visit our missionaries Barry and Mi-Suk Hoffman. In the evening service at Emmanuel Baptist Church, we were able to visit with several more graduates, including the Hoffmans’ son and daughter-in-law, Samuel and Sarah (to my right in the picture above), who are serving with his parents. There is another graduate couple cropped out of the picture above (for security) who are currently serving in China. They are helping with a church planted by an American missionary who was evicted from the country. This summer, they’ll be planting a church in a needy Chinese province several hours from where they are currently serving.
Also present at that Friday evening service was a group from Seoul Baptist Church, planted and pastored by Jireh Lee (immediately to my left in the picture above). While Jireh was at WCBC, he helped in our Korean ministry here at Lancaster Baptist Church. After he graduated, he and his wife Inhye started the Seoul Baptist Church.
Early on, the Lord gave this church the opportunity to purchase a building (a difficult and expensive proposition in the heavily-populated city of Seoul). They are two years in on this church plant and have already outgrown their building, averaging over one hundred adults each Sunday.
Noah and Yumi Kim (far left in the picture and also WCBC graduates) are currently serving at Seoul Baptist, but they will soon be headed to the Philippines as missionaries.
Jireh recently began a website, similar to the equipping site our ministry hosts, Ministry127.com—only with all of the articles and resources in Korean. It’s titled Plan B for it’s relevance to Bible Believing Baptists. The address is plan-b.or.kr. If you speak Korean, know people who do, or know missionaries ministering to Korean people, feel free to share with them!
I’m so proud of these graduates and grateful for the work they are doing for Christ. Our purpose at WCBC is “Training laborers for His harvest.” It is such a joy to see graduates in the harvest field who are truly laboring for Christ.
During this last trip to Asia, we were in two megacities—Manila and Seoul—both with a combined metro population of 38,000,000 people. And that is just two cities in a vast, densely-populated area.
It made me so grateful for every gospel light shining. And it encouraged me that I want to continue asking the Lord to send more laborers to His harvest!
Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.—Matthew 9:37–38
