“When you’re discipling North Koreans, you realize quickly that the tools that are fundamental to Christian discipleship in the West just aren’t available to help you,” says Foley. “Church buildings are illegal in North Korea. Paid, full-time pastors become ‘instant inmates’ in North Korea’s concentration camps. When more than two or three gather together — even in somebody’s home in the middle of the night — the police show up. And Bibles are confiscated instantly, and the people who possess them end up dead.”
Foley’s ten year work with North Korean underground Christians led him to a conclusion that he says “floored” him. “It turns out that our modern western way of making disciples and being church is the historical oddity,” says Foley. “The North Korean situation of empty-handed discipleship in the face of intense persecution is the norm.”
Foley planted churches in the United States and South Korea using what he calls “persecuted church principles for the free world.” After frequent inquiries from intrigued onlookers, he compiled the lessons he had learned into a twelve-point strategy he says is designed to make it possible for committed lay Christians to plant a thriving church — one without buildings, pastors, weekly offerings, and musical instruments, where members learn how to become “living Bibles” by memorizing Scripture rather than relying on printed literature. In addition to Church is For Amateurs, he also authored an extensive reference work on his discipleship model, The Whole Life Offering, which became available earlier this year.
Both books are available for purchase at www.seoulusa.org/resources. Rev. Foley is available for interview; contact publishing@wholelifeoffering.com for more information.
(Source: Christian Newswire)