Mission and Missiology as Vulnerability: A Qualitative Study

The spirituality of South Korean missionaries is currently in crisis. A survey conducted by the Korean Research Institute for Mission (KRIM) in 2015 revealed that 61.2% of participants acknowledged a lack of spirituality and expressed the need for further training in piety. Two fundamental causes contribute to this spiritual decline among Korean missionaries. Firstly, a deficiency in biblical principles of missional theology. It is argued that failure to derive missional theology directly from Scripture has weakened the spirituality of Korean missionaries. Secondly, the training curricula provided by Korean missionary-sending institutions, lack the necessary focus on spirituality. In response to this crisis, the authors carried out qualitative research to explore the question, "What is going on?"—the first of Osmer’s four tasks in practical theology. The study identified five key themes that emerged from the naïve sketches and structured interviews with the participants, who comprised Korean missionaries and members of the Kosin Presbyterian Mission (KPM).