Information
Good News Mission
The Good News Mission is a mission of Korea as Korean Baptist Union that leads those who are suffering due to sin to be able to become born again through the genuine gospel. It has branch churches in more than eighty nations and has the evangelical conference at every year. The Good News Mission spreads God's Word throughout the entire world through broadcasting and Internet.
The Formation of Goodnews Mission
It appears that Goodnews mission came into being in the 1970s, however in truth, it began from a missionary school that had been founded with foreign missionaries dedication and prayers (Dick York, Kays Glass, etc.) who saw the reality of Christianity in Korea: living spiritual life without the assurance of salvation from sin. Pastor Ock Soo Park was one of the students who studied there.
He received salvation after wandering in sin for a long time and received training at the missionary school. Afterwards, he pointed out the fundamental errors that weren't biblical and formed Goodnews mission to preach the pure Gospel.
How was Goodnews Mission formed?
Jay Chalbis and Norman Grubb
When you look at the history of Christianity, the church that had been started by the disciples of Jesus degenerated. And it recovered from it through renewed spiritual awakening, however it backslide again. Religion got corrupted and whenever it backslid, great servants of the Lord arose and awoke spirituality by calling on people to repent. The history of Christianity went on this way.
In the mid 1950s, Norman P. Grubb, the chairman of Worldwide Evangelization for Christ, (WEC) ran into Dr. Jay Chalbis, a world youth evangelist at the airport on his way to Tokyo, Japan and at his invitation, he visited Korea. He never thought of coming to Korea since he heard there was great work of God and many people were receiving salvation after the Korean War.
However, he was surprised to find the most of Christians gathered at a Bible seminar at Juamsan prayer house, Daegu when he was preaching the Word on how born-again Christians should grow in their spiritual life.
In doubt, the next day he asked them to raise their hands if they had the assurance of salvation. Nonetheless among the innumerable people who were praying earnestly, only a handful of people raised their hands.
Shocked, he went back to Britain feeling sorry that the Korean churches were not able to preach how people could receive the redemption of sin.
Founding the Goodnews Missionary School
One day, he went to a big church to preach the Word and before the sermon, he had one student who was receiving training as part of his mission give his testimony. This student named Kays Glass gave his testimony of how he met a born-again lady and received salvation after having lived superficial spiritual life for a long time in the Netherlands, and he said he was waiting to receive a visa to go to Nepal as missionary.
Upon hearing the testimony, Dr Norman Grubb thought, 'Ah, he can go to Korea and preach the Gospel' and eventually, Kays Glass came to Korea. He realized the Korean church was in the same situation as he was before receiving salvation and tried to preach the Gospel of forgiveness of sin to many people in Korea. However, since Korean people believed they could go to heaven by going to church, offering tithes and keeping Sundays, they couldn't understand him well. In the meantime, foreign missionaries, who were in Korea during that time, often got together and prayed for Korea. They were Dick York, Marlin Baker, Darek Earl, Harry Wyman and so on. Centered around Dick York and Kays Glass, they started training students by opening a missionary school named 'shield of faith mission' in Daegu in the hope of raising future Gospel workers in Korea. Pastor Ock Soo Park entered that missionary school in 1962.
Thanks to my mom who had been going to church since she was young, I went to church since I was young. However, as I was growing up, I struggled to get out of sin only to see myself fall into sin deeper and deeper. In spite of paying tithes, keeping Sundays and praying hard, the older I became, the more I fell into the sin. The life of sinning and then repenting repeated itself. Nevertheless, God poured grace upon me and blocked off all my ways. Neither could I continue studying, nor get a job, nor go to the army.
One day when I was deep in despair, I was going through the Bible while praying for my sin problem. I came across the Word, 'My sin was washed away as white as snow through the blood of Jesus' and I came to believe in the Word. At that time, all my sin was washed away in my heart and afterwards I could receive training in the missionary school by God's guidance. The missionaries' life of faith was not theory but reality. For instance, don't just say that God listens to your prayer when you pray, but get the answer of your prayer for real. One of the things that amazed me when I was in the missionary school was that their life was totally the life of the Word. They had us get everything from God through prayer and led us with the faith in the Word. Until then, I was so young in spirit that I knew little about the world of faith. (Ock Soo Park) The missionaries led the students to the life of faith. Afterwards, as the missionaries who led the church and trained the students went back to their home countries, Pastor Ock Soo Park took up ministry and formed Goodnews mission.