결속에서 연결로: 환대를 통한 한국 교회의 교량형 네트워크 강화 방안 연구 = From Bonding to Bridging: Strengthening Bridging Networks in the Korean Church through Hospitality

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The year 2025 marks the 140th anniversary of Korean Christianity, placing the Korean church at a crucial juncture where it must commemorate God's grace while simultaneously reexamining its identity and mission in a rapidly changing society. Over the past century, the Korean church has grown based on ‘bonding’ networks, demonstrating strong cohesion and dedication even amid social crises, and has wielded influence across various domains including education, healthcare, missions, and welfare. However, in contemporary society where pluralization and secularization have intensified, such internally-centered structures limit connections with the outside world and have become factors that hinder the recovery of the church's public nature and social trust. Internally, the church faces problems of inward-focused religious life, hierarchical leadership, intergenerational communication breakdown, and the spread of congregationalism. Externally, there are notable issues including declining social trust, the need for missionary paradigm shifts, insufficient digital communication capabilities, and weakened cooperation with local and civil society. To address these problems, it is necessary to maintain the advantages of bonding networks while expanding toward ‘bridging’ networks that connect heterogeneous relationships. This paper proposes ‘hospitality’ as the core value for implementing this transformation. Hospitality is described in biblical tradition as the act of inviting others into the community and represents an essential practice of the gospel embodied through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. When Miroslav Volf's four-stage process of “opening arms-waiting-embracing-opening arms again” is extended to ‘risk-taking hospitality,’ it can promote openness that expands the church's boundaries. Risk-taking hospitality can be applied in church settings through the acceptance of internal others, building mutually cooperative relationships with local communities, and activating interactive communication in digital spaces. The expansion of the Korean church from an internally-centered network structure to an externally-centered network structure based on such hospitality will transform the Korean church from a closed protective community into a public and missional community. Through this transformation, the Korean church will become meaningful spiritual and social capital that recovers the public nature of the gospel and provides crucial momentum for realizing the vision of God's kingdom in Korean society.