(Posted at http://rsqubf.info/documents/reform/1976.html.)
1976 Open Letter to Samuel Lee
(Seven Korean UBF staff shepherds wrote this document on April 17, 1976 before Easter to Samuel Lee. This is translated from Korean.)
Matthew 7:16,17: "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn-bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit."
May the grace of Jesus be upon you in this Easter season.
First of all, we are very sad to send this letter to you without first having the chance to discuss it with you. As you know, we have sacrificed our youth, dreams and family to serve the ministry of God. We have never disobeyed you. We obeyed you because we believed that you are God's servant. We hope that you might understand how we have suffered until we gave up Sunday worship services and the wedding of our sheep. We believe that God has begun his ministry in Korea and led UBF for 15 years through the Holy Spirit. We already thought how much our action would influence junior shepherds and sheep.
Shepherd Lee! On April 2, 1976, you ordered senior shepherds to gather at Chong-No chapter for message training because they were late for a meeting at 8:30 am. Through shepherd Mark Yang, you ordered Joseph Lee to go to Kwang-Joo chapter and Nathaniel Ahn to go to Dae-Jeon chapter. Mark Yang gave a meaningful smile and said to us, "Wait for a while and there will be another order." A few moments later, An-Soon Lee came and said, "Just write the message well." She explained why we got message training. It was because shepherd Chang-Woo Lee had difficulty writing the Genesis message, so he called every chapter in the morning. We heard from your wife that she paid careful attention to you because you would hit the rear end of shepherds after you quarreled with her. However, we did not take it seriously.
We believed that you were our spiritual father who gave us training out of love. You ordered Joseph Lee to move to Myung-Ryun chapter and Jonah Kim to move to Su-Daemoon chapter because they did not attend English Bible study on April 7, 1976. As we absolutely obeyed you as God's servant for eight to 10 years, shepherds Joseph Lee and Jonah Kim decided to obey your direction. We persuaded shepherd Nathaniel Ahn and Matthew Sohn to obey your direction. We prayed together and discussed current problems and future directions in UBF.
We found several problems in UBF. First, we do not know why UBF exists now. Even local churches are making efforts for campus mission and world mission now. Second, why have so many well-trained shepherds become useless? The situation was not too bad three years ago. Now they do not trust each other and compete too much to survive. Third, it is not right to overlook illegal acts inside UBF in the name of the ministry of God. We are tired of being trained by you and it difficult to see why we should continue to serve the ministry of UBF. Therefore, we decided to leave Seoul and spend time in prayer and God's words in order to refresh ourselves.
Shepherd Lee! Why did we become miserable like this? Why did UBF become miserable like this? We have received new life and calling from God to serve the ministry of God through UBF. Why are these tragic things happening10 years after we sacrificed our lives and gave up everything? We just kept crying without doing anything. We have lived for the truth, mission and our sheep to learn about Jesus, but we ended up being miserable. We could not stop crying. We prayed that God may use you and junior shepherds even if we might leave UBF. However, there was one unsolved question in our mind. Would every problem be solved if we resign? We have received calling from God to live for his glory. What is the right way to serve God even if we die right now?
We have prayed to find what we need to do for the future ministry of God. Through prayer, the Holy Spirit led us to this conclusion: to repent the sins of UBF and receive the grace of God. We should repent all our sins. We prayed together to find all spiritual sins and illegal activities under your leadership. Shepherd Lee! We were in high emotion. However, we've overcome our emotion now and made a decision for the truth. Please consider our opinions deeply.
1. Offering
As you know very well, our offering is from poor college students and laymen shepherds who are not economically settled yet. They sacrificed their whole income like the widow of Luke 21. Offering money should be used for world mission and charity. However, you spent the offering - 150,000won ($15,000) - by yourself. You should be concentrating on prayer and the ministry of the word instead. You said that we were too immature to take care of the offering money. However, you misappropriated the offering in the following ways:
i) Misappropriation of offering money
Shepherd Lee! In 1974, 20,000,000 won ($20,000) was collected for Bangladesh hunger. You misappropriated 20,000,000 won ($20,000) to buy the building for the Kwan-Ak chapter in 1975. You said that offering money would be returned later to be used for its original purpose. We agreed with you at that time. You, however, decided to permanently misappropriate those offering for spiritually poor students of the Seoul National University at the staff meeting of January 3, 1976. In order to collect this offering, our brothers and sisters sold their wedding rings, necklaces, textbooks, even their blood and offered their savings and college tuition. Those offerings should be used for Bangladesh hunger. What is worse, the Eerie chapter gave a lot of offering for charity since 1970. However, only 1,000,000 won ($1,000) was sent to Bangladesh in the spring of 1971. We cannot tell students to give offering for the 1976 Christmas because our conscience of faith would not allow us. Recently, the Dae-Han magazine was indicted for misappropriation of donation money. The illegal misappropriation should not be allowed for non-profit organizations.
ii) Concealment of an accounting book in UBF headquarters
You never disclosed the accounting of UBF headquarters. Matthew Sohn and Samuel Lee always reported the accounting by depending on information that your wife provided. As a result, they could only forge accounting. A large amount of money has been used for obscure reasons. The accounting has never been audited. We can not understand how one person can use such a large amount of money without an audit. Furthermore, a huge amount of money comes from abroad by layman missionaries. These offerings are very precious. Nobody, however, knows how these offerings have been used so far.
iii) Obscure expenses and expenditures
You bought a lot of real estate without discussion. When you attended the 1974 Swiss Rojan International Conference, you spent a lot of money bribing Korean religious leaders who were criticizing UBF. Your official monthly salary is 10,000 won ($100). You, however, squandered much more money than your salary. For example, you gave 1,000 won ($1.00) to sheep who came to greet you on new year's day. Is 1,000 won meaningful to our sheep? You, as the president of leaders, must give your attention to prayer and the ministry of the word (Act 6:3-6). You, however, control all expenses and expenditures by yourself. You treat the offering money of UBF as your own. As a result, UBF becomes corrupted. You show us that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10).
2. Abuse of human right
Shepherd Lee! You taught us that one person's life is more important than the whole world. Therefore, human beings should not be used as means in whatever situation. You, however, do evil in the name of good purpose and abuse human rights. These will become serious issues in our society if these are disclosed to the public.
(i) Case for violence and lynch
You beat people for training. Do you remember a big traffic jam in January of 1973 due to a severe snowstorm? Shepherds Nam-Kyun Lee, Isaac Koh, Jonah Kim, and Matthew Sohn were late for the leader meeting on that day. You ordered them to hit each other 10 times. Some of them fainted and some were hospitalized because of their wounded ears. According to the testimony of Moses Kim, you locked Dong-Jin Park in your house and made him sit naked in ice water for five hours. You ordered missionary candidate Ki-Hwang Yoo to be your personal driver. When he didn't obey you, you expelled him to Jejoo Island. You also ordered shepherd Nam-Kyun Lee to give Ki-Hwang Yoo only one meal per day at Jejoo Island and beat him 100 times everyday. He finally got pneumonia due to ill nutrition and horror. You made shepherd Man-Suk Chang take his two toenails out. You beat National Medical Center doctor, Hyung-Sik Sunwoo, at Chongno chapter before his brothers and sisters. You ordered shepherd Man-Suk Chang to beat Ki-Cho Kim at the CNF Mission Report in September of 1975. He got bruises in his face and ears. After this, he left UBF. There are a lot of cases. Shepherd Lee! We can not find anything like this in Jesus. If a victim sues you, UBF will be considered a cult and will be sentenced as guilty.
(ii) Forced arranged marriage
Shepherd Lee! Marriage is the blessing of God and should not be used for any other purposes. Marriage should be decided by the two people seriously. In the 1975 fall leader conference, you forced single male shepherds to make an oath, "I am the husband of a female German missionary." Even some shepherds, who were already engaged, were forced to do it. You might think that you did it for the love of spinster missionaries. You, however, did it strategically to encourage the loyalty of spinster missionaries to you. Shepherd Jung-Jin Kim did not answer your question immediately when you asked if he would marry the missionary you had in mind. As a result, you changed his name to Three Years Kim and ordered him not to marry within three years. Eung-Pyo Hong at Sudaemoon chapter was already engaged. You, however, ignored his engagement and forced him to marry another woman. You, however, excommunicated him saying he was like Ananias and Sapphira when he did not accept your order. The worst case was missionary candidate Soong-Heum Kim. You ordered him to marry Jung-Hwa Sho. She, however, turned down your direction. Thus, you ordered him to marry Jun-ho Lee. This time he turned down your direction because he wondered why God's direction was so whimsical. Because of his decision, you did not accept him as a missionary even though he sacrificed a lot in Chicago. Hwang-Woo Yeo, the Seoul districts judge, left UBF when you forced him to obey the arranged marriage. You spiritually abused Sang-Bong Kim at Kwan-Ak chapter when he objected to marry So-Won Kim. Whoever did not obey your marriage direction in UBF was accused of being a rebellious sinner. They had no choice but to leave UBF in the end. Most of the marriages in UBF were political. Marriage has been used to make members loyal to UBF. The arranged wedding is criticized by many people in our society and is disclosed to newspapers. The arranged wedding is not only non-Biblical, but also a sin that deprives humans of the freedom of marriage.
3. Cheat, theft and illegal activity
Shepherd Lee! Christianity never ignored ethics and morals in society (Matthew 5:20). You, however, said that the contradiction of ethical morals should be overcome. This non-biblical philosophy has justified many illegal activities.
(i) Theft
You ordered people to steal passports of missionary candidates for several years under the name of missionary training. The victims were missionaries Young-Ok Lee, Phil-Soon Huh, and Duk-Ki Kim. You also confiscated the working permit of missionary candidate Joon-Ki Chung because he was likely to desert missionary training. As Christians, we can not understand those things.
(ii) Forged documents and bribe
In December 1975, you wanted to change your ownership of the building of the Kwan-Ak chapter (25,000,000 won - $25,000) to the organization because of its high property tax. You changed the name of UBF to City Evangelism and appointed Joseph Lee, Nathaniel Ahn, Moses Kim and Mary Joo as committee members to obtain the alternation permission of ownership from local court. You also bribed tax collectors and notary officials to register non-registered real estate owned by the laymen mission organization. You evaded taxes. It is very sad that you, the chief leader of UBF, broke the law while keeping it secret from our sheep. Do we need to own those properties by breaking the law?
(iii) Destruction of family
You easily destroyed other shepherds' families while overprotecting your family. Family is a fundamental unit. Furthermore, a Christian family is the body of Christ. A Christian family is holy and personal and should not be destroyed by anyone. Only Jesus is the head of Christian family and leads it (Ephesians 5:30-33). You, however, intervened in the families of our sheep too much and easily destroyed families. You ordered Shepherd Paul Lee's wife to divorce her husband in the name of shepherd training. You ordered Samuel H. Lee to go to Kwang-Joo chapter after sending his children to an orphanage and his wife to the USA. These are not just verbal threat. You forced Kyung-Hee Suh (the wife of president of laymen shepherds Jin-Tae Suh) to go to USA because, you said, she was not qualified to be the wife of a president, and separated her from her family for one year. You forced Isaac Koh to sleep in the UBF center for self-control training of marriage life. You also ordered other shepherds be away from their wives and to divorce them. We did not take the arranged marriages seriously. But the suffering you cause in real marriages is unbearable.
4. Non-biblical education methods
Shepherd Lee! The education method of UBF is based on Jesus' disciple training. The basic of Jesus' education method is personal conversion. Our current education methods, however, depart far from the Bible.
(i) Forced repentance
Shepherd Lee! You forced missionary candidate Suk-Jo Chang to put red pepper into his eyes and made him strike his head on the wall for his repentance. He repented his sin superficially, but kept his bitterness in his heart. He never wrote a letter after he went to the USA. You also beaten or threatened people to repent. There is no example that true repentance is achieved by inhumane forced repentance. Missionaries who experienced inhumane training have bitter and askew hearts. We can not bear it any longer. Isn't repentance originated by the Holy Spirit?
(ii) Forced testimony sharing
Shepherd Lee! Testimony sharing can be used as a good educational method through which we can accept God's word deep in our heart and solve our problems. You, however, forced people to confess their sin through testimony by ignoring their own initiatives. You gave suffering to our sheep when they confessed their sin. You used their weak points to make them obey your direction. You forced E-Sook Ahn to write love confession several times before her marriage. This is severe spiritual abuse.
(iii) Infusion of personal philosophy through your message
Shepherd Lee! The essence of Christianity is Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection. For several years, you overstressed Genesis Bible study to force people to depend on your messages alone. Even though there was daily bread, you overstressed the part of the Bible to lose the universality of the Bible. This gave rise to the misunderstanding that our way of the Bible study is the same as that of a cult. We failed to teach our sheep the gospel of Jesus. Our Bible study methods are not those of Jesus and the Apostle Paul, but an infusion of your personal philosophy that blocks a free and creative way of thinking. It hinders the growth of faith for our sheep at each chapter.
(iv) Inhumane training of shepherds
Shepherd Lee! We admit that we shepherds need a lot of training in order for UBF to grow. It is true that you have much interest in shepherd training. You are absorbed in training shepherds after the CNF conference. You are proud that you are the best trainer in the world. We have been proud that we have wonderful trainer like you. What are the fruits of your training for the last 10 years? You were proud that you chose us from the best intellectuals. We tried our best to accept your training. But according to you, we turned out to be useless. Is there any problem in your training? Shepherd training absolutely needs individuality and self-control. Your training, however, is not spiritual training but spiritual abuse including harsh language, beatings and torture. You did not show personal interest and seriously discuss individual spiritual growth. You did not develop individual and personal talents. You made all members identical. You punished shepherds rather than helping them solve their problems if their errors were found. For example, you defiled them by beating (i.e., Man-Suk Chang) and hurt them spiritually by alienation. You threatened to impose fines and salary reduction. We are in despair due to horror, guilt, shame and self-accusation rather than growing spiritually by solving our problems. You don't have any standard for training. According to your wife, An-Soon, you hit the rear end of shepherds after you quarreled with your wife. Therefore, she tried her best not to quarrel with you. When we heard about this, we were shocked because we respected you as our spiritual father.
Shepherd Lee! Who grows spiritually by inhumane and identical training? The more we get your training, the more we become useless. Shepherd Jin-Hwa Lee does not say anything whenever he attends the leader meeting. Shepherd Nam-Kyun loses his hope. Shepherd Jonah Kim loses his whole desire. You, however, said that we were proud, lazy, and low-level because we graduated from third-level universities. You seem never to improve your personality. Your standard of training is to make a person like you and the goal of training is to absolutely obey you. We always worry about how we can escape your training and when your training is finished, rather than about growing our faith by training. Your training prevents us from growing. You make us spiritually useless and use us as a means for your business. Shepherd Lee! We are tired of your training. We bear fruits of fear, horror, lies, mistrust, and evil spirits rather than those of righteousness and peace. Shepherd Lee! We feel choked.
5. Shepherd Chang-Woo Lee centered-ministry
Jesus should be the center of the gospel ministry. The current UBF ministry is your ministry not Jesus'. The evidence is the following:
(i) Paralyzed function of committees
You appoint committee members by yourself. The main functions of committees are to budget, account, audit and inspect. You, however, won't reject to disclose the accounting balance and thus, the committee is nothing but a name. You always decide what you want without free discussion or vote. You easily changed decisions made by committee members. In fact, committees become puppets. For example, after you diverted 1974 offering money for Bangladesh hunger (20,000,000 won) to buy the building for the Kwan-Ak chapter, you forcefully obtained the purchase permission in the name of spiritual salvation during the regular committee meeting of January 3, 1976. This caused committee member Ik-Keun Hwang to resign. When this become a problem, you enforced the committee meeting on April 10, 1976, while five committee members did not attend. You concealed your sin of misappropriation by diverting world mission offering to refill offering money for Bangladesh hunger. You secretly appointed Seong-Jang Lee as the president of a committee to register the Kwan-Ak chapter building even though there was a legal committee president. These facts show that the committee becomes puppet controlled by you. As a result, you control the accounting and personnel administration of UBF by yourself. This causes you to make several sins.
(ii) Dictatorship of leader meeting
We were proud like the Apostolic church members when we accepted the calling to be a shepherd. We were eager to attend leader meetings. When we attended the leader meeting, we refreshed ourselves by the Holy Spirit. We came from a long distance to listen to your message every Monday despite financial difficulties. What is the situation now? You, the president of leaders, dictate in various meetings of 30 leaders. Through meetings, you input your thoughts to leaders without discussion.
You appointed, dismissed and changed the staff shepherds and lay shepherds by yourself. You gave bonuses and reduced salaries whenever you wanted. You manipulated your authority to subordinate shepherds who sacrificed their family, dreams, and life. You made Kil-Soo Kim, Anna Song, and Mark Yang your private tutors for your children. We, therefore, lost the meaning of God's absolute calling. Because of violence, shepherds live in fear. Every Monday, shepherds worry if they will be beaten in the name of training. They tremble with fear from beginning Monday morning and often attend the leader meeting without having lunch.
You ordered us to report the number of Sunday worship attendants and the amount of offering rather than the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you know that some shepherds made a false report? This is due to your dictatorship and fear rather than some shepherd's cowardliness. Joseph Lee sacrificed his life for 10 years. You said, "He can not live if he leaves UBF." You publicly told another shepherd that he hurt the ministry of God. He was an ineffective shepherd.
Shepherd Lee! Who can work under a leader like you? You judged a coworker's prayer topics and acted without truth in the name of training. You hurt shepherds fatally in their heart. When you discovered the weakness of one shepherd, you ordered one shepherd to train the other shepherd. You planted mistrust, doubt and bitterness among shepherds. Only order and reluctant submission remains in our leader meetings, which is far from the atmosphere of the Apostolic church. When the Holy Spirit works, all the believers become one in heart and mind (Act 4:32). When Satan works, only division and fear are expected.
Shepherd Lee! We lack a sense of spirit, philosophy and history. We sometimes did not love truth. However, if anybody read the facts mentioned above, he surely would say that UBF is gone too far from the spirit of truth. We have no doubt that God has used and blessed UBF through you. However, when we recall the last several years, UBF becomes nothing but a den of robbers since you did not spend the offering for charity.
We believed that you changed after you burnt yourself. Therefore, we absolutely trusted in you and followed your directions. We believed that you loved God and truth. We thought that we served God by obeying your directions in whatever situation. Last week, we deeply meditated with the Bible to ask if our act was like Korah who led a rebellion against Moses, the servant of God. We asked ourselves if criticizing you was to betray you, our spiritual father. We also thought that we should serve God's ministry as one body, keeping in mind the miserable history of division in our country. If all the facts in UBF are disclosed to the public, UBF will be an issue of horror in society. We already considered that our act might devastate the UBF ministry and hurt our sheep. This is not all! When we repented the sins of UBF before God, we experienced the suffering of death because we ourselves were already deeply ill.
You, however, said several time that UBF should perish for the glory of God if UBF is gone from the truth. You were right! In Jeremiah chapter 7, God said that He would make his temple like Shiloh. His people, the Israelites, did all kinds of evil and followed other gods while saying, "This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!" God said that He would scatter the Israelites and make them captives of Babylon. God is righteous. If there was no truth and righteousness in his ministry and people, God turned his promise over to Gentiles, destroyed his temple, and scattered his people. The ministry without truth should not exist. As long as the ministry exists without truth, God's glory is not revealed and our sheep are manipulated. We all agree that you are idolized in UBF and your glory is revealed without revealing God's glory. UBF ministry becomes a man-made ministry, in which Satan works.
Jesus said in John 8:44 that Satan is a liar and killer. Your saying seemed to be right when you said. That you, however, lied too much as a Christian leader after all. UBF is not a ministry of light and truth, but a ministry of cheating that has a lot of dark secrets (1 John 1). UBF is far from righteousness (Matthew 23). We have worked very closely with you for 10 years. We conclude that we'd rather die than work with you like Rehoboam (1 King 12). UBF used to be a life-giving ministry of the Holy Spirit. Now you use people and desert them.
What you do is far from what Jesus did. It is a life-killing ministry, not a life-giving ministry. You heard from Shepherd John Jun that we gathered near City Tae-Jeon on April 14, 1976. You sent Isaac Koh's family to the shepherd Nathaniel Ahn's house and expelled his 10-month pregnant wife (Ee-Sook Ahn), three year old son (Daniel), 14-month old daughter (Ee-Sook) to Kyomoon, Kyungki-do without shepherd Nathaniel Ahn. Seeing what you did to shepherd Nathaniel Ahn, we can not respect, love and obey you.
You announced that shepherd Nathaniel Ahn was qualified to be your successor. He might be deluded by Satan for a while. Nonetheless, was it permissible for you to take advantage of a weak pregnant woman and children in order to accomplish your goal? You sent shepherds Moses Kim, Isaac Koh, and Kil-Soo Kim to occupy Hanyang chapter by force while shepherd Nathaniel Ahn was out of town. You hurt the brothers and sisters in Hanyang chapter who recently accepted Jesus. Jesus said, "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6) Jesus said, "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." (John 10:11)
The work of the Holy Spirit is to be one heart and will. Could your untruthful acts be justified even if your acts were for the training of shepherd Nathaniel Ahn and for the ministry of God? How many times did you teach us that Satan used weak persons based on Genesis 3 and John 8? Your responsibility is to be a peacemaker. You, however, made shepherds Moses Kim, Isaac Koh, Kil-Soo Kim enemies of each other for your strategy. During the last 10 years, you led several shepherds to believe that they would be your successor in order to make them subject to you. You broke the friendship among leaders. Shepherds Jonah Kim, Joseph Lee, Nathaniel Ahn, Matthew Sohn all have the training to be your successor. They all agree that your acts are non-biblical. Can it be said that we are proud and low-level though we are already over 35 years old and have served the UBF ministry for 10 years? You might say that shepherd Nathaniel Ahn and all other shepherds are rebellious against you and are led by Satan. Nonetheless, it is not right for you to think that you have the right to do such murderous acts. You always have served the UBF ministry based on your spiritual philosophy that God's ministry can kill and manipulate people like Moses and Samuel did. You said before that it is all right for Jonah Kim to commit suicide in order for Joseph Lee to be your successor. You recently excommunicated Joseph Lee. You tried to eliminate Nathaniel Ahn this time. How can we believe that you are not going to eliminate shepherds Man-Suk Chang and Paul Lee?
Based on your deeds, we don't think that you learned from Jesus, Moses, and David. Moses killed many people who served idols. He, however, forgave Aaron, his closest coworker (Exodus 32). Did Moses pray for his people by laying his life as a security? Even when Miriam and Aaron talked against Moses, Moses did not give them training or revenge. Instead, God judged them (Numbers 12). Is there anything wrong for us to say that you, the servant of God, judge people because, you think you are equal to God? King David fled when his son, Absalom, rose in revolt (2 Samuel 15). He let God judge. How sorrowful David was when God judged Absalom! Didn't the father in Luke 15 want his prodigal son to repent and come back home? Jesus once rebuked Peter as Satan because of his human thoughts. Did Jesus visit again his disciples who betrayed him and serve them by love (John 21)? Apostle Paul served people with humility and tears (Act 20). Why couldn't you talk with us and help us even though we are wrong? We have never been against you for 10 years. How could we trust you as spiritual father and serve the ministry of God with you if you do not listen to us just one time?
We have wrongfully thought you are the spiritual father of UBF. You take advantage of your authority as the spiritual father, teacher and leader of UBF. However, God, our lord, is the only father, teacher and master. We are all brothers (Matthew 23:8-11). We understand that you should be respected as a spiritual father to establish spiritual order. Saint Paul also called Timothy son. The equality in UBF is, however, broken. Under the broken equality, calling you a spiritual father leaves UBF members in the relation of master and servant. You are nothing but a cult leader because you tried to become God. As a result, Satan works in UBF in several areas. We cannot but conclude that your words and deeds are tied up to the evil spirit of lying, killing, and fear (Roman 8:15).
Shepherd Lee! You might think that we lead a rebellion against you for political reasons or we are Satan led by one shepherd. We, including you, should repent together before God. You know well that UBF becomes a problem as a cult in our society. You made an excuse saying that UBF is strict. You also criticize the religious leaders. Why, then, do you flatter them by spending money inviting them? We cannot but think that you flatter them because you fear the disclosure of UBF's wrongdoing.
We will not keep silent about all the evil in the name of God's glory. We will not allow the evil ministry that idolizes you and manipulates our sheep. We pray that you repent and resign from UBF. This is the only way to restore the ministry of UBF for the glory of God. We are going to wholeheartedly pray for you. Please pray for us that we might continue to serve the ministry of God. We sincerely pray that the Lord of Lords, the righteous God, may win the victory.
April 15, 1976
Samuel H. Lee
Barnabas Chang
Peter Suh
Nathaniel Ahn
Matthew Sohn
Joseph Lee
Jonah Kim
This is a part of document from 1976 first UBF reform movement.
Ministry directions of UBF
UBF should be the ministry that God may use after solving the problems mentioned above. We suggest the following ministry directions based on the Bible. We want to change the regulations of UBF based on the following directions.
Main direction: The Holy Spirit instead of one person should lead ministry. The agenda should be discussed and determined together.
1. System
(1) Identical man-made system should be changed to creative and independent system that respects the ministry of local chapters (Ephesians 2:21,22).
(2) Each chapter is led under each chapter director's responsibility. UBF discussion committee should be organized.
(3) Abroad chapters are independently administrated. Offering money for missionaries' education and training should be sent to the main accounting department (Romans 15:25,26). Missionary sends offering to his home chapter by his own will.
2. Enforcement of committee
The function of committees should be reinforced to establish budget, audit, inspect accounting, and administer personnel (Act 20:28).
3. Separation of administration: Administration personnel will control budget, accounting and auditing.
(Currently, the president of leaders has controlled accounting even though he should concentrate on the prayer and the ministry of the word.) (Act 6:3-6)
4. Education of shepherds and missionaries: Impersonal physical training should be stopped and education should concentrate on spiritual inspiration. (1 Timothy 4:7,8)
5. Administration of personnel: Personnel administration committee should maintain the administration of personnel. (Currently, the president of leaders decides and maintains the administration of personnel.) (Act 1:15-26)
6. Protection of private life: The family of shepherds and laymen should not be inhibited by anybody for any reason.