Lutz Drescher - Jooseop Keum

Der Direktor der "Commission on World Mission and Evangelism" des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirchen in Genf sprach zur Verabschiedung von Lutz Drescher in der Feierstunde der Geschäftsstelle der Evangelsichen Mission iun Solidarität (EMS) in Stuttgart am 23. April 2016.
Foto C.Waltz/EMS
Das Grußwort von J. Keum stammt aus Facebook

Saranghanun Hyungnim,

Dear Lutz, you know what the word of Hyungnim means in Korean. It is much more than an elder brother. It could mean perhaps a brother who is like a mother and father. I remember you called Jesus as hyungmin when you were serving in Korea. On this special day of your retirement, I want to say, “well done saranghanun hyungnim.” You have been a faithful servant of God, a friend of suffering Korean minjung, and a prophet of peace and reconciliation. 

I am grateful, for our gathering here today gives me the opportunity to share with you all some of my personal esteem for our dear brother Lutz Drescher. I met Lutz for the first time in August 1989 in the campus of Yonsei University. We were crying together because of the tear gas. It was a strange experience to meet a German missionary at the demonstration of the Teachers Union for Democracy in Korea. While both of us were attending the general council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, we discovered that we liked more the ecumenism on the street rather than in a cathedral. 

The second encounter was a gathering of the Association of Minjung Churches in Korea later that year. I was surprised to see more that Lutz was working for a gongbubang (a day care centre for the urban poor children) in Hakyedong. By that time I was also working for a night school in Ansan for the labour movement. Soon after, when we were helping at the WCC JPIC Convocation in 1990, Seoul Korea, I was removed from the seminary by the dictatorship and you gave me lots of encouragement. I am sorry that I didn’t accept your advice to move my membership from the conservative PCK to the progressive PROK by that time. I wanted to challenge and change the PCK to become more ecumenical and more progressive. 

Allow me to highlight three areas in which I believe you have made a prophetic contribution of immense value to ecumenical mission practice. 
- Lutz has shown an example of ecumenical missionary work in mutuality and solidarity in the postcolonial era. He has lived out ecumenical discourses of mission into action.
- Lutz has developed an incarnational model of mission in the suffering context of the Korean minjung. He not only lived and worked at the margins, but also struggled together with the marginalised people for the transformation of the Korean society.
- Lutz has followed the footsteps of Jesus as a disciple of peace and reconciliation in the Korean peninsula. God appointed him as the Asia Secretary of EMS because he was missing too much Korea even after his return to Germany. I am sure that God will use him even after retirement as a messenger of reconciliation and a mediator of peace for the divided two Koreas.

Dear Hyungnim and dear friends in EMS, 
Hope, courage, prayer and peace – these are some of the hallmarks which I associate with the witness of Lutz Drescher as a person who has been obedient to the calling of missio Dei. On behalf of the Korean Church and minjung, on behalf of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches, I would like to say a big thank you to you. You have been a God’s gift to Korea. May God bless you and your continuous journey as a God’s missionary in the world!
Thank you.

Jooseop Keum, 
Director of CWME
World Council of CHurches