How a “Chance” Encounter Can Impact a Nation

Our Passion: To see the Body of Christ worldwide experience

the freedom of the Gospel through the power of forgiveness.

Our Mission: To coach pastors and ministry leaders on how to forgive

and how to coach their people to forgive and coach others to forgive.

Our recent trip to South Korea may have been our most consequential trip to date in terms of the number of significant pastoral leaders we had the privilege of connecting with. I taught 24 sessions to 11 different groups in the two weeks we were there. We shared the message with pastoral leaders from some of the largest churches of various denominations in Korea and, in one case, the world. A conservative number of congregants in the churches represented by these pastors would be well over 125,000 people. We were blown away at the privilege God afforded us on this trip.

To be candid, we were a little apprehensive heading into the sessions with the pastors. It has been our experience that, for a variety of reasons, pastors are often the ones who are the most resistant to the Forgiving Forward message. With this in mind, we enlisted our prayer team and prayer partners to beseech God specifically that He would open the hearts and minds of the pastoral leaders to whom we would be teaching. And God answered in incredible ways.

The leaders listened attentively and embraced the message. After the lunch break at the largest seminar, one pastor announced to the 170 in attendance that he would pay for everyone to have a copy of the Forgiving Forward 2nd Edition book. After teaching the Forgiveness Protocols, we asked them to pair off with someone from a different church and take turns coaching each other to forgive. Without hesitation, they moved to various sections of the larger sanctuary and got to work. We gathered them back together and asked them, “How’s your heart? Describe how your heart feels.” They responded: “Peace!” “Freedom!” “Total joy and a feeling of satiation!” Powerful! Holy Spirit power!” “Release!” The change that had taken place in the hearts all over the room was remarkable.

One of the Senior Pastors who sponsored the event shared with me that he was going to make sure that his entire staff implemented the message into every part of their church’s ministry. There was discussion about us coming back for a larger multi-church seminar and a coaching intensive. We were overwhelmed by the response and the potential for the message of Gospel-centric forgiveness to spread throughout South Korea.

We are in a constant state of amazement as we recall all that God has done and is doing in and through Forgiving Forward, using seemingly small things to orchestrate a huge impact. This is particularly true about our trip to South Korea.

In January 2020, a small group that met 10 minutes from our house had chosen the Forgiving Forward Video Series as their next study. The leader of the group had asked us to help launch the series by sharing some of our story on the first night of the study. We happily agreed. One of the couples attending that night was Joseph and Enny Kim, who were in our area on sabbatical from his pastoral position in South Korea. As we shared our story and various accounts of people we’ve helped find freedom through forgiveness, Joseph was visibly moved. At the end of the evening, they asked if we could get together for lunch. At our lunch meeting, Joseph shared that he’s been praying for a new mission to help the people of South Korea grow in their faith and that he felt Forgiving Forward was an answer to his prayer. After applying the message in their own lives, Joseph and Enny asked if we would be willing to come and bring the message to their home country. From that day forward, we began making plans to share this message in South Korea. Although we thought COVID delayed our trip, God used the delay for Joseph’s team to prepare the way for our time there by translating both editions of the book and training many of the leaders of the cluster of churches they are connected with. God used all that to prepare the ground for our time there to be as extraordinarily fruitful as it was. Thank you, God, and thank you, Joseph, Enny, and the team!

Our strategy to accomplish our Passion and Mission is simple: “Savior, like a Shepherd, lead us!” We love living this way because we never know when God will use a “chance” encounter to open the door to an incredible expansion of the message of Gospel-centric forgiveness to the other side of the world.

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