WestCoast Association commissions first missionary
By Frank Stirk
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA—The first inkling Korean-born Moses Seo received that God was calling him to be a missionary to First Nations peoples came in April 1999 through his television set. He was at his home in Montreal watching a program on the formal ceremony marking the founding of Nunavut in Canada’s far north.
“I was taken by those Inuit, because it was as if I was looking at my neighbours from my home country when I was growing up,” he said. “Their faces are like my home country’s. Everybody looked so friendly to me.”
Today, Seo is the missionary pastor of Victoria Korean Baptist Church. He also ministers to the 1,600-member Tsawout Nation, whose reserve is located just north of Victoria, in cooperation with the Tsawout Assembly of Praise Church in Saanichton.
In April, the WestCoast Baptist Association (WBA) formally commissioned Seo and his wife, Sarah, as missionaries assigned to proclaim the gospel, prepare servants and plant churches among the over 28,000 First Nations peoples who live on Vancouver Island.
“Whether they will eventually become affiliated with our churches, that’s not the ultimate goal,” said WBA moderator Alan Au. “Although it is a good hope that they will affiliate with us, the ultimate goal is to see people converted and congregations formed.”
“I didn’t expect this blessing from my association,” said Seo. “This is a big support for me, not only financially, but also in prayer support and heart-encouragement.”
That support includes ongoing mission trips to the reserve by several WBA churches that Seo believes have been well-received by band members. Au hopes these experiences will benefit the churches involved as well.
“I would hope that we will learn to cross-culturally reach other people,” Au said. “We have not been effective or actually even ventured out to reach other cultures—and this is our first chance to do it.”
Getting to this point in his ministry has not been easy for Seo, who described his transition from urban church pastor to a native village missionary “like a new immigration.” (Seo had previously pastored and church-planted in South Korea and New Zealand before coming to Canada.)
When God began revealing His will for Seo’s life, he had been the pastor of On Noori Baptist Church of Montreal for two years. In obedience, he began praying and meditating and studying the history of Canada’s indigenous peoples.
“The more I studied, the more drawn I felt to these peoples,” he said. “I realized they were like the man who fell into the hands of the robbers in Luke 10:29-37. And through that Bible passage, God gave me the calling to First Nations peoples a few months later.”
But God had still more to reveal to Seo. After going on several short-term trips to First Nations peoples in Quebec, he realized what they needed was someone willing to live among them and love them in the name of Jesus on a long-term basis. “And so I made up my mind to spend my whole life among the First Nations people,” he said.
At the urging of a Korean missionary with a native ministry in Vancouver, Seo and his family moved to Victoria in August 2001. And yet when he first ventured onto the Tsawout reserve, he was met with suspicion, rejection and even outright hostility.
But with perseverance and the offer of free haircuts—Seo is a barber by trade—he gradually began to earn the trust of the band members and leadership, and has developed strong relationships with many of them.
Despite his desire to do more to reach out especially to the reserve’s teenagers and its many single mothers, Seo remains mindful that much work remains to be done to reach all of Vancouver Island. It is a task he admits he cannot accomplish alone.
“I can visit many reservations, but I think it’s far beyond my ability or my ministry,” he said. “I want to see more ministers coming to this island and working together for the long term—10 years, 20 years, 50 years or until the Lord comes—and after my death, to have another one come as my successor.”
“Moses is a wonderful man,” said National Ministry Leader Gerry Taillon, who calls Seo “exactly a model of what the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists is all about—laying down your life for people.”