Editor Details Editor : The Revd Clint Padgitt E-mail : CPadgitt@aol.com

As an organization concerned with all aspects of maritime mission, past, present and future, IASMM welcomes articles, letters and notes from all involved in this work, whatever their own particular faith perspective, and whatever their maritime mission interest, whether pastoral, educational, welfare or medical. The following two articles, taken from the last issue of the newsletter, demonstrate this diversity. Clint Padgitt offers an historical overview of the work of the German Seamen's Mission in New York; and Dr David Chul-Han Jun discusses his perspectives on Maritime Ministry Among Muslim Seafarers.

German Seamen's Mission of New York, 1907-2001
By Clint Padgitt

The German Seamen's Mission of New York was founded in 1907 in Hoboken, New Jersey, as a purely German-American organization, as it has remained to this day. The original impulse came from German-American Lutheran clergy, and the financing came from private donors and from two big German shipping companies. The Mission's development mirrors the history of German immigration and trade with the United States in the twentieth century. It also illustrates the desire of German Lutherans in New York to reach out to people from the "old country" with special needs arriving in the USA.

Today's German Seamen's Mission of New York represents a 1974 merger of three German organizations: the Lutheran Emigrants' Association (das Deutsche Emigrantenhaus), the Assocation for the Relief of Indigent Germans (also known as Freunde der Freundlosen), and the Society for the Care of German Seamen in the Port of New York. The oldest of these organizations is the Lutheran Emigrants' Association, which was founded in 1860 to assist the enormous number of German immigrants arriving in New York. Its building on State Street in Manhattan was a first home for many Germans newly arrived in a strange country. New Immigration laws requiring immigrants to have a sponsor removed the need for many of the organzation's services, and after 1933 it maintained only an office for counselling immigrants.

The Association for the Relief of Indigent Germans assisted infirm and aged people of German extraction who were in hospitals and old age homes on Welfare Island, where a church was built and dedicated in 1919. The same work was later continued at Seaview Hospital and the Farm Colony on Staten Island.

The Hoboken Years

The impulse for the founding of the Society for the Care of German Seamen in 1907 came from Dr. D. C. Berkemeier, pastor and director of the Wartburg Orphan's Farm School in Mount Vernon, New York. Having heard in Germany about church work among seafarers, Dr. Berkemeier rallied the support of churches and pastors in the New York area to to bring over a seamen's pastor from Germany. The Germans arranged to send Pastor Willy Thun, who had been a seamen's pastor in Scotland and who began his work in New York in September 1907. With the help of many Lutheran churches (most of which were composed of German immigrants), the German shipping companies (especially the Hamburg-America Line and North German Lloyd), a Seamen's House in Hoboken, New Jersey, was purchased for $12,000 and dedicated on November 23, 1907.

Hoboken was chosen as the site for the building because most German merchant ships at that time docked along the New Jersey waterfront opposite Manhattan. Hoboken had already come to be known to seamen jokingly as a "suburb of Bremen." To give an idea of the number of German seamen in port in those years, the records show that in the first three months of 1908 there were 7,575 seamen who visited the Mission in Hoboken, and over 18,000 during the entire year. The Mission provided a quiet and safe place to stay, to meet others, and also a place where one could deposit one's pay and have the money sent to one's family in Germany.

Pastor Thun returned to Germany in 1909 and served for a further 45 years as seamen's pastor in Hamburg-Altona. He was succeeded by Pastor H. Bruckner from Weimar, who remained until 1954. During these decades in Hoboken, many deacons were sent from the St. Stephen's Foundation in Hannover to assist in the work among seamen. One of these, Heinrich Hoffmann, was House Father for 40 years (1919-1959). The Mission was constantly growing. In 1910 and 1911 two more houses were bought, and in 1925 a new wing with rooms for 170 people was built at a cost of $90,000.

World War I

Many German seamen were left stranded in New York at the outbreak of the war in 1914, with no way to return to Germany. About 250 seamen had to sleep on mattresses on the floor of the Mission, and ships' cooks were engaged to cook meals for them. The seamen set up a small workshop where about 100 men made models of the German ship Emden. About 30,000 models bearing the legend Seemannshilfe ("Seamen's Aid") 1914-15 were sold at $0.50 each. The men also made Easter rabbits and dolls.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, Seamen's Pastor Bruckner was interned on nearby Ellis Island for six months together with all the German seamen who had been ashore in Hoboken. In the spring of 1918 the Mission in Hoboken was seized by the United States authorities and occupied by 300 soldiers until October 1919.

After World War I the German merchant fleet gradually expanded. Many of the ships were on "tramp" routes which rarely took them to Germany. The need for providing books and other amenities on board the ships grew enormously, since seamen were away from home for months or even years at a time. The depression on the 1930s affected shipping greatly and also had a negative impact on the finances and work of the Seamen's Mission in New York.

World War II

Times became even more difficult when the Second World War broke out. There were, of course, no German ships in port, and the work among seafarers came to a virtual standstill. The Alien Property Custodian took control of the Mission in Hoboken, confiscated the library and exercised oversight over the income and expenses.

At the end of the war, the property was returned to the Mission. At that time about fifty German seamen who were naturalized American citizens were staying in the building, and ten elderly gentlemen remained there to spend their retirement.

The Post-War Years

As Germany began to rebuild after the war, more and more German merchant vessels began to arrive in the port of New York and New Jersey. In 1954 Pastor Herbert Patzelt succeeded Pastor Bruckner and dedicated himself to a new type of work among seamen: visiting on board ship. The modern ships were in port only one or two days, and the crews had little time to go ashore. The Mission in Hobokon was no longer near most of the ships and came to be visted by fewer and fewer seafarers. To help meet the expenses, part of the building was rented to the Waterfront Commission.

In 1958 Pstor Patzelt returned to Germany, where he served in parish ministry. (He now lives in retirement in Munich.) At this time Dr. Heinrich P. Suhr became president of the Seamen's Mission, succeeding Pastor Heinrich Kropp. At the beginning of 1959 Pastor Hans-Otto Zbinden arrived from Philadelphia to become the new seamen's pastor, and Mr. Alexander Birnbaum became "House Father" after retirement of Deacon Hoffmann.

In April 1959 a new Seamen's House was put into service: a brownstone property at 348 West 22nd Street in Manhattan, near the West Side piers and convenient to seamen. This building was purchased with the proceeds from the side of the old Deutsches Emigrantenhaus.

In 1964 Pastor Zbinden retired, and Pastor Otto Winter, who had founded a mission to seamen in Toronto, came down from Canada to become the seamen's pastor. His emphasis came to be visiting on board ship, serving as friend and counselor to countless seamen who seldom had time to go ashore. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the German Seamen's Mission of New York in 1967, Pastor Winter was presented with the order of Merit First Class of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) for his ministry to German seamen and immigrants.

In 1974 the German Seamen's Mission became an agency of social ministry of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Lutheran Church in America. In 1979 the old Mission in Hoboken was sold and the work was consolidated in Manhatten.

The Present and the Future

In 1978 the Rev. Clint Padgitt, the present seamen's pastor, succeeded Pastor Winter, who had retired and returned to Toronto. In the continuing ministry to seafarers today two factors are particualarly important. One is containerization and the concentration of ships in Port Newark/Port Elizabeth in New Jersey. Most container ships dock far from the city and remain in port for twelve to sixteen hours. A seamen's pastor has to be well-organized and mobile so that he can visit mariners on board their ships. The second factor is the need for co-operation with other chaplains and organizations, especially with Seafarers & International House of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which has a modern eleven-storey building at 123 East 15th Street in Manhattan with overnight accommodations for 100 people. Maintaining an office at this fellow Lutheran agency made it unnecessary to maintain a separate German Seamen's House on West 22nd Street, which was sold and the proceeds invested in furthering the Mission's day-to-day ministry, which involves going to the seafarers aboard the ships where they live and work.

Thanks to a taxation policy that has encouraged investment in merchant vessels, Germany today has one of the largest fleets of modern container ships, many of whch are chartered to companies all around the world. A typical German vessel has around five Germans and an international crew from the Philippines, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Eastern Europe and many other countries. The chaplain cares for all of them without distinction, filling the role of friend, helper, guide, counsellor and pastor.

The German Seamen's Mission of New York has been serving seafarers in the name of Jesus Christ for 94 years. Countless thousands of men and women who come to our country on ships have been touched by this ministry and have seen and felt that the Church cares for them even in a foreign place. Without the dedication and hard work of many people through the years this outreach would not have been possible. Thanks to their support, we can look forward to seeing it continue for many years to come.

Postcript: In 1998, the German Seamen's Mission of New York became a constituent member of the worldwide German Seamen's Mission based in Bremen, Germany. However, it still retains its independent legal and financial status.

Maritime Ministry and Muslim Seafarers

Dr David Chul-Han Jun, Asian Port Chaplain, was recently made a Doctor of Missiology. His thesis was on the topic of "An Historical and Contextual Mission Approach to Seafarers by Korean Churches with Special Reference to Muslim Seafarers."

We are grateful to Roald Kverndal for conducting this interview.

Friday, March 16, 2001, marked the beginning of a new chapter in Maritime Mission History - the culmination of a 10-year research odyssey with which our association has been deeply involved throughout. On that day the Rev. David Chul-Han Jun, Korean-born seafarers' chaplain with 25 years' experience in maritime mission, successfully defended his Dissertation at Fuller School of World Mission in Pasadena, California, for the Degree of Missiology. Not only is this the world's first maritime-related "D. Miss." degree but an indigenous Asian candidate has earned it in a field of maritime missiology that could hardly have been more challenging or more timely. In a postmodern world where the very validity of mission among those of other faiths has come under heavy fire, Dr David Jun has elected to focus on Muslim mariners. Today Islam is widely seen as the fastest growing yet also most unreachable of all non-Christian world religions. Pending the official graduation ceremony June 7, 2001, IASMM's President was able to record the following interview with this pioneer maritime missiologist:

When and how did you first become connected with mission and ministry among seafarers?

In 1972 a recently retired Korean General and Methodist deacon called Kim Eui-Min had a vision of penetrating the port-cities of otherwise closed Communist North Korea through the Christian witness of international seafarers visiting those ports. In 1974 General Kim launched an organization embracing this purpose, Korea Harbor Evangelism (KHE). Founded in Inchon, the port-city of Seoul, it thereby became the first indigenous non-Western maritime mission agency in the world. As for myself, I was a member of the Korean Evangelical Church, affiliated with the Oriental Mission Society. In response to a call to serve the Lord in global mission, I was at the same time attending Seoul Theological Seminary. In 1975, just as I was ready to graduate, I was invited to join the KHE as mission secretary, working with the organization's new leader, Dr Paul Ki-Man Choi, a Korean pioneer missionary in Iran and Afghanistan.

I thought you had gained some sea experience as well, had you not?

I did - with the mission ships run by the global mission agency Operation Mobilization (OM). Later, in 1975, the Logos visited Inchon for the first time and made a great impact in Korea. From then on we in KHE developed a close partnership with OM. In 1978 I joined the ship for a one-year global mission training programme that took me to several Islamic port-cities in the Middle East. Later, for two years, from 1985 to 1987, I was able to join the ministry team of the other OM mission ship, the Doulos, this time especially taking in West African port cities. This gave a great opportunity to relate to the many Muslims in these parts, too.

Does this mean that Korea Harbour Evangelism abandoned its original seafarer-related purpose?

No, not abandoned, but broadened! Initially, KHE was there for seafarers only. But through its partnership from 1975 with the world evangelization agency, OM, and from 1981 with the development aid agency, World Concern (WC), KHE has simply taken on an additional role as global mission partner agency. However, the key component has been our Inchon Seafarers' Centre. By offering a location for candidates from local seminaries to gain both motivation and education for cross-cultural ministry, we have been able to provide an opportunity not easily come by in a mono-cultural country like Korea. So, KHE has now become a channel for recruiting and training literally hundreds of cross-cultural missionaries for both of these major global mission agencies. (From 1988 we have for that purpose, maintained a special Cross-cultural Missionary Training Institute.) I am glad that KHE has, in this way, been renewing the historic linkage between maritime and global mission going back to the early 1800s.

Can you give us a thumbnail history of your research for this Dissertation?

When the Doulos reached the port of Cape Town in January 1987, I "jumped ship" together with my family and stayed behind in order to establish an overseas branch there for the KHE. During the slack winter months I prayed for guidance and was strongly reminded of the large Muslim community in our midst. (Their ancestors had been brought in as cheap labor from Malaysia and Indonesia by Dutch settlers 300 years earlier.) At first I hesitated because I already knew how resistant they might be. I also wondered how my own organization would respond to such possible lack of results. But my wife Sung-Ohk and I could not dismiss the thought. So we started a year-long training programme for a dozen young missionary trainees from Korea, integrating both local port ministry and training resources from the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM). From then on the work gradually grew.

I remember when I visited your home in Cape Town in September 1990, while working as Maritime Ministry Consultant to the Lutheran World Federation, you were seriously considering a maritime-related doctoral programe in the USA.

Yes, I had, back in Korea in 1984, already written a Master's Thesis on the History of the KHE. Tacoma Seafarers' Centre had by then, under Chaplain-Director, Ray Eckhoff, begun to develop what would become a special partner-relationship with Korean maritime mission agencies. At that time, Paul Peterson (then a lay chaplain from Tacoma Seafarers' Centre), was actually working with KHE. He told me about the Doctoral Dissertation you had just defended that year in Norway, and he helped me borrow it. It gave me the whole historical foundation I had to have for my Thesis. But you wrote in your Introduction you hoped it might also provide "a stimulous for further research."That's just what it did. It opened up a new world for me. Finally, in 1991, I received a nine-month furlough and enrolled in a doctoral program at the Fuller School of World Mission in Pasadena, California, with the intention of majoring in Maritime Missiology. But one day soon afterwards I was at the point of giving up any maritime connection at all for my topic, and focus instead solely on reaching the Muslim world with the gospel. Period. I simply could not convince the faculty that there existed enough source material beyond your book! The next day you showed up on campus out of nowhere, but with a bunch of books, papers and photocopies for me, plus a load of arguments for the faculty. From then on there was just no looking back.

That was only the beginning, wasn't it?

True, it would take another ten years to get there. On my return I continued my ministry in Cape Town, combining this with course work for Fuller. In 1997 I was able to move to Seattle and finish up at Fuller, while at the same time working for the KHE World Concern campaign to relieve starvation in North Korea. Now I'm headed back to Korea, where I look forward to sharing the results of my research both with KHE and seminaries there.

So how would you now summarize the main thrust of your Dissertation?

Basically, my aim is to identify a historically grounded and contextually relevant paradigm for maritime mission and ministry, and to do so from a specifically Korean and therefore Asian perspective. A secondary but significant purpose is to explore the implications for Muslim seafarers. In terms of historical it seemed to make sense to make maximum use of your own detailed 1986 History, rather than risk trying to duplicate. But I do highlight especially the birth of the Bethel Movement, owing to its unique relevance to contemporary maritime mission strategy.

What resources do you rely on in terms of current-day context?

The results of recent research by fellow-members of our International Association for the Study of Maritime Mission (IASMM) have been quite indispensable. This applies most of all to my former colleague from Korea, Canon Paul Mooney. I completely concur with the conclusion of his ground-breaking Th.D. Dissertation on Maritime Mission in the New Millennium. To remain relevant in an era of radical contextual change, maritime mission must shift to a ship-based, seafarer-centred approach, with seafarers themselves as the primary agents of ministry. While there will still be a need for a shore-based, specialized supportive role for resourcing and training, seafarers must no longer be relegated to just recipients and therefore objects of ministry! I also quote from British maritime union leader, Peter McEwan's address, at ICMA/99 in South Africa. There he specifically suggested not just relying on agency-supplied "sailing chaplains", but training lay crew-members themselves to become "conduits" of ministry on shipboard. In this connection I warmly welcome the research project on "shipboard welfare services" now initiated by the Cardiff-based Seafarers' International research Centre (SIRC). I trust they will also be including the various versions of lay crew-member ministry that McEwan refers to and that have in actual fact been emerging during the last two decades.

How do you see all this, as your topic suggests, from a specifically "Korean" perspective?

I was invited to an Asian Regional Conference of ICMA held in the Philippines late last year. I could not help commenting: "Where are the Asian faces here?" Thay all agreed that with so much of the maritime work force from Asia, here was a serious problem. Among our fellow-Asians it just so happens, partly because of geo-politics, that we Koreans have taken the lead in non-Western participation in maritime mission during the last quarter-century. And here I want to recognize the role of KHE's younger sister agency, Korea International Maritime Mission (KIMM), whose leader, Dr Jonah Won Jong Choi, has headed up the recent renewal of shipboard peer-ministry and community development among Korean and now also other Asian seafarers. To be truly contextual, modern-day maritime mission needs more visible Asian faces - and more audible Asian voices - on the waterfronts of the world! Without Asian instinct for community and comprehensiveness, we affirm both holism (including the whole Seafarers' Rights Movement) and ecumenism (including with so-called "false dichotomies" here! Much of my dissertation seeks to address precisely these issues.

And what about the Dissertation's "Muslim" connection?

I agree with those who see Islam as both the greatest challenge and greatest opportunity facing Christian global mission - as well as maritime mission - as we now move into the Third Millennium. I also believe that because of Korea's history of cultural isolation and proneness to ethnocentricity, Korean seafarers' chaplains have a natural feel for the mindset of Muslim seafarers. They can understand the problems posed by Islam's own severe laws of apostasy without being identified with the West - and whatever problems that, too, might entail. In my Dissertation I explore building bridges to Muslims. Not by confrontation, but by so-called incarnational "friendship evangelism" - in sync with the Gospel's core of unconditional love. Not only that, I also happen to agree that access to an authentic contextual offer of the Gospel alternative is an issue of basic human rights. For Muslims as well as for any one else.

How then do you see your own continuing role in all of this?

I look forward to continuing to serve seafarers of the world, not least through that special interdependent trio: ICMA, whose current General Secretary, Berend van Dijken, has invited me to cooperate in their first Asian-based training program. IASMM, with whom I am exploring possibilities for publishing my research. And finally that other, more recently established maritime-related research agency, SIRC, with whom I also hope to establish fruitful relations in the future.