Read Letters from Art and SuE Kinsler
October 2011
April 2011
December 2010
October 2010
May 19, 2010
December 2009 August 13, 2009
March 31, 2009 November 18, 2008
For older letters, contact Mission Connections
Art and Sue Kinsler
Sue and Art have ended mission service with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). They are available to speak when their schedule permits. Email them to extend an invitation to visit your congregation or organization.
Since 1972 Art and Sue Kinsler have been mission co-workers in Korea. Art has been involved with evangelism in Korea as a co-laborer with the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK). This service included church planting in rural Korea, industrial mission in new factory cities, Christian outreach through the Bible Club schools for the disadvantaged and teaching as well as serving in the General Assembly offices of the PCK, a denomination with two and one-half million members. Sue has worked with the physically challenged through a vocational school, sheltered workshop and the Fig Tree Association.
“During a time when Korean Presbyterian churches have grown to maturity and church growth has slowed, it is a challenge to be one of the few mission workers remaining as a bridge to the world church, a link to the church’s roots and institutions and a fellow servant ministering in Christ’s name,” says Art. In 1999, on reaching age 65, Art became a mission volunteer. Since his “retirement,” he has worked as the facilitator and treasurer of the office that supports PC(USA) mission work in Korea. His work with correspondence, reports and visitors at the church headquarters is balanced by preaching at Yonsei University’s global worship and the English or Korean worship services of Korean congregations.
Ten years after the disabled graduates of a vocational school met and prayed with her for a sheltered workshop, Sue started the Koinonia Sheltered Workshop and welfare center in 1991. Space, equipment and some funding for this were provided by the Korean government and supplemented by church help. After changing jobs from director to advisor in 1997, Sue turned her attention to the needy in China and North Korea.
Since 2003 Sue has visited North Korea six times a year. She now runs a program to feed thousands of young children soybean milk and bread in the North. Through the Lighthouse Foundation, founded by Sue in 2004, clothing and medicine for more than 700 orphans are provided. The Lighthouse Foundation has been an effective channel to help North Korea’s medical needs. Sue found an opening to serve the physically challenged and returned with a signed agreement to refurbish the 4,000-square-foot first floor of an apartment building. A year later, in May 2007, the Potonggang Welfare Center for the Disabled was opened in Pyongyang with four sheltered workshops, plus bath, treatment and eating facilities.
The Rev. Arthur W. Kinsler, Ph.D., has served as a mission worker in Korea, the country where he was born to missionary parents in the city of Pyengyang in 1934. He graduated from high school in Tokyo and earned a B.A. degree from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He received his M.Div. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, class of 1961. He holds a Ph.D. in history of religions from Yonsei University in Seoul, concentrating on Korean Shamanism. Ordained by Long Island Presbytery, Art served three years as a U.S. Army chaplain and from 1972 to 1978 was assigned to direct a service center in Korea in outreach to U.S. military personnel and others in the surrounding community.
Sue Young Soon Kinsler, nee Shin, was born and educated in Seoul at Soong Eui Presbyterian Girls High School and the International School of Fashion Design. Sue and Art were married in Seoul in 1968. In 1970, Sue received citizenship in the United States and since 1972 has served in mission with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). She was co-director of the Service Person Center, Hillside House, in Seoul until 1978. From 1981 to 1991 Sue was a member of the board of directors of the Vietnam Refugee Women’s Project and sweater knitting workshop. In 1991 Sue founded the Koinonia Sheltered Workshop for the Disabled and continues to be its advisor.
Art and Sue make their home in Seoul while having work contacts in several other cities in the Republic of Korea. Although Art is a clergy member of Heartland Presbytery, they are active members of Yonsei University Church in Seoul. The Kinslers have three children — John, who is teaching English in Seoul, Ross, a special education teacher in Hawaii, and Elaine, who stays in a group home in Upland, California.
Birthdays:
Art - April 20
Sue - August 6
