New Horizon: The Missionary Band That Raised Church Recognition in South Korea from 7% to 70% (1974)

In 1974, missionary work in South Korea faced a serious challenge. The government was limiting the number of American missionaries allowed into the country, and Korea Seoul Mission President Eugene P. Till discovered through a survey that only about 7 out of every 100 Koreans knew anything about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He knew something had to change.

When a young guitar-playing missionary, Elder Randy Davenport, shared his desire to teach the gospel through music, President Till did something unexpected: he assigned him to write original songs and form a missionary singing group. Davenport was soon joined by other elders — including Lonnie Gunter, Brook Richan, and Clyde Robins — and by a gifted young composer-arranger named Elder Mack Wilberg, who years later would become music director of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. They called themselves New Horizon (New Horizons).

President Till's call, however, was not primarily about musical talent. “The intent from the very beginning was not to call in the most musically talented elders,” he later explained. “I interviewed for the spirit. . . . Those who were the most tender hearted and loving and kind and humble and had the spirit of Heavenly Father with them were the ones who were called.”

Partnering with the Tender Apples, a beloved Korean girls' choir of girls up to age 14 from a children's home, New Horizon performed Church music, folk songs, and uplifting pop music in Korean on television, radio, U.S. military bases, and concert stages across the country — even placing a song on the Korean pop charts. The group often set up in apartment courtyards, stringing cords into apartments to borrow electricity for their equipment, drawing large crowds while other missionaries mingled to answer questions and pass out tracts. Proceeds from four albums recorded by the combined groups supported the children's home.

President Till had one rule: whenever the missionaries were interviewed, they had to include the Church's full name in every answer. When he repeated his survey at the end of his mission, recognition of the Church in Korea had grown from 7 percent to 70 percent, and missionaries across Korea reported the same experience: people invited them in because they had seen New Horizon on television. When Elder Gordon B. Hinckley came to Korea to evaluate the singing group, President Till shared the survey results, and his response was simply, “Carry on.”

The story is a testament that God can use unique, consecrated talents — even a missionary pop band, decades before K-pop — to open doors for the gospel that no other approach could.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Crockett Clan, Korea Mission History):

Because the Church was growing rapidly, the Church Missionary Committee sent increasing numbers of elders and sisters (lady missionaries first came to Korea in 1972, an indication that health conditions had improved greatly) to Korea during Brown's time and continued to do so after Eugene P. Till became president in July 1974. He did this through the use of bumper stickers, a new device in Korea, and through performances by a missionary quintet, the New Horizons, and a choir of orphan girls, the Tender Apples. President Till assigned several elders -- who formed a singing group known as New Horizon -- to work directly with the Tender Apples choir to put on a musical show that would introduce the people in Korea to the gospel. At the end of three years, more that 70 percent of the people in Seoul recognized the Church's name.