In last week’s Pastor’s column, I wrote about ‘The Blessing of Being a Korean Church’. It said that our “Korean identity” has become a blessing for us that aids in spreading the Gospel, that this blessing should be the ‘first stone laid for our English ministry’. I also prayed for our second generation children to inherit the spiritual legacy given to the Korean people and make it ‘their mission to build the bridge’ when spreading it to the rest of the world.
However, our ultimate identity should go beyond just being a ‘Korean’. If we limit our “Korean identity” to just our eventual identity, we will be limited on what we can do. Having a Korean identity is just one of the tools that can be used for the kingdom of God. Thus, we want to use it strategically. We count on this identity because we need it but we are not confined to it.
If you read our church’s weekly bulletin or homepage, you will notice that the word ‘Korean’ is missing. This is because the church we aspire to be is not limited by its Korean identity; our goal is to exceed the limits of such identity. However, if you google our church, you will find a search result that reads ‘Korean’ in our church’s name. This is because we “strategically” need that name now. Our church is linked to the Korean language school, and many people discover Korean schools through it. We still need ‘Korean’ in our church title and are using it “strategically” through internet searches.
I pray that our second generation children will embrace people with multicultural origins and build up a new church, leading them to God. America is a mission field, ripe for harvest. ‘The Kingdom of God’ is looking for workers to send out into the harvest field. Our second generation should be these workers. They should pray and dream about it while getting themselves ready for the pursuit. I pray that the glory of God will appear onto our second generation children..
In the Bible, the Antioch church starts in a foreign land due to the dispersion of churches in Jerusalem due to persecution. There, the Antioch church is reshaped into a missional church that speaks a Greek, a foreign language. Throughout this journey, there probably were inconveniences that existed among Hebrew christians because of a foreign language spoken at church. However, they endured it. They placed their priority on the ‘Kingdom of God’, and not on ‘personal convenience’. Step by step, they practiced escaping from their ‘personal comfort zone’ for the higher cause and devoted themselves to it. And as a result, the Gospel was able to spread to many nations through many generations and has been delivered to us today.
I also plan to step out of my comfort zone as well. I ask all of you to join me enjoying this ‘inconvenient privilege’. Our English Speaking Congregation is already enjoying this ‘inconvenient privilege’. Even though English is more comfortable, they are staying in a Korean-speaking church enduring this inconvenience, dreaming of the kingdom of God. Such inconvenience is the privilege we can enjoy to build the kingdom of God.
Following the shepherd…
Pastor Jiwon Choi