Candidate 58 Profile

Section A. Background Information

10. Year of Ordination

2004

11. Denomination of Ordination

Presbyterian Church (USA)

12. If not RCA, what classis or supervising body from the ordaining denomination recognizes your ordination?

Pittsburgh Presbytery

13. Present denomination

PCUSA

14. Present classis or judicatory

Pitsburgh Presbytery

15. If you are not now a member of the Reformed Church in America, can you, in good conscience, agree with the doctrine, discipline and government of the RCA?

Yes

16. Do you support the mission and division of the Reformed Church in America?

Yes.

17. Citizen of what country? If not USA, do you have permit to live and work in the USA?

USA

18. Previous Experience

19. Formal Education

20. Continuing Education

21. Languages (list any languages, other than English, in which you can preach or converse fluently)

English, Korean

Section B. Reflection

1. Describe your strengths, the best of who you are, and what you bring in service to the church.

As our Lord Jesus Christ was the wounded healer, I am striving to be a healer with many wounds and scars. I could not understand why I had to face tough challenges throughout my life until I spent a decade in the ordained ministry. After 20 years of ministry, I learned that my brokenness , scars, and wounds can be good soil for the parish ministry in which many people of God are going through spiritual, emotional, and even physical struggles. I am not THE wounded Healer; however, I continue to wrestle to bring God's people to THE TRUE HEALER through my own experiences of being scarred, wounded, and yet healed by my Redeemer.

2. Name two or three mentors who have significantly contributed to your ministry, and explain why these people are important to you.

I have many theologians and ministers who helped me to grow as an ordained minister. Among them, I have two people who made great impacts. The first one is Dr. Cleophus Larue, Patton Professor of Homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Larue taught "Black Preaching" while I was a Th.M. student of homiletics. While I was struggling between applying to a doctoral program or going ot ministry, he challenged me to discern the true calling God had given me. And his guidance and wisdom helped me to refresh my mind and heart for the parish ministry rather than academics, not to mention how much I learned about the great prophetic & poetic preaching tradition of the Black churches in America. The second mentor is Rev. Sang-seok Bin, the senior pastor of Friends Church, Little Neck, NY. Rev. Bin has been my friend and brother for 25 years. Before he was called to Friends Church, he was deeply wounded at his previous ministry. He was slandered, defamed, scarred, and wounded. He faced character assassination and verbal/emotional abuse for 9 years to the point of mental breakdown. Yet, he continued to be faithful. He continued to carry on the calling of faithfully sharing the Gospel and leading the people on the righteous path. After resigning from that church, he was beaten down and exhausted, and I thought he would give up his ministry. Nevertheless, through prayers and discernment, he was able to be resilient. His extreme spiritual resiliency taught me to focus on the Lord who called me to be His faithful servant rather than the conditions of our ministry.

3. What caused you to enter ministry, and what are the core values that define your vision for ministry?

My father was about to be ordained as an elder when he was killed by a drunk driver. He was 39 years old, and I was only 9. Four decades ago in Korea, losing a father meant many things. “Whose sin is it – him or his parents?” echoes in the Korean cultural taboo. Growing up in an androcentric Korean society where “fatherless” is a cursing word, it did not take long for a young person to figure out that the child was “fatherless.” My family quickly fell into poverty, and I grew up in the ghetto area of Taegu City. By the grace of God, I did not fall into any stupid mistakes which might haunt me for the rest of my life. However, I had many theological questions and spiritual struggles, for I remembered my father being such a loving caring Christian in my whole life. Even after I came to America as a new immigrant in the worst age of 12th grade, I could not go to school and I had to work at a convenience store in the slum area in Fort Worth, TX. There, I saw many people struggling with poverty, substance abuse, violence and murders. Both in Korea and in the USA, I experienced the issue of the fallen nature of humanity and saw my friends struggling with human depravity and the injustice issue of poverty. I slowly yet certainly learned that poverty and violence are more than money issues... In fact, it was social issues, justice issues, attitude issues, mental issues, and definitely spiritual issues. After several years of my life in the ghetto area, I was able to attend a privileged university with a scholarship, where I met many "middle and upper-class" White friends. I thought their lives would be completely different from those who were in the slum area. And they were – for the most part– without gang violence, human trafficking, and poverty. However, in the midst of affluence, I saw many friends and classmates were a s broken as those in the ghetto. I was utterly shocked that many voluntarily submitted to the evil of substance abuse and promiscuity, and many did not appreciate what they had but hated their lives. Painfully, I learned that the brokenness of human beings was prevalent regardless of their economic situations, and all and everyone needs the grace and love of God to overcome their brokenness. And I wanted to be like my wounded Healer by witnessing to the steadfast love of God – the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a minister of the Word and Sacraments. This understanding of Christ Jesus, Son of living God, healed my brokenness by being wounded on the cross… We call it grace. And grace has been my core value of who Iam and the vision of my ministry.

4. Explain the strategies or ideas that most excite you for helping a church to become and remain missional.

My ministry goal is to live the life of God's kingdom on earth. As our Lord Jesus Christ taught us to pray, "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." As broken as this world might be, Christians are called to be the light of this world, shining the glimpse of the heavenly kingdom on earth. I believe the Kingdom of God Jesus taught us is not a far far away place beyond a black hole in the space where our souls go after we die. The Kingdom of God is the most relevant, powerful, and dynamic reign of God that has come, is coming, and is to come. I believe the pastor is to share this great vision of God's kingdom here on earth – in our day-to-day lives to be more specific – from the pulpit so that the Christians live in the great joy and hope. In addition, the Holy Sacraments of the Lord’s Baptism and Lord’s Supper are imminent and powerful ways to bring the joy of God's kingdom to our community of faith. By Baptism, we remind our new lives in Christ Jesus with the calling to be His witnesses and disciples. By taking the Bread and the Cup, we remember the sacrifice of our Savior and the great hope in Him for God's eternal Kingdom, bringing the joy of heavenly feast in our midst. This is why the ministers are ordained for the Word and Sacraments. These are two ministries that excite me the most to help a church to be the church.

5. Name three of your most passionate hopes for the Church at large, and why they are significant to you.

1. I hope that the Church will not be conformed to this world but will transform this world with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In my opinion, too many churches are on the defense line trying their best to defend what they have. Christ Jesus proclaimed, "the Kingdom of heaven has been coming violently, and violent people take it by force. (Matthew 11:12)" Of course, Jesus was not promoting violence here. I believe Jesus Christ meant the "radical" perspective of God's Kingdom. In fact, grace is radical. As Christians, we are so used to "grace" that we often forget how radical grace is. Outside the church, the people in the world do not grasp "grace" in the way that our Lord Jesus Christ has shown us. The sinless, perfect Son of God gave His own life on the cross for the sinners... without any cost, without any demand, without any payback... But why? Irrational, illogical, unconventional way of God's grace which no human philosophy can fully grasp but asks, "Why?"... This incomprehensible question is the power of grace. The Church is the body of Christ called to show this grace to this broken world. 2. I hope that the Church will be truly missional. Being missional does not mean supporting many missionaries. Of course, we do need to support as many missionaries as we can. But being missional means far more than financial support for missionaries. Being missional, for me, means carrying on the mission of God (Missio Dei) in our "zit mi Leben (at our lives)." God never makes mistakes, and if so, God has a mission and purpose for our lives and for our church. This mission of God for each and every one of us provides us purpose and goal of our lives. Yes, ultimately the mission of God is completing His Kingdom on earth where all the people will come and celebrate God's grace and salvation forever and ever. And to bring that kingdom on earth, each of us and each church on earth has a calling to carry on. No one church can do everything. No one is talented for everything. Only the humble and honest prayerful discernment will lead us to the specific calling God has given "me" and "our church." In so doing, we could continue to do what God has bestowed upon us. It does not have to be the same for all churches. For example, helping children academically with after-school programs might be a crucial part of ministry for some inner-city churches, while it might not be as crucial a part of ministry for a church located in an affluent, academically well-established community. That is why each congregation is unique in its calling from God. And I hope the Church will be a missional church with a transcendent vision of God's Kingdom with unique contextual understandings of themselves. 3. I hope that the Church would be "going out" rather than "inviting." Whenever I hear some people saying "I wish our church could be more inviting," I wonder why we want to be an inviting community. The New Testament Church was not an inviting church. They went out to the world witnessing the life, death, and resurrection of their Lord Jesus Christ. In my opinion, people like their church to be "inviting" because they see the Church as a religious institution with better service to invite more customers. However, the Disciples did not invite people in Jerusalem to Church when the Holy Spirit came upon them on the day of Pentecost. They went out to the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming that the Christ Jesus was Lord. The Apostle Paul did not dwell in Thessalonia waiting for people to come in. He traveled all over the world proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. No, I don't mean to proselytize like Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. I mean to witness – witness to the grace and love of Christ Jesus which was freely given to the broken such as me. As St. Augustine said, "We always have to preach the Gospel. And if really necessary, we need to know how to use words." Our mission field is out there. Church is where we come, get rejuvenated, and become restrengthened so that we can go out and carry on our calling as Christ's witnesses and disciples.

6. Give an example of how you would theologically address an issue facing your contemporary world. Please be thorough enough to help the reader to understand your thought processes and your life commitments.

One of the most challenging issues of today's church is that we are losing our young people. Our children and future generations are facing much more serious and gruesome oppressions and challenges. Historically, the Church of Jesus Christ has been persecuted by the powers and principalities of this world. Christians in all ages live in an entirely different paradigm – the Kingdom of God. As a result, the powers of this world persecuted our forefathers of faith with violence. Ever since Herod killed James in the Book of Acts, martyrdom has not been a strange word for Christians al over the world. However, our generation and our children are facing much more difficult spiritual battle fighting against apathy and indifference. Instead of persecuting, the powers and principalities of today's world manipulate our young people into apathy. "Who cares?" is one of the most difficult challenges that the Church struggles with. I lost count of how many young people who claimed to be "spiritual but not religious." For our young generation, the Church often seems to be not only old but also obsolete. I mean many are sick and tired of hypocritical leaders, and they think the Church forces ethics and moralities which are irrelevant to their lives. But I beg to differ. The Church is neither an institution teaching ethics and morality nor teaching religious rites. The Church is the Body of Christ to show the grace which our Lord Jesus Christ has shown to us in his life, death, and resurrection. Having majored in religious studies in college and growing up in Korea, I studied major religions and many alternative religions. And I found "grace" to be a very strange concept for al other religions. Every religion strives to teach us that God is fair. Deistic religions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and Taoism teach that God has a set of rules, and human beings are to fulfill these rules. People will be evaluated by how many rules or what percentage of the rules they obey, and God either reward or punish them based on the scores. Atheistic religion such as Buddhism (and Hinduism, although it is a deistic religion) teaches karma, the cause and effect of someone's present and previous lives. When the good karmas of present lives cancel out al the wrong deeds of the past and previous lives, one may achieve Nirvana, eternal nothingness. In all cases, their teachings are focused on fairness. However, the Christian Gospel dares to claim that God is NOT fair. The living God sent His only begotten Son, who was absolutely pure, completely sinless, and perfect without blemish, to the cross to take the punishment of sinful, broken, rebellious people like us when we did not even know that we were sinners. And this spotless Son of God took our punishment. Does it sound fair? Absolutely not! We, Christians, were redeemed and given eternal life because God was NOT fair. He did not count all our sins and iniquities when Jesus was sent for us. This is the gist of the Christian understanding of grace. And this is totally strange for the people ni this world. People in our world learn that there is no free lunch, while Christians dare to proclaim that eternal life was given freely in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ! This grace is the greatest message of the Church to the world, which is completely oblivious ot it. I truly believe if the Church truly shows this grace, we can drastically change our communities in this world. Our younger generation is parched and longing for grace, while most of them do not even know what grace is. When the grace is powerfully given, all people including our next generation wil come back ot their loving God.

7. What theologians, pastors, authors or other leaders have had the greatest influence upon your life and thought? (List up to 3 and explain.)

1. Karl Barth made a great impact on the formation of my theological growth. Most pastors know him as a great systematic theologian, but I was much influenced by him as a great theologian of homiletics. His bold claim that al his work of thousands of pages of theological studies is nothing but a preparation for a sermon dramatically challenged my understanding of preaching as a Th.M. student majoring in homiletics. Although Barth was a great rhetorician, he was against treating sermons as rhetoric or skills. He taught in his lecture (later published as a book, Homiletics) at Chicago University that the preacher must aim to deliver God's message beyond of the wall of context. I could not understand what he claimed here until a decade into my ministry of Word and Sacraments. Context is important, but the centrality of the sermon should be beyond the context – the truth of God's love and grace revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. Fred Craddock, a great New Testament scholar who founded the school of inductive preaching, made a great impact on me as a preacher. Although his position was quite the opposite of Karl Barth's understanding of homiletics, his teachings and preaching style made undeniable impacts on the American pulpits since the 1970s. Inductive preaching, aka storytelling sermons, changed the preaching style from authoritarian orator to personal or familiar stories most people can relate to. However, it was not his preaching style that impacted me. Rather, his belief that 90% of sermons are preached Monday through Saturday deeply challenged me about preaching ministry. In addition, Craddock really believed that preaching the Word of God becomes the Word of God when the response of listeners' hearts meet the proclamation of the word and they spark into an event of life. I have seen some "events" where the proclamation from the pulpit became the Word of God in the listener's lives, and I believe this event of sermon becoming the Word of God is precious beyond words. 3. Philip Yancey's What's so amazing about grace? is one single book that changed my perspective on the understanding of grace. Growing up in a Christian church with Christian parents, I was very used to Christian jargon such grace, steadfastness, unconditional love, and so on. When I spoke with my non-Christian friends, I found it strange that they had no idea what those terms meant. However, I guess I did not know the true meaning of grace either because I just grew up being so used to using the word "grace" all the time. I thought grace was something I should earn by living holy and sacred above and beyond the non-Christians until I read that book. I was stunned and shocked by the biblical understanding of grace being unpurchasable yet free, too precious yet given ot the sinners, longed to earn yet lavishly poured upon the undeserved, and glorious yet easily abused.

8. How do you hope someone influenced by your ministry would describe what s/he considers to be most important?

I hope and pray that my church family would consider the radical grace of God to be the most important. Not only conceptually but also in their daily lives, I hope and pray that they mimic the grace they have received from God to their neighbors. Practicing the radical grace of God does not mean being a doormat. It does not mean to be naïve. Grace is not pity, an easy solution for many problems in our world. To give a couple of dollars to a homeless person at the corner of an intersection is an easy solution out of pity. But grace is to struggle with the homeless issue of our community genuinely. To show the world the grace of our Lord, we have to be painfully keen on the brokenness of our world, and we must wrestle with this brokenness to show God's grace. We, Christians ultimately must provide something far transcendent than social programs. We are to show our community the vision of God's Kingdom through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace is so powerful and radical that it challenges and changes our world. At the same time, we, the followers of Christ, often need to remind ourselves that the grace of God is far greater than our brokenness. I have seen some Christians not being able to forgive themselves for their shortcomings and imperfections. I believe showing the world the love and grace of God does not require us to be perfect or much better than the people in the world moraly and ethically. Sometimes, we testify to the grace and love of God by confessing our brokenness and how God restores us even when we are full of shortcomings and imperfections. More often than not, Christians witness to their Lord and Savior in this world by testifying our own vulnerability and the grace that fills the wounds and scars of such vulnerable, broken lives.

9. Name at least one challenge for a pastor who accepts a Call to lead a church whose culture is other than his/her own.

My first parish as an ordained minister, Bay Road Presbyterian Church in Lake George, NY, was an Old Scots Church with 100% White members. Throughout its 150 years of history, my family was the first Asian family who came and worshipped. And I came to that church as their pastor! I remember a 4 year-old girl, Charlotte, came to me and touched my arms to see if the color of my skin would peel off. Of course, her mother was embarrassed and apologized. Did I get offended? Absolutely not. Charlotte had never seen a non-White in her whole life until she met me. It was an innocent child's curiosity. When a pastor comes to a church with its members from different ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, it is crucial for both the pastor and the members to acknowledge that they are ignorant about each other's culture and hopefully, they are willing to learn from each other. Sometimes, God brings an outsider to challenge us regarding what we are so used to. Amos was from Judah when he prophesied in Northern Israel. He was snarled at to go back to Judah. David grew into the kingship while he fled Israel and lived in Palestine. Jesus was an outsider for Judeans because he grew up in Egypt and later Nazareth even though he belonged to the city of David, Bethlehem. Peter, a fisherman from Galilea, founded the church of Rome. When God brings people from different cultures together in Christ, He always has a great plan for the people of God as long as they are willing to overcome the cultural, and ethnic barriers. From my experience, I have found that such barriers often come from ignorance about the other culture. In Christ, the barriers of ethnicity, culture, generation, and language are not to divide Christ’s Church but to be overcome in the vision of the Kingdom of God.

10. Describe your vision and hopes for the Church over the next 5-10 years.

America and the Western world are no longer a Christendom. Just like the early Church in the Roman Empire, we are living in the non-Christian paradigm. People in our world do not live in the paradigm of God's kingdom. Unfortunately, the world hates those who refuse to be confirmed with their ideology and philosophy. For early Christians, to live in the belief that "Jesus Christ is our Lord" in the ancient Roman Empire where all other people lived in the paradigm that the emperor was God inevitably brought challenges, persecutions, and even martyrdom. 2000 years later, the same powers and principalities of this world, like a roaring lion, wander around to find the faithful to devour. We are living in a world where people worship money, fame, and "likes" on their social media. Technology advances so fast that we will become obsolete unless we are up with it constantly. In this context, we are to proclaim the message we have received from our forefathers 2,000 years ago. I believe the only way to transform our world is to show how the message we proclaim is incomparably relevant and central to the people in our world. It is ironic that people have hundreds and even thousands of "friends" on FB, Instagram, and TikTok, while they have few genuinely caring when they are vulnerable. In 5-10 years, I hope the Church of Christ will experience and taste the joy of finding one lost soul. When the world is insisting that we need to get a thousand "likes" and "thumbs up" to be happy, the Church of Jesus Christ must stand up, proclaim, and show that we celebrate with God and the heavenly host for one lost soul we have found.

11. If there is anything else you would like to add about yourself that you think would help a search team to better understand and consider you as their next pastor, please elaborate here.

I have been serving as a reserve chaplain in Air National Guards for 17 years. I am currently serving at 104FW, Westfield, MA as the Wing Chaplain (Lt. Col.). I have the heart to spiritually and pastorally care for those whom we send to harm's way to protect our freedom and liberty. And this ministry is impossible unless I wear the same uniform with them. Our young men and women in the military desperately need the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and they are one of our most important mission fields. To wear the uniform to serve them, even as a part-time reserve chaplain, I will need church members' prayers and support. I respectfully ask the brothers and sisters in faith to consider my ministry as Air National Guards chaplain as their mission for our young souls in the military.