Pastor Timothy Yoo, the pastor of the English ministry (EM) on the left, and Reverend John Kim, the head pastor of World Agape Mission Church, on the right.
Sitting around a long table in the English Ministry (EM) room, Reverend John Kim, the head pastor of World Agape Mission Church, and Pastor Timothy Yoo, the EM pastor, shared their stories about the Korean and English ministries of WAMC, and the journey that it took to build WAMC to be the church it is today.
Currently, 80-90% of the students in EM choose to stay near Los Angeles for college instead of going out of state because they want to stay at WAMC and continue to serve. 85-90% of the EM members regularly tithe, and many of them attend early dawn prayer with the Korean ministry (KM).
“At one side you hear people screaming, 주여!, and on another side you hear, Jesus! We’re praying in different languages but we’re all praying together with one heart,” Pastor Yoo said.
What was the secret to the health of this church and the devotion of its members?
Discipleship.
WAMC was actually first started with discipleship. Reverend Kim started the church 38 years ago with a group of youth and young adults, and discipled them. During a time in which other churches did not have youth ministries, Reverend Kim decided to invest wholly and solely in the younger generation. As they shared life together, these young people grew in their knowledge and love for the Lord, and some committed to serving as a full time minister at WAMC, one of whom was Pastor Yoo.
“So how exactly did you guys share life together?” I asked, wanting more details.
Laughing, they told me, “We lived together.”
Reverend Kim built a dormitory for his 10 disciples and himself to live in, and together they ate, talked, laughed, cleaned, prayed, and shared everything together. When Reverend Kim had events to go to, he would ask Pastor Yoo to drive him there.
“I was pretty much his chauffer,” Pastor Yoo said with a smile, joking. “But it was because I drove him to these places that I was able to observe how he does ministry and how passionate he is.”
Both pastors agreed in saying that the key to creating a church atmosphere in which the KM pastors and EM pastors can work together and build each other up is discipleship. As Reverend Kim lived with his disciples and invested in them whole heartedly, his disciples, in turn, were able to learn his heart and develop their own passion for the church. Then, as Pastor Yoo committed to EM ministry, there was no room for tension or clashes in opinion because at that point, the two of them already shared the same mindset about how to do ministry.
“I don’t consider any of my pastors as ‘inferiors.’ They are my partners, and our boss is God,” Reverend Kim said.
If older members of the congregation had oppositions about how some pastors were leading ministry, Reverend Kim said that he would try to shield them from these oppositions.
“I try to help the 1st generation Korean members of our congregation to understand that 2nd and 3rd generation members just learn and interact differently,” he explained.
I asked Pastor Yoo how he disciples his own followers today. “Do you also live with them in a dormitory?” I asked.
Reverend Kim responded, “The times are different. The dorm system worked back then, but it wouldn’t work now.”
Pastor Yoo agreed, and said that instead, his discipleship training consists of 6 meetings per week. That seemed like a heavy number of meetings. But, Pastor Yoo said, most of his disciples come an hour or two early, and stay a little later after meetings as well. He said they spend about 20 hours per week together, sharing life in that way.
When confronted with the argument that a language barrier might hinder other churches’ relationships between KM and EM, Reverend Kim responded, “I think that if someone is loved, they will know it.”
Both Reverend Kim and Pastor Yoo exhorted the church leadership to invest in and love on the younger generation. There is no quick-fix or easy solution to creating faithful leaders in the church. But through loving discipleship and long-term investment, God can use current KM leaders to raise up passionate disciples and future leaders of EM to partner in building His kingdom together.
"Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." John 13:14-15
This is one in a series of interviews with southern California pastors who either serve in English ministry (EM) or have a heart for the intergenerational relationship between Korean ministry (KM) and EM. As the generation of the Korean church is shifting from the first to the second generation, what are the obstacles that are hindering the English ministry from flourishing? How can EM and KM pastors work together to build up the second-generation church? These are among the many questions that these pastors grapple with, and that Christianity Daily is hoping to wrestle together with through these interviews.
