담임목사 비전과 목회철학

I attended a church throughout my childhood. However, I did not discover the meaning of "salvation" until the spring of 1979 when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior at a church revival meeting. "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life" (1 John 5:11-12).

These verses gave me assurance of salvation and changed my faith from a speculative one to an active one. The Holy Spirit gave me a strong desire to become holy like Jesus Christ. Confessing my sins and admitting my weaknesses as a sinful man, I exclaimed, "Lord, please purify me and teach me what I must do." While studying the Bible intensively, I became convinced that God wanted me to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit and engage in evangelism. I wanted to equip myself as much as possible to be used by God.

After arriving in the United States, I could enjoy "a free market of ideas." I believe that historically inherited religious traditions constrain or induce perception, decision, and action of a believer, thus limiting the degree of freedom s/he can exercise within her or his specific faith heritage.

I grew up in a social milieu reflecting religious diversity: Christianity, Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism and Shamanism, the indigenous religion, were around me. In this situation, often I had to compare the main teachings or values of Christianity with those of other religions. I believe this experience was very helpful for me to understand Christianity deeply and correctly.

Another major factor, which influenced me in understanding church and society, was the ideological cleavage between the conservatives and the radical left, under the authoritarian regimes of the 1970s and 80s in Korea.

The appeal of radicalism in Korea, derived from the perception of an uneven distribution of the benefits of socioeconomic change, attracted many young students including myself. Witnessing student demonstrations on campuses, my concern was not always about a blessed "next" world but also about "present" issues of political and economic justice.

My Christian heritage, which acclaimed political neutralism and evangelism, could not give me persuasive answers to the questions of daily life. When I came to the U.S., however, I could take advantage of the opportunity to evaluate my faith heritage again.

After arriving in the U.S., I began to examine the various historical traditions of Christianity in order to have a more balanced perspective; I read books by, and about, the reformers, Catholics, evangelical and liberal Protestants, Pentecostals and atheists.

I widened the scope, and enhanced the balance of my horizon of faith through reading books, such as Streams of Living Water by Richard J. Foster, which identifies six traditions of Christian faith: contemplative, holiness, Charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational traditions.

This book shows that even though we Christians love God and use the same biblical vocabulary, the focus of expression of each tradition may be different. I learned that I should respect other Christians who are in different faith heritages.

Reinventing American Protestantism (Donald E. Miller), Culture Wars (James Davison Hunter), American Evangelicalism (Christian Smith), and The Restructuring of American Religion (Robert Wuthnow) all helped me understand American Protestantism.

Also, reading Prayer and Temperament (Chester P. Michael and Marie C. Norrisey) broke down my narrow concept of prayer. Jack Deere's books, especially Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, deeply touched me and corrected my biased view on the Charismatic tradition.

In particular, one course in my Ph.D. program, "The Logic of Political Inquiry," which introduced alternative approaches to explanation and theory, and "Systematic Theology" at Yale Divinity School, which compared different approaches of Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, were greatly helpful to me in cultivating a capacity to accommodate different views.

In addition, after studying the Christian Realism of Abraham Kuyper and Reinhold Niebuhr, I learned that Christian faith should be verified in action.

Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and Michel Foucault, however, taught me that I cannot be a truly free person, who has a perspective that is unaffected and independent of the influence of a particular ideological paradigm and social structure.

I am just an imperfect human being who needs God's great grace. To me, God is the God of grace. God is the one who demonstrates his own love by allowing his own son Jesus Christ to die for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).

God is the one who chooses to love us first and frees us from our sins through God's infinite grace so that we may be free to choose God and love God. As the Creator of our world, God not only renews, restores, and recreates our shattered lives and broken selves but also stays close to us and with us as God continues God's work of creation in our lives today.

God is love. And God commands me to make this love known to others.