I had a Zoom meeting with diaspora church leaders this past Tuesday. There was a total of about forty of us. We held a short worship service, talked about the future directions for our ministries, five members shared about the effect of the pandemic on their ministries, and had smaller breakout groups. Thankfully, I was included in that group of five and was able to share about the grace that God has poured out on our church in this difficult time.
Pastor David (Sung Tae) Kim, with whom I often spoke about our vision for city ministry, played a big role in the formation of this meeting. While working as a staff member for London City Mission (LCM) he introduced me to their CEO and the Director of Ministries so that I could actively participate from the beginning. Pastors were put into groups based on the continent they were originally from and held two forums before the first conference at LCM headquarters on 9 November 2019 where approximately 120 diaspora church leaders participated.
After that, in the middle of organizing more regular meetings under the name “D.N.A.”, the pandemic struck unexpectedly and a year passed without any progress. But at the beginning of the new year, our meetings have restarted via Zoom. I was interested in this meeting from the beginning and because Pastor Kim enthusiastically recommended me for the position, I became a member of the steering committee. Even though I’m not confident that I can contribute to the group because my English is limited, I consider it a God-given opportunity to serve with the group.
How can we do missions here in London? How can God’s Vision Church be a missional church? Throughout the past 14 years serving in London I have thought and prayed these questions quite a lot. To prevent European mission work strategy and preparation for unbelievers’ possible questions from becoming simply armchair theorization, we have been going to the streets of London diligently every week to sing praise songs and hand out gospel tracts. I want to at least dream about church planting so, even though it’s not easy to spend three days of my week there while pastoring, I have been studying at Amnos Church Planting School for the past year. Two pastors I met there decided to plant a church, so since their first church service we have been evangelizing continuously.
But still, I really wished we would evangelize more systematically in London. And then, in 2019 after my 5 months of sabbatical was coming to an end in September, I heard that the CEO and Director of Ministries of LCM, the most impactful organization in England, were concentrating on supporting diaspora churches. I believed it was God’s leading and that’s how I came to participate. This is how D.N.A. was started with the support of LCM. Since then, from this year, D.N.A agreed to become independent and make its own path. I’m not sure if it’s the right time to become independent and leave the big umbrella that is LCM, but in this situation, because it’s important to make independent decisions, I plan on presenting my opinions and devoting myself to the healthy formation of this organization.
Even though it was a meeting through Zoom, I was quite happy to be able to meet other diaspora leaders and hear about their ministries. After the meeting, because a few Korean ministers were agreeable, we decided to have a study session together. We decided to read and discuss a chapter of ‘Scattered and Gathered’, a book about diaspora missions, every week. I had only bought it and hadn’t read any of it but because of this meeting I pulled it out but as I started to read it I saw so many difficult words. Still, it felt good to start reading it. Like clockwork, because of the vision God has given me, when I do something related to it, it feels like my heart is racing again.
