I started this Open Mind corner in church leaflets when I was at my old church in Korea, serving the “Young Adults” division (those in their 20s-40s that were still single). I wanted to become closer to the younger generation and thought it would be a good idea to share my life and thoughts with them. Normally, church leaflets were used to set out the order of the service or announcements – the “interesting” part would generally involve summaries of sermons or good Christian quotes which we had copied from elsewhere. Back then, most of the young adults at our church went to the main service, and didn’t attend the separate service we held for young adults. This was a while ago when it was normal for people in Korea to work until Saturday AM – and the young adults service was on Saturday PM. It was difficult for people to come, particularly when they wanted to rest.

To reach out to those young adults that didn’t attend, I shared parts of my life and thoughts in the church leaflet, and handed it out to the young adults I met on Sunday, and encouraged them to come along to our Saturday services. To get their attention, I once wrote about how I met my wife, through a series that I labelled “My love, Meeok Im”. A lot of people, even outside the young adults community, became curious and followed my Open Minds with interest.

Thanks to this, several young adults started to come along to the Saturday service, and my wife and our deacons started to prepare dinner for them, as they must have been hungry to come to church straight after work. After the service, we shared rice, a soup dish, and two or so side dishes together. It was a great time of fellowship, and thanks to these efforts, we had around twenty to a hundred people (at our max) gather on Saturday.

These past experiences have been really helpful during my ministry here in London. Up to a few years ago, we used to prepare bibimbap for two hundred people, to have after our Sunday service. We asked each cell group to take turns in preparing the easy ingredients – the important ones were prepared by our deacons and my wife. In total, we had about seven ingredients, so it was really delicious. There was a lot to look after, from setting the tables to washing up – though this was tough at the time, these remain as fond memories to a lot of us.

During the pandemic, many members of our church went back to Korea, and while a few have returned, the numbers aren’t high as before. When we create a new place of worship in Wimbledon, several will move to there, so my wife is already wondering whether we can restart our lunches as our numbers will be down again to a manageable level. ^^ However, with the Covid situation improving in the UK, it is looking difficult as I expect that there will be more students coming back to study in the UK.

While it is simple to stop doing things, it’s very hard to restart them. When I first came to London in 2008, we had about 20 people worshiping in Wimbledon, and 30 in central London. A few months later we combined the two services and had one service in central London. We had about 60 people in total, and thanks to us combining efforts, we went from two praise teams to one, which was great since we had that many volunteers. But as we prepare to open a place of worship again in Wimbledon, we have quite a few gaps that need to be filled with new volunteers, which is no simple feat.

While it is difficult serving a church that constantly experiences change, I am thankful as this is a sign of life, and proof that the church is not staying still like stagnant water, which is bound to rot. If we want to see change, we need to be ready to serve and take on that much more work.