The second prayer I have for our church this year is for us to establish a Multicultural Church. I was sent to the UK as a missionary in June 2008, so even when I was serving Koreans, I was very interested in mission, and I wanted our church to be focused on mission. Mission Retreat, Mission Sunday, 2012 London Mission Conference, Missionary Trips India and raising local leaders through Zoom, graduating Amnos Church Planting School and supporting the planting of two churches by two pastors, Arise evangelism campaign, evangelising each Saturday in central London, and advisory member of London City Mission – both personally, and through the church, I’ve done my best to contribute to mission.

One of the things I learned through the process though was that most acts of mission were limited to helping people indirectly. There were a lot of barriers to our church leading mission itself. In the meantime, we saw an increase in the number of non-Korean members attending our church. This may be due to the popularity of K-pop, but I also think Korean churches have a strength that other English churches don’t have – for example, one non-Korean member who attended for the first time last week said that “Korean churches seem alive”. I also think that we need a Korean church with an English service to support the second generations of Koreans in the UK, who aren’t fluent in Korean, and also those who come over from the US every year.

The Multicultural Church that our church has in mind is different from an International Church or English Ministry which is common in the US. While there are less than 40,000 Koreans across the UK, we prefer to worship in Korean and come to a Korean church with Korean culture and food. Same with other countries – there are around 140,000 Chinese people living in London, and while they didn’t have a Chinese church, one was established during the pandemic. There are around 500,000 Bangladeshi people in London, but they do not have a proper church. There is only one Jewish church, with around 30 people, while there are 160,000 Jews, and there isn’t a church for the Kurds while there are 40,000 of them in London. So from a mission-focused mindset, the church that we need in London is not an International Church that worships in English, but a Monocultural Church that worships in each nations’ language.

So the Multicultural Church that our church wishes to establish is a mother church that helps and supports the planting of various Monocultural Churches. For example, let’s say that a Bangladeshi Christian came to attend our Multicultural Church. Rather than hoping for him to become a good leader of our Multicultural Church, our hope is that he will one day be a leader that can plant a new church for the Bangladeshi people, who so desperately need a church.

Starting a new church takes a lot of preparation. For a Multicultural Church to be set up, we will need an English-speaking pastor, a praise team, and cell group leaders. We need a place of worship, and a lot of financial support too. My prayer is that we will start our preparations this year so that we may open a Multicultural Church sometime this autumn. Since Jesus is in charge of church planting – as we can see when he said “I will build my church” – please pray for this every day. And please introduce your non-Korean friends to our church, and help us as we prepare for our Multicultural Church. Please pray that, rather than just being another Korean church, our church will be able to directly participate in mission by collaborating and supporting other monocultural churches here in London.