Cornerstone Church, located in Harbor City, CA, is atypical as a Korean immigrant church, in that it doesn't have a separate Korean ministry (KM) and English ministry (EM). Instead, worship is organized according to age group, and the sermon is preached in the more dominant language for each age group while translation is made available for everyone else.
For example, in the main services for adults, Reverend Jong Yong Lee, the senior pastor of Cornerstone, preaches in Korean, and translation is offered in English. In younger services, including Sunday school, youth, college, and young adult services, the pastors preach in English, and if there are students that recently arrived from Korea, teachers are readily available to translate for them and help them to understand.
Some may be skeptical of the method of preaching in one dominant language. Wouldn't it be uncomfortable for those who aren't fluent in the language?
For the adults, this method actually allows them to lay down their comforts and preferences and become humble before God in worship, according to Patrick Kim, the assistant director of the education department.
"Initially, I resisted hearing the word of God through translations because I feared that I would be receiving a diluted version of God's word," Kim wrote in a testimony published in a booklet that was given to Cornerstone members during Cornerstone's 20th anniversary celebration.
"I wanted worship to be physically comfortable and didn't want to listen to the message with conspicuous, gigantic headphones or sing praise in my broken Korean. My pride blinded me and my view of worship was narrow ["¦] However, after listening to the Sunday messages and being ministered to by [Reverend] Lee, I came to understand that Biblical worship has nothing to do with personal comfort and has everything to do with sacrifice and yielding to God."
David Lee, who pastors the college students at Cornerstone, added that this format also helps the Korean American young adults to become more familiar with Korean culture and learn the Korean language.
"Being with the first generation Koreans always gave me a deeper understanding of where I come from," he said. "And the cultural background of our church has helped me to learn Korean so much more as well."
For the younger ones, preaching in English and assimilating the students who just moved from Korea actually helps them to learn the language more quickly, and build relationships with other peers who speak English, Lee explained.
"This is not necessarily the best method, and we're not the perfect church, but the foundation for this is from the Bible," said Sung Hong, who pastors high school students. "Hebrews and Greeks worshiped together"”it's in the Scripture."
Sung Hong (left) pastors high school students and David Lee (right) pastors college students at Cornerstone Church, located in Harbor City.
Though Hong asserts this isn't necessarily the best method, it seems to be working well for Cornerstone and helping it to thrive as a church. One of the ways this method is working is that it keeps the unity of the church under one vision and purpose from top to bottom. Reverend Lee has focused on the theme of being one body and family for Cornerstone, and as such, the entire staff"”and even the members of the congregation"”also focus on making the church as one body and family.
"When I see a student, I can automatically picture the parents," said David Lee. "We have so many big events and everyone joins in together, so everyone has to know each other. Even if high school has praise night, the parents come and join in and support them. And our whole church pretty much stays until around 4 or 5 PM on Sundays just chilling and talking with one another. I guess that's just built into the culture of our church."
There are still other ways that church members build relationships with each other as one body. Mission teams are multi-generational, allowing members of the older and younger generations to fellowship with each other and serve together. And parents have parent-student conferences with the teachers in the respective ministries, discussing the student's walk with God and any other concerns that they feel the need to discuss.
"If there are any issues or urgent matters, we open it up to the entire staff, and pray together on what might be the best way to resolve the issue," Lee said, further describing how the church works together as one body. "Because problems might not be just about that one child or person, but it might be about the family as a whole. So we all try to resolve the problem together."
"When we all come together, all of the generations, it's great. We can all learn together, grow together, and not necessarily just make it 100 percent comfortable all the time," Lee continued. "There are things we have to sacrifice, for example comfort in language or culture, but in sacrificing we're learning together."
