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It is a long history to say
why I wanted to establish the church. Here briefly, I want to state the motive
to establish the church.
My father was a businessman
and an elder in a Sungkwan
Methodist Church in Puchun, Kyungkido, Korea where I
attended the church. There I heard even a sermon of Bishop Haejong
Kim, who was a bishop of UMC and now he preach at Drew University. My father contributed to Sungkwang Methodist Church when it was
built because he was responsible for building the church. In 1986, he was
stricken with paralysis, so he couldn¡¯t do anything except for lying up for
seven years. He has a tumor in his back and he felt a pain, but there weren¡¯t
many things I can do for him.
One day I saw my father
read the Bible and be at his player. As soon as I see the scene, I decided to
do ministry instead of my father. I was
a sale manager at a trading company to sell semiconductor to local computer
manufacturers at that time. I got high salary. I decided to study theology and I
had a chance to enter Methodist Theological
Seminary (MTS) as a graduate student.
After graduating from MTS, I
wanted to start my pastoral work in Methodist church, but there was no chance
for me to be a pastor because there was no vacancy for me. But a person who was
an elder at Sungkwang Methodist Church at which I was
a deacon in the past was ordained in the Presbyterian denomination and started Youngdeungpo Jungang Church in Seoul. In 1995, he called me to help him as a
preacher. As he was very weak and needed
a person to help him, I joined the church and started to preach at the Church.
It was a great pleasure for me to preach at the church. I was satisfied with
this religious activity even I didn¡¯t received ordination. According to the advice and recommendation of
the pastor Ahn, I joined to Presbyterian denomination soon and I received the
ordination from the denomination after a year.
After working as a curator,
I started as educational pastor at Nanum
Presbyterian Church which had about 300 persons of congregation in 1997. Even
though the experience was helpful to me, I wanted to establish a church after a
year, but because I lacked money and helpers, I had to delay my plan to make a
church because Korea faced with
financial crisis in 1998.
In 2000 I worked as an
English Lecturer at Kunkuk
University in Seoul and I was satisfied
with my job. However I felt that I should start a church before I became older. So I made a plan to make a church alone. I rented a basement room which is about 70 square
meters at Shihungdong where CHMC was established at first in 2000. At that time I belonged to a Presbyterian denomination.
When I started Chuhyang Church, the only
members were just three people: my wife, my son, and my mother. There were many days when I preached just in
front of my wife. At first I was much disappointed to know it is not easy to
increase the number of congregation. It was not easy for me to continue the
experimental church only with my wife. Also
as I studied at MTS, I had no persons to talk with my worries in the
Presbyterian denomination. Also, I had a problem in my identity as a Presbyterian
pastor because I studied as a pastor for Methodist pastor, so I decided to
affiliate our church to Korea Methodist
Church (KMC).
As soon as I decided to
join KMC, my family including two sister and their husbands agreed to join our
church. So Chuhyang Methodist Church (CHMC) was born with the first congregation of 12 people in Oct. 2000. When we started ministry, my major target for
mission was children because adults wouldn¡¯t attend church. The children¡¯s
number reached 25. And we even hired a woman preacher in 2002.
Originally CHMC had been
located in Shihung-4-dong, Kumchungu, Seoul for 2 years.
However it moved to Bong Chun-8-Dong Kwanak-Ku, Seoul in 2002 which
is about 5 km away from the original area. Now CHMC belongs to Kwanak district
of South Seoul Annual Conference, the Korea Methodist Church.
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