I Found a Home!

After a less-than exhaustive (but plenty exhausting) church search, I’ve found a place to belong. One of the teachers here belongs to a church that has welcomed her and become family— so I went along last week to check it out. In fact, she had heard about Onuri (the church I found online) and wanted to see what God was doing there too; so we made a day of it: Seoul Light and Salt Church in the morning and Onuri in the afternoon with a big subway ride in between.

To relieve the suspense for any of you with weak constitutions: I’m attending Seoul L&S Church. Now, back to the story…

Sunday morning we walked and bussed the 20 minutes to Sue’s church and I found that I had been right there one Sunday solo-exploration morning on my bike, but you would never know that it’s a church because it’s a sky scraper like all the others around it. The church is HUGE with thousands of members in 4 services on Sundays, but the English ministry is much smaller with about 100 people in service. The great thing about this ministry is that it is run by Korean nationals and over half of the congregation is Korean English speakers/learners, so the culture is intact. Everyone was very welcoming (they have newcomers come up front and sing a song to them—happily, I was not the only visitor!), very diverse (Filipinos, Peruvians, Americans, Canadians, etc.), and very REAL. We stayed for the study group time after service—who knew Purpose Driven Life would follow me overseas!—and then stayed for lunch. This huge church opens up the cafeteria and feeds everybody! Eating is a major social activity in Korea and so we fellowship while breaking rice and noodles together =)

After a wonderful lunch, we made our way to Onuri -- this church was even huger than the morning one and the English service was probably about 1,000 strong in a big auditorium with an amazing light/sound system, mission statement banners hanging up front, and BIG music. It was polished, trendy, and void of Korean influence—I actually forgot I was in Korea for a while! Even the Korean leaders up front had no accent or Korean worldview. It’s an active church ministering to the community in mighty ways, but it’s not for me. Since I live and work in a fairly sheltered American/Western environment, I’m not looking for that in a church. I’ll attend closer to home (fewer excuses on a busy weekend =), get involved in this body of Christ reaching out to the community (it’s very alive and small, so it’s easier to get into ministry and quite necessary & expected!), and maybe go to Onuri for events and a good USA fix sometimes (like Christmas time =)