Multicultural Church Retreat

The Village Church, Portland OR.

1. Leadership Evolution (Andrew Beunk, Lead Pastor)

For decades New West CRC has cared about reaching its neighborhood. In the 1970’s volunteers from our church brought our Sunday School ministry into contact with a low income housing community in our neighbourhood, a community where many recent immigrant families lived. Also, our congregation has been very intentional about welcoming refugees from various cultural backgrounds, as well as seafarers who visited the Vancouver port. But for close to 40 years that ministry intention did not translate into ethnic diversity in the pew.

During the late 1990s, the congregation hired an Associate Pastor from an East Indian background. However, his tenure lasted less than a year.

Up until 2009, the number of ethnic minority members was very low (<15), several of whom were married to Caucasian spouses.

When I interviewed with the Leadership Team in 2009, they shared with me their desire to connect more meaningfully with our immediate neighbourhood and “more visibly reflect the ethnicities of our neighbourhood within our congregation.” As we talked more about this, it became apparent to me that this desire was genuine, one in fact that drew me to accept a Call to serve as the Lead Pastor even though I came with no experience of leading a multicultural congregation.

Upon joining the staff team at as Lead Pastor, I served alongside a part-time Pastor of Preaching, a Youth Pastor, an Administrator, and a Custodian; all Caucasian.

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Concurrent with my arrival at New West a Korean family visited our church for a couple of Sundays. After preaching a sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22—breaking down walls of division—the husband, Daniel, asked to meet with me. “Do you really believe what you said in your sermon?” he asked. “Because if that is your vision, then my family would like to be part of this church.” That began a 15-year friendship with Daniel and his family.

Daniel had strong leadership gifts and a passion for connecting with international students and scholars. He was just completing a Ph.D. in Cross-cultural Management and was able to provide important insights, and cross-cultural awareness to me and to our congregation. He gave strong leadership to a growing international students ministry. Within two years, Daniel joined our Elder team; the first ethnic minority member serving on our Elder team since my arrival.

In 2012 Daniel and I visited China and South Korea in order to connect with students and scholars who had visited our church, as well as some of their families. We visited a total of 7 large cities, met dozens of friends and their families, worshiped in house churches, and ate lots of great food! I mention this trip because it was a formative experience for me as a leader. It allowed me to encounter first-hand the cities, countryside, and foods that many of our international friends represented, and it gave me many points of connection with new Asian students and families that would come to our church. I think it’s worth mentioning that since I arrived at New West, I have visited a variety of countries and cultures, including Honduras, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey. A sabbatical took me to five of these countries. All of these visits have made me more comfortable and sensitive to serving an ethnically diverse congregation.

By 2015 our ministry to international students (the ministry was called MOSAIC) had grown to the point where we felt a paid staff person was needed to provide strong leadership to this vibrant ministry. Although we didn’t explicitly limit applications to minority culture applicants, our leadership agreed that we had a strong preference for a minority culture candidate. And we prayed, “Lord, send us the person of your choosing.” Turns out He had done that already! Hyung-Jun Kim and his family had already been worshiping with us for several months when the position was posted, and he applied! Hyung-Jun (Jun) was hired as our half-time Coordinator of MOSIAC Ministries.

As Jun came on board, our Pastor of Preaching and Youth Pastor finished serving with us. By the middle of 2016, we hired a part-time Youth Pastor of Latino background, and we had a Cantonese-Canadian Office Administrator and an Indonesian-Canadian Custodian. I was the only Caucasian on staff. It felt like a new chapter of ministry was beginning.

Jun came to us with international student ministry experience, although his ministry was predominantly to Koreans studying in Vancouver. He had recently moved on from his Korean congregation and had no multicultural church experience, but he came with a passion to learn and grow, and that was one reason among many that we were drawn to him.

Over the next 18 months, not only did our student ministry grow, but we began to see a couple of new families visit and join our church; each from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

After 1 ½ years in the part-time Coordinator position, Jun was hired as a full-time Pastor of Discipleship and Multicultural ministry. A significant part of his new job description was to help the congregation be more intentional and sensitive in welcoming and enfolding ethnically diverse families. It’s worth noting that those families were not (yet) part of our congregation. As a Leadership Team, we agreed that 30% of Jun’s new position involved ministering to our current congregation and 70% involved working with those who were not yet here. The Leadership Team agreed this was a “step of faith” and an “investment in our future,” and something we would review after 1 ½ - 2 years.

Over the next few years, our congregation continued to welcome new members. Many of them were living within the vicinity of the church and reflected the diversity of our surrounding neighbourhood. On one particular Sunday, we celebrated the ordination of a new Elder and a new Deacon. Both were part of our MOSAIC ministry—in fact, one came to faith at New West—one of them was from China, the other from South Korea. On another Sunday several years later, when several families happened to be away, we noticed that all the Sunday School children that came to the front for prayer were from ethnic minority backgrounds. The congregation was visibly changing, and everyone couldn’t help but notice.

By 2020, we hired Sion Jeon, Pastor of Faith Formation, and ordained Pastor Jun as Rev. Hyung-Jun Kim, Associate Pastor! Today, our pastoral staff includes one Canadian-Dutch, two Korean-Canadians, one Cantonese(Hong Kong)-Canadian, and one Indonesian-Canadian. We’re also blessed with two Student Pastors who are completing their M.Div. at Regent College in Vancouver: Sandra Park, Spanish-Korean, and Daniel Choi, Canadian-Korean.

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Today, the ethnic diversity of our Leadership Team is a direct reflection of the diversity within our congregation. Our Pastoral Elder and Deacon teams are made up of people from Canada, the Netherlands, India, Egypt, China, Singapore, Germany, Iran, and South Korea.

By God’s grace, the prayer of the Leadership Team that interviewed me in 2009, that the congregation would more visibly reflect the cultural diversity of our neighbouring community, is being realized. Glory be to God!