Church: A fraternity of Koreans, Russians, and Chinese

The regular click and clack of Stella Rim’s heels echo in the parking garage of the Korean American Presbyterian Church of Queens. As she approaches the church entrance with her husband, Stella looks up to see a greeter holding the door open. She quickly rushes through to keep the woman from waiting any longer, bowing her head in a Korean style of gratitude as she enters the lobby. Then, Stella immediately immerses in the sounds of change.

She meets children running around the church screaming, “Tag!” while their parents call for them in a cacophony of Korean, Russian, English, and Chinese. Families crowd together, conversing with one another in English, waiting for Sunday services to start. This has now become a staple in Stella’s week though it has not always been this way.

At the Korean American Presbyterian Church of Queens – “KAPCQ” – four quite different congregations gather together in Flushing under one roof. In the main sanctuary is the Korean ministry; across the hall, the youth group and the Russian ministry; and upstairs, the English and Chinese ministries. They crowd together every Sunday to come closer to God.

Korean American megachurches like KAPCQ are expanding their connections to people who are outside of the Korean American community. The Queens church has started hosting services in English, Russian, and Chinese and within the next year, plans to erect a new building to accommodate the growing number of congregant groups.

“Korean megachurches are trying to serve other ethnic groups and other immigrants. In other words, other immigrants, who have mostly had similar experiences with them,” Bansuk Kim, explains. Kim grew up as a preacher’s kid. He is now a pastor himself and an alumnus of the Chandler School of Theology at Emory University. He is currently working on a dissertation about Korean megachurches.

These large Korean churches began humbly in homes or storefronts as meeting places for first-generation Korean Americans, following the third wave of Korean immigration from 1976 to 1990. Now, they are opening doors for other immigrants as host church for their congregations. The demographics of Queens have significantly changed. Over half of the Korean Americans who used to live in Queens have moved outside of New York City.

 At one point, KAPCQ was one of the largest Korean American churches in the metropolitan area, with 3,500 congregants in 1999; however, as the community in Flushing is migrating out of Queens, and into suburban areas, this is changing. Currently, KAPCQ has 1,500 in the Korean ministry, 700 in the Chinese ministry, 175 in the English ministry, and around 50 congregants in the Russian ministry.

According to information collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2020 Korean Americans made up about 2% of the 2,340,255 residents of Queens. In 2010, that proportion was well over 4%. Today in Queens, the number of immigrants and their children whose roots are the Former Soviet Union is slightly smaller than the number of Korean Americans, according to an analysis of the Journey Data Center. Chinese Americans make up more than 10% of the Queens population.

“[KAPCQ] almost feels like a commuter church. You know, usually, you’re supposed to be a local church, but a lot of our members are in Long Island and so they come and they go,” says Nathaniel Cha, an assistant pastor of the Korean ministry and head of the education ministry at KAPCQ.

However, it is important to note that ultimately this new mission at KAPCQ boils down to the church’s main goal of being a multi-ethnic, multi-generational church.

“We do have our ethnic differences, but at the end of the day, it’s one faith, it’s for one gospel… There’s a great benefit to just having congregations where we can grow together, learn together, and worship together,” Cha reflects.

The goal for this new type of Korean American church comes from KAPCQ’s current head pastor, Kim Seung Kook. Pastor Kim became the second long-term pastor at the church and approaches his role with the idea of a multi-ethnic community uniting under Christianity.

Cha ties this mission to the deep connection to Christianity in modern Korean history. “A long time ago, there were missionaries, who weren’t Korean, [that] came to Korea, and [the country] was very influenced by Christianity. And now we believe that we, as Koreans, have a duty and obligation to reach other groups as well,” he says.

Cha also mentions how this approach grew out of the fast growth of Korean Christianity in the 1950s. Bansuk Kim refers to some of this more recent history. “There’s a historical background too … with [the] Korean War,” the pastor says. “And right after the [war was] over, many American missionaries came to Korea. So, that revival happened. A lot of churches were built and with that flow, immigration happened too.”

The KAPCQ community is working as a team in a relay race. It is trying to spread their faith to non-Korean immigrant communities as a way to fulfill their sense of obligation to relay what the American missionaries had done in South Korea under Japanese colonialism and the post-war era. KAPCQ spreads its faith by catering services for other ethnic communities, but other Korean American churches do so mainly through mission trips.

This idea of an obligation to spread Christianity is found throughout the Bible but is perhaps best seen in one of Jesus’ last instructions to his followers, which is recorded in The Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, verse 15. Just after Jesus’ resurrection, Mark wrote, “And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.’”

This short instruction inspires many churches to go on mission trips to developing countries. Some contemporary critics of these mission trips label the trips as a form of modern-day colonialism, claiming that there are parallels between these trips and the assimilation schools established in North America to ‘civilize’ Indigenous children. KAPCQ, however, has a fresh new take on the relationship between the church and the indigenous. While its congregants do go on mission trips sponsored by the church, KAPCQ is also taking a step of mutuality by offering immigrants to use the church to form their own congregations.

KACPQ’s vision is not a triumphant one in which it rules over all. On the contrary, the church itself feels under a sense of obligation to Jesus and to the missionaries who spread the Christian faith. There is also a sense that while it is still able, the church must help the new generations of immigrants to make their own way. The Korean American churches are facing the fact that they themselves may cease to exist within the next few decades.

“I can’t see if [the changing demographics] were 100% a factor. But if you keep in mind that Koreans are not immigrating. The Korean Church, as we know, probably won’t exist. I don’t know how long, but maybe in 20 30 years, it’ll mainly be English speakers,” Cha reflects.

So, while the Church is carrying out a mission to spread Christianity to immigrants and welcome newcomers, the mission also functions to allow the church to continue making a place for Korean Americans in American society.

In a smaller way, the need for Korean American churches will not cease. There will always be Korean immigrants entering the country, while the greater Korean American population will be joining mainstream society.

So, KAPCQ is staying true to its roots and mission as a multi-ethnic, multi-congregational church. It is practicing a spirit of mutuality by offering additional services and housing congregations in a separate building that allows people to come of their own volition.

At the end of the day, “While we do have our ethnic differences, it’s one faith, it’s for one gospel. The point is to have congregations where we can grow together, learn together, and worship together,” Cha concludes. A pretty important task for a church as well as for our city.