A Story of Church of All Nations
By Jin S. Kim

Members of the Church of All Nations. Photo by Jin S. Kim.In January of 2004 a group of mostly second generation Christians of a Korean immigrant church in Minneapolis was blessed by our “mother church” to launch a multicultural community called Church of All Nations. We were chartered with great fanfare, receiving congratulatory notes from denominational executives and Minnesota politicians, splashed on the front page of a local newspaper, even featured in two PC(USA) videos.  No-one knew if 100 mostly young Korean-Americans could actually become a Church of All Nations; many thought the name was a bit premature, if not presumptuous.

Today, we have an adult membership and worship attendance of about 250. We are currently 32 percent Asian, 37 percent white, 20 percent black, and 10 percent Latino, with over 20 nations represented in our membership. Our pastoral staff includes people who hail from Korea, Kenya, Sudan, Brazil, Japan and the United States (both Euro- and African American). Our session also reflects the major racial groups of our congregation.

We are one of a handful of congregations in the United States with no ethnic majority and sizable groups of the four major racial categories of white, black, Asian and Latino.  But we actually have even more denominational diversity than ethnic diversity, and draw as many Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans as we do Pentecostals, Baptists and Evangelical Free.

Our highly visible commitment to ecumenical unity may be one reason why out of the 25 new members we recently incorporated the vast majority had no Presbyterian background. We have people from very conservative Northwestern College in St. Paul, where Billy Graham once served as president, to United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, one of the most liberal seminaries in the country. We also draw equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats and we address politics, racism, the economy, war and peace head-on.

From the beginning, the crafting and nurturing of our congregational identity was seen as paramount. The second chapter of the Book of Order lays out the Presbyterian Church’s self-understanding. We also declare to our members and to the world “who we are, what we believe, and what we resolve to do” in the following statements from our Web site.

Our Identity:

• We are a high-risk, low-anxiety church because our hope is in Jesus Christ.
• We are committed to being honest, transparent and vulnerable with one another, just as Jesus modeled for us.
• We are committed equally to sound Biblical teaching, to genuine personal transformation and to sweeping social justice.
• We are committed to an ecumenical expression of Christian worship rooted in the early church that is equally rational, sacramental and Pentecostal and to being a church that embraces a global, multi-epistemological future.
• We are a penitently Presbyterian congregation, appreciative of the many gifts that this tradition has offered to the larger church and to the world, but mindful that denominationalism announces to the world the sectarianism, brokenness and disobedience of the body of Christ.

Our central mission is to do the ministry of reconciliation, and it is happening in all kinds of wonderful ways here.  For instance, in January of 2006 we moved from our “mother church” to a declining white PC(USA) congregation, Shiloh Bethany Church, which had plenty of space. We rented for a few months, but then Shiloh Bethany asked if they might merge with us. At the end of July they had a congregational dissolution after being founded in 1884, and all of their members became members of Church of All Nations, handing us the keys and the title to the building.

Incidentally, 1884 is the year that PC(USA) missionaries first arrived on the shores of my home country, Korea. So we came full circle, historically speaking. Not one Shiloh Bethany member left after the merger — praise God! One of the key reasons for this union was the growing recognition of the need to be a new kind of church for an increasingly multicultural population in Columbia Heights and the entire Twin Cities area. Church of All Nations fit that need very well.

We witness many signs of growth in our midst, but the most important thing is that people are filled with joy, hope and genuine love for each other across all kinds of lines, crossing barriers erected by church and society, history and culture. For decades now Shiloh Bethany members have prayed that their sanctuary would be full again, and that the building would be restored to its original condition. Who knew that God would answer the prayers of this typical, small white church through a young, multicultural church? Who knew that a new church would own a beautiful, sizable building overlooking a gorgeous lake debt-free within three years of its existence?

Many of us who began this journey assumed that we would be dealing with much more conflict as many cultures and worldviews add to the complexity of congregational dynamics. What we have discovered, to our delight, is the exact opposite. The very decision to join a church in which one chooses to be a minority seems to draw the kind of people who are willing to “lay down their sword” of power and privilege. The Korean American founders had to set the example first.  Today, we all seem to be caught up in a virtuous cycle of who can lift up and value other individuals and cultures, to “consider others better than oneself.” The culture of public confession, corporate repentance, joyful celebration and vulnerable relationality that we have cultivated here is key to understanding the dynamism and eschatological hope evident in our life together.

We live in the time between the “already” and “not yet”.  Our church also sees itself between Pentecost in Acts 2 and the coming kingdom in Revelation 7, when all nations, tribes and tongues will glorify God together in one voice. We feel called to be an ecumenical church that embodies the major spiritual roots of the early church — to be simultaneously rational, sacramental and Pentecostal. We are also convinced that only intentional movement away from rigid denominationalism toward visible unity will lead the global church to recover its identity as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. We are a high-risk, low-anxiety church where anything is possible, including the possibility of failure. The only poverty we contest is the poverty of imagination. We feel so blessed with God’s abundance and grace. With humans, this is impossible. Thanks be to God who makes all things possible!