Searching for an Authentic Church

Yesterday morning (11-8) I was able to attend Korean church with my school's director, David. He took me to a small, Korean-speaking congregation. It was good to meet the Church here, even if I couldn't understand the language.

This church seemed very Western, with translated Western music, Western technology, and Western methods. They had everything from a standard pulpit to a computerized projector screen. We even adjurned to the Fellowship Hall afterwards for a meal. I had the impression through the progress of their liturgy that it was modele after a Methodist church because I recognized the Lord's Prayer and a congressional lead-and-response volley. In my head marched the different Protestant denomonations that I knew: Lutheran, Episcopalian, Southern Baptist, Pentacostal. None of them directly fit this Korean mold, so I assumed it must have been something with which I was less familiar. David later explained that it was a combination of Presbytarian and Methodist; those were the two denominations who evangelize the peninsula, presumably from the beginning of the missions movement. The theology is Presbytarian, he said, but the methods are Wesleyan.

Thinking back on it now, it all seems like a copy. It wasn't an authentic Korean church; it wasn't the expression of Jesus in the unique Korean culture. It was the expression of Jesus in a highly Westernized Korean duplicate. It felt Korean in name only--with the Korean language, to be sure, but nothing else. If what I've been taught is true, this Korean church was just another extension of the American church, but not its own! Apparently, in the church's distant past, its parent church[es] reproduced after their own kind. In some respects, this is dissappointing. I wanted to experience Korean church, like my dad suggested, not just another picture of my own.

It's problematic in other ways, too. David suggested that many Christians live their whole lives as baby Christians. If that's the way it is for many Korean churches, then they've inheritted the apathetic, sinful condition of the American church at large. If the Presbytarians and Methodists who founded the Korean church reproduced after their own kind, they brought with them America's diseased spirit. Is this the way God's church is throughout the world? Are we so stuck on ourselves that we've lost our power? Are we so materially-minded that we don't need Jesus anymore? Are we so Westernized that we don't have room for the Spirit to move in our gatherings?

If this is true for the world Church, then what's the solution? To demolish church buildings and revert to house-church settings forever? What would that accomplish? Yes, house churches have good aspects, but they have some drawbacks that are worth considering. One is the size: You have limited resource availability in a small house church. You also have limited spiritual "resources." To use the analogy of the body, the cells within a given locale--say the fingers--are all finger-cells; that's their spiritual gift. They work very well together, but there are no other kinds of cells because everyone is literally the same part. If it takes the whole body of Christ to grow a believer, as some say, he may have trouble growing just among finger-cells, especially if he isn't one himself.

Another drawback to house churches is the tendency to glorify--or at least permit--the flesh. House churches seem largely to be discussion-based: a leader begins talk of the Scriptures, usually with a reading, an members contribute their own ideas. Though this can be moderated somewhat, it seems to lend itself to an attitude of "anything goes." If the idea seems good, then it's allowed. But if it's not from the Spirit--if the Spirit isn't saying it to the congregation--then it doesn't contribute to the growth of the church and might as well be "like a sounding gong or a clanging cymbol" (I Cor. 13:1). If the utterance is not from the mouth of God, it's useless.

So how does one create or produce an authentic [fill in your ethnic group] church? What is the expression of Jesus in this unique Korean culture? In asking these questions, have we missed the point of the sea of believers in Revelation "from every tribe and every tounge and every nation" (5:9)? Are we so busy trying to keep the church "unique" or "cultural" that we've forgotten what the Church is all about? What's the sea of believers doing in the first place? Certainly not arguing over doctrine or which song to sing--and certainly not singing their own songs. They may be a unique expression of Jesus in their cultural backgrounds, but when they gather around the throne of God, they stand united as one, uniquenesses forgotten. That's what the Church should be: united as one, in awe of the beauty of their God, and sent out to give cups of cold water to strangers in desparate need.