Paramount’s Pastor Ken Korver at Emmanuel Church

Pastor Ken Korver has lived most of his life in Paramount, not out of familiarity or convenience, but out of a great depth of commitment and calling felt in his heart since he was 11 years old. Emmanuel Church has a rich history intertwined with the city of Paramount. In an earlier blog, “Neighborhood Spotlight: Paramount Profile,” we explored how the nationally recognized city earned its commendations for turning itself around from a “disaster” area into an “All-America City.” By God’s incredible design, Emmanuel Church was a vital partner in accomplishing this massive feat. But before this partnership was established, a calling had to be answered. 

Pastor Ken’s father was leading a church camp in Chicago when he received a mystical call to come to Paramount, CA to a dying Dutch Reformed Church in a transitioning community. He declined, but was challenged to pray about it by the ministry team reaching out to him. Neither historically spiritually charismatic nor interested to confirm the call’s validity with prayer, he nevertheless found himself having a divine encounter in the prayer room. Every time he faced North, South, or East, a sense of vertigo overtook him, but when he faced West, he regained his balance. Pastor Ken’s father had never experienced this before, so when it kept happening, he believed it was God’s leading to move to California. 

However, God was not done speaking just yet. On the way to California, they were visiting family in Iowa when 11-year-old Ken was called out by his Uncle, “Kenley, when you get to California you tell them about Jesus.” The words sank deep in Pastor Ken’s heart and from that moment, he, too, accepted the invitation to spread the gospel in California with his father. He has been operating on that call ever since, and following his father, he is now the lead Pastor at Emmanuel Church. 

We connected with Pastor Ken and asked him about growing up in Paramount, his journey to respond to his call, and what Paramount is like today. 

Hearing your story, it seems you were destined to come to the community that you’re in, to the people you serve.

Pastor Ken: The answer to this sounds corny, but that's what I feel. That's how I feel.

Wow. Since you’ve been in Paramount since you were 11, I would guess that you have a really good knowledge of the heartbeat of your community. What did the community look like and what has been Emmanuel Church’s impact on the community?

Pastor Ken: It’s a beautiful community. When we came here in 1970, the Rand Corporation called our community an urban suburban disaster site and said we were the fourth worst city in the United States of America in terms of crimes going up, gangs increasing, businesses fleeing, white flight and schools not doing well. However, when our family moved here, we found that we loved the people. It’s a blue-collar Latino community. The city was kind of beaten down, but we loved it, and my brothers and I went to public high school and played sports. In the ‘70s, there was kind of a revival at the high school so in the ‘80s, my older brother and my father were praying, “God in the ‘70s you let us be your ministers in Paramount High School, but we feel like the demographics are changing. We’re not sure we’re being as helpful as we’d like to be.” My father and brother were literally praying to God to give us an opportunity again to serve in a unique way when right then, the city manager knocked on our door and said, “Crazy idea, but we want to paint our city. We want to go to the roughest areas and paint houses with your church. We have seven or eight professionals and staff -could your church be the grunt laborers?” And my Dad and brother immediately said, “Yes! Put us in.” Over a three-year period, from 1988 to 1991, the church painted somewhere around 400 houses. Although we painted 400 houses, it led to 3,000 houses getting painted. When people observed their neighborhood’s roughest houses get painted and learned that the city supplied the paint, they felt incentivized to paint and upgrade their own homes, too. And in 1991, George Bush the first, declared our city an All-American City and declared that Emmanuel church was one of a Thousand Points of Light. When Bush was running for office, he said he wanted “1,000 points of light” and Emmanuel was 1 of 50 religious organizations to receive the award. 

And what does Paramount look like now?

Pastor Ken: Our streets are well paved, our parks are totally clean, everything is green there’s no trash, and the crime level is low. The City Manager, Pat West, was asked what changed the city, and these were his words: “The catalyst of the change of our city was that church, Emmanuel Church.” You know, when people say that to us, we say, “No, God changed this city.” We think the city staff and the city’s unity also played a vital part of God’s plan, but we’re humbled to hear that even non-Christians believe that the church was the catalyst. Catalyst doesn’t mean you did it all; it means you helped light a match. 

How has Emmanuel Church grown through the seasons?

Pastor Ken: Our Church in the early ‘90s was still predominantly white. We had become a church of 1000 people when it had started out as 200 Dutch people. For 20 years, we had reached the community, but the congregation of Dutch and other European Americans did not reflect the diversity and changing demographic of the city. And so, in the mid-90s, we began a noon service. For the noon service, we made 25,000 phone calls to neighboring cities around our community. We called Compton, Southgate, and North Long Beach and said we were starting a new church. We kept our 9 and 10:30 AM services the same, but for the noon service, we wanted to do something different by reaching out to the wider community. We had 400-500 people coming in, and it was no longer a white service; it was predominantly brown and Latino, and the choir sounded like a black soul choir -it was all these different backgrounds. Well, that led to the church becoming multi-ethnic because over time, the noon-service people began attending the 9 and 10:30 services. 

In the ‘70s we became a missionary church, the ‘80s we became a church that helped the city transform, the ‘90s we became a multiethnic church, and in the 2000s we focused our efforts to serve Compton. We live right next door, but we ignored Compton for 80 years. We repented, and we said, we are to love our neighbor. The whole world has heard of Compton and we never cared. Since we learned how to paint, we thought, let’s go serve in Compton. So we started the Compton Initiative: Just do Good, which has 2000 volunteers paint schools, churches, and 20 grandma houses four times a year, all because we learned how to do that in Paramount. To date, we have painted 1600 homes, schools and churches in Compton. That was the 2000s. And now in the 2010s, we’ve become a church planting church. We’re trying to plant into the city. We tell people to remain in the city they reside in, but ask if they can let their eyes look towards Los Angeles. Can they join us in planting churches that way,  painting that way, and caring that way? So instead of a suburban mindset, the Church is taking on an urban mindset. 

Wow. I love what I’m hearing. There are a lot of Churches with a long history that have grown stronger and stronger in their ways and gotten more involved in their own structure. Whereas what I hear from you is that your Church transitioned as the people transitioned, and as the community grew, you have grown in response and as a leader. It’s amazing  how your church has been active in growth and led by the Spirit. What would you say is the greatest need of your community? 

Pastor Ken: I think the greatest need in our community is to know the love, and Salvation, and Holiness of God. That people would meet Christ and know Jesus’s way into the kingdom. He came smiling and preaching the good news of the kingdom of God, while also saying to the people, “Repent and believe.” So we do ministries in painting, cleaning, feeding, sports and afterschool programs. Behind all of that - and the heart of all of that- is the hope for people to encounter Christ. We think He’s the actual Savior, the actual answer -but you don’t start with preaching at people. Jesus went around feeding people, clothing them, and healing them. When you do that, your message has a better chance of being heard. 

Absolutely! It sounds like Emmanuel is really a unique church: unique in its history, unique in its actions, unique in its perception by the community. I would love to get your perspective on the word hope and what that brings to mind.

Pastor Ken: On Sunday I preached on 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 where Paul says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received.” And what I shared with our congregation is, to be a Christian is to be comforted by God. And you’re comforted by God through the complete forgiveness of our sins, the promise of everlasting life, the Romans 8 promises that [God is] going to work for the good of those who love [Him]. And if God loved us so much that He did not spare His only son, will He not also give us all things? Could anything separate us from the love of God? Nothing in all creation. So, we’re the people who walk in hope. We walk in hope of Jesus Christ’s salvation, and His promised return. We walk in the hope that one day all things will be restored. And so, our job is to hope in the Lord, live that way and then see each person with the lens of Christ. Who could they be in Jesus Christ, who would they become and as a result, what would their families be like? So, when I think of hope, I think of Christ and the Spirit and the hope we have in the Lord both now and forever. And we’re to bring that to the people in the midst of the difficulties and hardships of life. 

At Emmanuel Church you’ll find a community of people that looks like the neighborhood of Paramount; warm, friendly, beautiful people passionate for Jesus, loving their neighbors, and ready to follow the Spirit wherever He calls. If you’re interested in visiting Emmanuel Church online or in person, check out their website or email their team at info@erc.la for more information.