Shine Your Light
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This past Friday, Faith & Community Empowerment (FACE) held an event called "Passing the Torch: A Conversation On Post Pandemic Relevance: Your Church & Community Impact," that was co-hosted by "Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary," at Hillside Church of LA, which was one of the sponsors of this event along with Together LA.
At this event, several Korean American Churches convened to have a post pandemic conversation on how each of them responded and made an impact in their local communities.
The event started off with Hyepin Im, President and CEO of (FACE) discussing the L.A. Riots and the repercussions of Asian Americans being wrongly portrayed as the "model minority" and how it often puts them against other communities, when in fact, "We should be all on the same team." Hyepin went on to also discuss the benefits of "Letting your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Her hope was that by sharing what these pastors have been doing, that all would be encouraged and challenged to do more.
As the torch was passed, these are the highlights from each of the speakers.
Pastor Sam Koh (Lead Pastor at Hillside LA)
"By partnering with the Los Angeles Department of Health Services (DHS), we were able to distribute over 700,000 meals here in our parking lot during the Pandemic."
Reverend Dr. Elbert Kim (Camarillo United Methodist Church)
"Our ministry expanded three fold: equipment, resources, and grief care. And during the Pandemic, we were giving out over 600 pieces of medical equipment each month."
Reverend David Kim (The Garden Church)
"Because we wanted to help local businesses, we decided to help by partnering with the Children's Hunger Fund (CHF), and began distributing the food that CHF provided."
Pastor David Yoon (Tapestry LA Church)
"During the Pandemic, we held care packages for the local community. The first round was 300-400 care packages. We also created something called the Zachaias Fund. These funds were meant to support Black seminarians. In total, we raised around $100,000 and supported two Black seminarians."
The final torch was passed onto Dr. Daniel D. Lee who is the Academic Dean of the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry and Assistant Professor of Theology and Asian American studies at Fuller Theological Seminary:
"Whether it be Black Lives Matter, Anti-AAPI Hate or White Christian Nationalism, for Asian American churches to engage these topics with the gospel requires that we actually have a better and more biblical theology than what many of us learned in our white normative seminary education… There is no one size fits all gospel… Because our God is a God of Kingdom, all aspects of life including the political realm matters for faith... As we serve our neighborhoods, we need a better theology to support our ministry and mission."
The main takeaways which were expressed by Hyepin were the following:
• We need to learn to transcend the stereotypes that have been placed on us and stop perpetuating the false narrative that we are quiet and passive.
• We need to begin documenting the work that we do and show it in tangible ways.
• We can utilize the resources of third parties and those whom we choose to partner with.
• We should utilize the giftings of our church members.
All these churches demonstrated through their actions the call to shine our light to others. Is your church shining the light?
At the end of the day, if we choose to shine our light, then others will come and approach us, and we will be able to have a greater influence in the communities that we serve. So let us shine our light today, for this is the will of God.