Outreach Magazine Nov./Dec. 2008 Issue
Korean Congregation Plants “A Church For All People”
As her church home of 13 years endured a prolonged split, Susan Kim’s walk with God faltered.
She left the congregation, took a vacation and did not find a new church home until a friend’s cousin invited her three months later to attend a newly formed church- Crossway Community Church (Crossway-Church.com) in Brea, Ca.
“It seemed like they were really on fire for God,” Kim says of her first impressions of Crossway. “They had a purpose.”
That purpose is to be outward-focused and “a church for all people,” says Steve Choi, Crossway’s lead pastor. A church plant of Sa-rang Community Church in Anaheim, Ca., one of the largest Korean congregations outside of the Korean peninsula, Crossway marks the first time and immigrant church planted an English-speaking congregation, Choi says.
“I felt it was good time to be a blessing to the whole community,” Choi says.
Crossway has bestowed this blessing though a string of outreach activities, including serving the homeless at the Orange County Rescue Mission, providing a carnival for kids at an AIDS patient care facility, and sending a team on a mission trip to Thailand.
In its first year, the church has grown from 50 people to more than 300 attendees, many of whom are new to church or like Kim, had been away from it but are coming back, Choi says. Although still predominately Asian, the congregation includes people of many ethnic backgrounds.
“People have been inviting their friends, coworkers, relative,” Choi says. “It’s the work of God.”
- Scott Marshall
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