In 1999 Jin S. Kim (M.Div., 1993) was working in a Korean church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His job was English ministry—ministry in English to the children of the church’s founding Korean immigrants. Many of these young adult children were born in the United States and were culturally, and linguistically, different from their parents; his call was essentially to minister to Korean Americans.

But the Spirit moves where it will, and Kim soon found that his English ministry for Korean Americans included non-Koreans, many of whom were white parents with adopted Korean children. Both the white parents and their adopted Korean children were culturally different from the second-generation Korean Americans originally part of his ministry. When they were joined by a Liberian man, a third-generation Presbyterian who took a bus and walked a mile and a half to the church because it was the nearest one to where he lived (never mind that the sign clearly said “Korean Presbyterian Church”), Kim knew he was entering new territory.

As Kim asked himself what it meant for him to be a pastor to second-generation Korean Americans, Euro-American parents, their Korean adopted children, and a Liberian man, he realized he could no more justify Koreans ministering only to Koreans than he could whites ministering only to whites. He wanted everyone to feel welcome in his congregation, but welcome to what? he asked himself. In the case of Kim’s church, welcome to become part of the dominant Korean culture of the mother church? What about the Korean adoptee children, who felt neither Korean enough for the Korean mother church, nor white enough for the white church?

Kim began to believe that the gospel was captive to the culture of his Korean church, just as much as it was captive to the white American church, where everyone was welcome, but welcome to “become white,” he says. “Once I realized this in the Korean context, it was a small leap [to the truth] that every nation and every culture is deeply pathological, and the gospel is powerless in almost all cultures, because empires and nations co-opt it. The question was how not to be co-opted by our cultures of origin,” says Kim.

For Kim, answering that question began with becoming a church that is neither Korean nor white, and that is both. It is also African American, Latina/o, and Native American. The Church of All Nations (CAN), which was founded in 2004 and which Kim now copastors with colleagues from Brazil, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Sudan, and the United States, represents all five minority groups recognized by the PCUSA (African American, Asian American, Latina/o, Native American, Middle Eastern American), and twenty-five nationalities. But Kim’s goal is not to have a church with an “apple, an orange, and an Oreo,” he says, “meaning yellow, red, or black on the outside but white on the inside. We’re not interested in drawing co-opted minorities or in sociological fads, we’re interested in reconciliation.”

Reconciliation doesn’t come cheap. It requires “taking our divisions seriously,” says Kim. In the process of becoming a church of all nations, the congregation “didn’t sweep anything under the rug.” While conflict was necessary to the process of becoming a multicultural church, division was not. Kim spent years “wrestling with the mother church to get her formal blessing,” finally renting space at a local Presbyterian church that had been told to “die gracefully,” he says. But the young Korean congregation did not join the white church and thereby “save” it; instead, the white church dissolved, and its members became members of a new church, the Church of All Nations. The church now has 250 members and is 37 percent white, 20 percent African American, 32 percent Asian American, and 10 percent Latina/o. In 2000 the city of Minneapolis was 65 percent white, 18 percent African American, 6 percent Asian American, and 7 percent Latina/o, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

And how do people of all nations worship together? For Kim, different languages and cultures are not a barrier, but a blessing. The vision of the Church of All Nations recalls Pentecost, when a “multicultural, multilingual, multinational gathering of people witnessed to the mighty acts of God,” according to the church’s vision statement. At Church of All Nations, worship includes a Swahili choir, a Korean choir, a West African choir, and a Brazilian praise team. One of the church’s five principles is “an ecumenical expression of Christian worship rooted in the early church that is equally rational, sacramental, and pentecostal,” according to the church’s web site. “Even though [as Presbyterians] we’re Calvinist Enlightenment rationalist, we’re not bound by Calvin’s European culture,” Kim says. Raised hands, clapping hands, and folded hands are all welcome expressions of worship at CAN.

According to Kim, the multicultural church calls for not only new and renewed ways of doing worship but also new and renewed ways of doing theology: “The multicultural context is so complex, so demanding, so radical, that conventional theology and conventional leadership were utterly inadequate,” Kim says. The resulting theology defies easy categories. For example, Kim often critiques the “imperialism” of white culture in the language of liberationist theology, while at the same time he reclaims the phrase “born-again” from what he calls the “reductionist, truncated soteriology” of much of the evangelical movement. He says that CAN is committed “to sound biblical teaching, to genuine personal transformation,” language typically associated with the conservative right wing of the church; CAN is also committed to “sweeping social justice,” language typically associated with the liberal left wing. For Kim the liberals and conservatives are equally imperialistic, and left and right are not the issue; the gospel is. “The kingdom offers a truly alternate reality,” he says.

And as for many in his generation and in the emergent, post-denominational movement, for Kim worship should strive to reach deep, back to the early church, and wide, into the breadth of the ecumenical church, according to the church’s vision statement. The church is as diverse ecumenically as it is culturally, with members who are former Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists, Evangelical Free—and those who identified as non- or post-denominational. Although CAN is Presbyterian, it is “penitently Presbyterian,” because Kim believes that denominationalism is a form of brokenness.

Taking one’s own brokenness seriously is standard operating procedure at CAN. The church is “committed to being honest, transparent, and vulnerable…” and to being “high-risk and low-anxiety,” lingo from Edwin H. Friedman’s standard From Generation to Generation. No one has to be “lower anxiety” than the pastors of this multicultural church, and that includes taking the risk of finding different ways to lead. How do Kim and his fellow pastors enable their congregants to live out their calling to be a truly multicultural church? “I say the two most dangerous words in the English language—Follow me,” says Kim. “When I fail you and betray you I will confess honestly, repent honestly, heal honestly, and reconcile honestly. The way I fail and the way I reconcile is going to be a model for you in all of your sin and failure.”

Being multicultural means taking oneself and one’s failings seriously in light of the gospel, but it also means taking oneself less seriously. Dana Caraway (M.Div., 2006), pastoral intern, noted that whether worshippers come early or late, or pray loudly or silently, “We love each other. It doesn’t have to always be the way I want it to be.” For her, being “multicultural means submission. Even though you don’t want to give up [your own way], you do, because you love your brother.”

Ultimately being a multicultural church is not about the cultures, but about the gospel. “I’m Korean and American…why would a Brazilian follow me? Not because they like Korean food, but because they see a genuine disciple,” Kim says. “I have an elite educational background. How will poor, uneducated people trust me? How will they connect with me? Not culturally. I have to be profoundly Christian.” For Kim what is required to be a multicultural church is as radical as the gospel itself. Being multicultural means being “deeply, proudly, and penitently who you are.”

For more information about the Church of All Nations, including a list of resources about being a multicultural church, visit www.cando.org. For more information about being a multicultural church from the PCUSA’s Office of Multicultural Ministries, visit www.pcusa.org/multicultural/.

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