Purpose

Today was the exact opposite of yesterday. I left my apartment around 8:40 this morning and came back around 3pm while I waited for a friend (I’m not sure if Aristotle would classify us as this or not) to finish her church duties. I was going to take a nap but I decided to type out the text messages I’ve sent and received in Korean. This was about 100 messages. When I came back tonight after coffee and dinner I translated them and sent them off to my Korean teacher. I’m sure she will love me for this.

My day started with the English service at the university church. My role in this was rather minimal today because I was only responsible for greeting people coming to the service, leading the congregation in confession, reading the Scripture passages (except for the sermon text) and leading the congregation in affirming our faith by reading the Apostles’ Creed. Okay, maybe my role was more than minimal. What I mean is that I did not preach. But that will change next week as I will be preaching. After the service I talked to a Korean professor and with the other ministers of the service about the future of the service.

I am concerned about a service in English in a Korean church that has more foreigners leading it than Koreans. Since there are few foreigners who go to this service, and since it is in a Korean church, it seems to me that there should be more Koreans leading the service than foreigners. I guess today it was half and half. But still, it seems to me the ideal would be for there to be more Koreans leading it than foreigners.

I’m really not sure whether to continue my involvement in this service. It seems that I experience God’s grace in some sense through this service, especially when I feel like the sermon is just for me as it seemed to be today. The vision of the service seems to be unclear so it is difficult to manage the success of the service when I am not sure how to manage that. It seems that different people come to the service but there is little consistency except that the service is attended by few people. Some people have found it difficult to understand what is going on in the service. I’m sure some of this is due to my complex sentence structure but I’m not sure about the rest of the service. It could be that this service is structured differently than a typical Korean Nazarene service. I am wondering if having a service completely in English is too much. When I went to the Anglican Cathedral on Easter Sunday the service was partly in Korean and partly in English. I suggested that we might want to try that if we continue to do the service.

After a lengthy discussion about the service and the church in general, I had lunch with a few people I know at the same church. I talked with them some about the English service but I didn’t learn much from them except that the service is difficult to understand.

After lunch I went to Grace Church (은혜교회) to teach English to some children and their mothers. This was quite challenging when I tried to talk about the names of the 12 disciples in English. I learned that I don’t know much when it comes to the details of these names. It was difficult trying to figure out the differences between the English and Korean translations. Then it also got confusing when I tried to explain these differences and when the people in the class tried to explain them to me. This was difficult and frustrating because I can’t speak Korean fluently and they can’t speak English fluently. The name that is the most unique is James. One of the students suggested that the Korean translation is wrong. When I asked why the Korean translation must be wrong and not the English translation, they said that when the Bible was translated into Korean there were people involved who were not Christians. I challenged this when I noticed that a fairly recent translation of the Korean Bible (New Korean Revised Version) which was copyrighted in 1998 for the first time used the same name for James. I argued to the contrary because I heard that one of the theologians at KNU participated in this translation. Of course it is entirely possible that I am the one that is wrong. I was surprised that one of the students was so quick to assume that it is the Korean Bible that is wrong.

After that class was over, I went back to my apartment while I waited for a friend to finish her church duties. She ended up taking longer than she expected so I just kept working on Korean. We met at 4pm and had coffee followed by kalguksu (갈국수). This was a fun for both of us I think though it was a little difficult with the language barrier. She tried to get me to try speaking in Korean and I failed miserably.

After I came back to my apartment, I felt that same empty feeling that I’ve been feeling the last few days. I persevered in spite of it through the Korean sentences and am feeling mildly better. Now to figure out what the source is of these feelings. For now, I think I’ll post this and call it a day. I need to get up early tomorrow to call my parents and a friend in America.