Winning College Students for God’s Kingdom

– Part Two Interview with Rev. Young Kim

By Lily Yang

Edited by Andrew Yang

Pastor Young Kim is the pastor of several campus churches in the Philadelphia area under the umbrella of Grace Covenant Church. For over ten years, Pastor Kim has been working toward his vision of a “multi-ethnic church that will raise kingdom workers for the harvest of the world to the glory of God”.

We sat down with Pastor Kim to discuss the unique challenges of pasturing a church exclusively focuses on campus ministry.

Where did you get the multi-ethnic concept and how does it apply to Grace Covenant Church?

I guess I don’t really know where it came from totally, but I feel like we live in a multi-ethnic culture. I speak English, so I should be able to reach anyone. I learned a lot inside the Korean American church and I saw that we can reach definitely more than just Koreans.

I just said we want to be different. We don’t want to be just Korean American, we want to be multi-ethnic.

I don’t think I understood everything, even now I don’t know exactly what all that means. But the more I do it, the more I realize what it means to be multiethnic, because we are very multi-Asian; Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians. But it’s really funny once you start being more multi ethnic…for example, I’m skipping subjects but one time we had an intro night at a campus. All these students came in and you could kind of tell who’s Korean and who’s Chinese. In the beginning there were about, ten Korean and two Chinese students and it seemed a bit awkward, “is this a Chinese group or is this a multi ethnic group?” But then what’s funny was an African American girl came in and suddenly the Chinese people felt okay. And the African American girl was like, “Is this like Asian or what is this?” and then a couple Caucasian kids came and suddenly the African girl, she fits in.

So I think definitely as an Asian American I realize I can reach the multi-Asian community and even minorities. It is still hard to hit the majority culture. Some of it might be my problem, maybe I don’t have the confidence, but I still don’t think it’s easy.

What are some differences between campus ministries and a regular church ministry?

Our original vision was to be a campus church and to spread campus churches. When I think about myself, I don’t know if I had this whole vision planned. First I thought I was going to be a Korean American youth pastor. Then I thought I was going to be a Korean American EM pastor. Then I realized I should be a multiethnic campus pastor. I have a couple reasons for wanting to go to campuses: number one, I felt that in the college years that’s where someone’s philosophy of life and spiritual formation happens that affects them until they’re thirty. Second, I felt like it’s an easier place to be more multiethnic because you want to try new things.

In the college years, people are meeting new cultures and new personalities, so I felt like that was a good place to do a multiethnic church. And I really love college students and investing into them. So those were some of the reasons that we can change the course of their lives. I think the campus church is different from campus ministries like intervarsity or campus crusade and navigators.

And I think the reason there are campus ministries, or parachurches as they call them, is because many times there are no campus-focused churches. Many times if you do a church that’s focused on campuses, it’s really exciting for four years and the students grow, but then they leave. So when you go through the second generation and even third most families get tired of the college church, they love the students, but you realize they keep leaving. So they get tired and you have some campus ministry but then slowly you focus on youth group or like, Sunday school youth group and slowly you lose focus on college.

I really felt like the campus is a great mission field. That’s where a lot of people come to know Jesus Christ because they’re open, they’re thinking of new things. Of course some of them will know a lot of drinking and partying stuff too, so I felt like we want a church that really doesn’t lose its heart for college students. And I think it’s different from a parachurch because I think there’s more balance. Because a parachurch, and I really respect the parachurch, if you didn’t have the parachurch a lot of these campuses would not have the gospel, but I think the parachurch sometimes develops an emphasis on the individual Christian life. And it’s not as much a community and even if they develop a community Christian life they’re not as focused on the local church. So a lot of times guys who come out of parachurch are good Christians but they really have a hard time adjusting to a local church. Now in our model they still have a hard time, a little bit, because they’re in this college atmosphere, but I think it’s one step easier. Even stuff like parachurches, they don’t teach you how to take communion or tithe, what to do with your money…

We try to actually bring in some hymns once in a while; we used to actually sing hymns a lot. We sing hymns at our offering time and stuff like that, just so students will hear it. So that if they go to a more traditional church they’ll be comfortable. And I think it is a more Biblical model.

Based on your observation of over 10 years in ministry to college students, how has their value system and philosophy of life changed over these years? How does your ministry respond to the changing needs of these students?

I think it’s definitely changing, there’s post-modernity and modernity and all of that. I think even though we are somewhat multi-ethnic we’re still 70% Asian American, and I think in the Asian-American culture the post-modern attitude hasn’t hit as strongly. But it’s changing. For example, in the early years even in the way I’d preach I’d be a lot more…at least Korean father-like. I would tell them, “don’t do that and do that and don’t do that”. Now I don’t do it as much. I try to say, “this is what I think is best, you think about it.”

I’m still very “you need to do this” but I think I realized…

That post modernity doesn’t want the answer? The “correct” answer?

Right, and they don’t want authority without relationship. Whereas in earlier years of our ministry if you just gave authority, a lot of people were still like me. For example, my dad didn’t have a relationship with me, though in my mind the way I thought about it was that his telling me to what to do was the way he expressed love to me, and that is what it was. But the younger guys don’t want you to tell them what to do, they want you to love them, and then you might be able to tell them what to do. So it’s really changing. So some of the older guys are like, “why aren’t we yelling at them?” or “why aren’t we saying a lot more up front?” And we still do once in a while but I tell them it’s a different people.

And then the other thing I realized is before when guys came into college we would have a big freshman class. We tried to do sports and picnics and other things. But more and more we actually have a bigger sophomore class because the freshmen -- they just wind up not coming to church and then afterward some of them do bad things or do dumb things and they wonder, “Maybe I should go to church”. So in some ways it’s a little more difficult because before we used to get a lot more freshmen. So we had sophomores, juniors, and seniors helping them but now we get people coming in sophomore year and junior year so we only get one year to really help them to be disciplined and find a more Christian philosophy of living, so it’s getting a little harder to help them.

What is the biggest challenge you ever faced?

I think the biggest challenge I ever faced is me, and me becoming like Christ. When I was younger I thought I was going to be like Jesus really fast, but the more I live the more I realize I’m a sinner. Someone said something like, “if you want to conquer the world, you have to first conquer yourself” So I think that’s the number one challenge.

What do you think that readers who read about this ministry can do, and the message you’d like to give?

Well, I think one thing is the importance of college ministry, I think that these students’ lives are going to be changed. They’re going to find their mate, and their career, and their God in that college, and I feel like there needs to be more of a vision to support, pray for, and even plant more college churches. So I feel that’s definitely some of the resources should go. Because family churches think there’s so much trouble in high school years, they think this guy didn’t go bad and then he goes to college and they think he’s at Harvard, or Temple, or wherever and they’re like, (sigh of relief). But you just sent them to one of the biggest battlegrounds!

I actually think people should try to support campus, if there’s no campus church they should support campus ministry. For me I wouldn’t send my daughter or son to a college unless I knew that it had a good campus ministry, because if it didn’t, then they’re going to be in big trouble. So definitely understand the need for campus churches and ministries. I think one simple thing is to find out, especially if your children are growing, what group are they involved in and even ask like, “Hey, is there a way we can support?” because even good Christian parents will support their youth pastor, but don’t really think about the campus. So, I think those are some action steps. A lot of times I won’t meet the parents until they graduate and they’re like, “Thank you very much, my son has a job and he didn’t fall away,” but I think they should be a little more involved if they can.