Hear The Good News In Your Own Language

By Rev. Joe Kim
Bothell UMC (Bothell, WA)

I remember one time at a previous job, sitting in a meeting, when someone said, with complete sincerity, “We’re so glad you’re here because we really need more diversity in leadership.”

It was meant as a compliment. They were trying to be welcoming. But I remember sitting there holding two truths at once. On one hand, I appreciated the honesty. On the other hand, I could feel the weight of what was underneath it, that sometimes my presence was first understood as representation before it was understood as relationship.

I was not simply being invited to lead. I was being asked, consciously or unconsciously, to symbolize something.

Many Asian American pastors know that feeling. You are welcomed into the room, but sometimes the question lingers: are you here because people trust your leadership, or because your presence helps the institution feel like progress? Are you being invited to shape the future, or simply to reflect the image of it?

As a Korean American pastor serving in the United Methodist Church, I have spent much of my ministry navigating spaces across race, culture, and expectation. I have served in predominantly white congregations, worked in denominational leadership through a general agency of the Church, and now serve as the lead pastor of a church seeking to live more fully into justice, inclusion, and belonging.

Along the way, I have learned that intercultural ministry is not primarily about representation. It is about truth-telling. It is about trust. And it is about whether the Church is willing to be transformed, not just diversified.

That lesson did not begin in ministry. It began much earlier.

My Korean American identity has shaped my faith in ways I did not always recognize when I was younger. Like many children of immigrants, I grew up carrying both gratitude and pressure. Gratitude for sacrifice. Pressure to succeed. Gratitude for community. Pressure to not make mistakes.

There is a particular way many of us learn to move through the world, aware of how we are perceived, careful not to create discomfort, often taught that survival depends on excellence and adaptation. That formation shaped how I understood belonging.

It taught me how easily acceptance could feel conditional, something earned by being useful, agreeable, or exceptional enough to be welcomed. And when that mindset enters the Church, it quietly distorts the Gospel.

But again and again, Christ moves toward those on the margins, not asking them to change who they are first, but restoring the dignity that empire had already tried to deny.

Jesus does not call people into belonging because they have mastered the right language, culture, or credentials. He calls people into belovedness first. He moves toward those who have been told they are too much, not enough, or somehow outside the circle of grace.

That matters deeply to me because for many of us, especially those leading across cultures, the temptation is assimilation. We learn how to survive by becoming legible to power. We learn how to soften edges, translate ourselves, and prove we are “safe” enough to trust.

But Pentecost tells a different story.

In Acts 2, the miracle is not that everyone suddenly speaks the same language. The miracle is that people hear the good news in their own language. Difference is not erased. Difference becomes holy. The Spirit does not flatten identity. The Spirit dignifies it.

That has become one of the deepest theological convictions of my ministry: God is not asking us to become less ourselves in order to belong. The work of the Church is not assimilation. It is communion.

And communion is harder, because true belonging requires more than welcome language. It requires shared power.

It is one thing for a church to say, “All are welcome.” It is another thing entirely to ask whose voices shape decisions, whose stories are centered, whose discomfort is protected, and whose pain is dismissed as too political, too disruptive, or too much.

Intercultural ministry becomes life-giving when people are willing to move beyond politeness and into transformation. I have learned that trust is not built through statements alone. It is built when people are willing to listen without defensiveness. When they are willing to be changed by what they hear. When inclusion is not treated as charity, but as discipleship.

Some of the most hopeful moments in ministry have come not when people got it right immediately, but when they stayed in the conversation long enough to let love do its work.

I have seen older members of congregations choose curiosity over fear. I have watched people who once thought justice conversations were “too political” begin to understand that the Gospel has always been political because it concerns who belongs, who is protected, and whose humanity is recognized. I have seen communities move from tolerance to solidarity.

That gives me hope. Not perfection. Not speed. But movement.

And perhaps that is why (AANHPI) Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Pentecost belong so closely together.

AANHPI Heritage Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate stories too often overlooked. Pentecost reminds us that the Church was multilingual, multicultural, and Spirit-disrupted from the very beginning. These are not separate conversations. They belong together.

The future of the Church will not be sustained by nostalgia for what was. It will be shaped by our willingness to become something more honest, more just, and more whole.

I believe that future is possible. I believe it because I have seen it in congregations willing to repent and rebuild. I believe it because younger generations are asking better questions than many institutions are prepared to answer. I believe it because the Spirit has always moved faster than the Church’s comfort.

And I believe it because resurrection has taught us this: what looks final often is not.

The Church can change. Not because diversity is trendy. Not because institutions need better optics. But because the Gospel demands it.

Because the Gospel has always been about who belongs. It is about who gets welcomed to the table. Who gets heard. Who gets protected. Who gets named beloved.

Belonging is not a side project of the Church. It is at the center of who we are.

It is not an optional ministry. It is the work of the Gospel itself.