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Taylor said the decision to combine the two congregations has been a unanimous decision by the Sessions, which is the official board of directors for Eastminster Presbyterian Church, as a congregation and a corporation.
Taylor emphasized that the merger is, in his words, “Not official yet.
“We’re working with the Presbytery of the Cascades,” Taylor said, “and we have its blessing to live together and work towards a merger. We will probably go to the Presbytery sometime this summer with a request that we merge officially in November, but that’s still iffy.”
Taylor explained that the Presbytery of the Cascades is the next highest level of church government above the individual church. The Presbytery of the Cascades is a regional body of 224 churches, covering the territory from Vancouver, Wash. to Southern Oregon, and from the Pacific Ocean to Eastern Oregon.
Taylor outlined the goal of the merger.
“Our goal is to bring the two congregations together to form a bicultural, bilingual congregation,” Taylor said, “in a community that is multicultural, multilingual. Our long-term goal is for us to have a congregation that is multicultural, multilingual.
Services are presented in both English and Korean.
“We’re starting out with just two languages first,” the exuberant Taylor added.
“Some of the people we are hoping to target initially,” Taylor continued to explain, “are American families who have adopted children from Korea. We feel we can provide for them a ministry that is firmly grounded in American culture, yet give children a sense of their birth culture.
“And where American families might not be comfortable in a Korean church,” Taylor added, “they’ve got the option of the American church.”
Taylor also said that, in the past, the Eastminster congregation created a community center at the church.
“Scout groups and others have used our building pretty regularly,” Taylor detailed. “We’re hoping to maintain that and expand.”
Taylor said that once the merger is made official, “one of our first acts will be to create a building committee to add on to our facility. We’re hoping to add classrooms, along with a multipurpose gymnasium and auditorium with locker rooms and kitchen.”
Taylor said that the new construction planned would not happen over night.
“This is a five- to ten-year plan,” he said.
Taylor was enthusiastic about the continued changes at the church.
“I’m so excited about it,” he gushed. “It’s an opportunity for the congregation that has been here for 50 years to expand its ministry to relate to the community which it is in. The Parkrose community is one of the most multicultural and diverse communities in the state of Oregon. The Parkrose School District deals with some 29 different familial languages and cultures. And in order to be relevant to the community, we have to change. And this is an opportunity for us to change and hopefully reach out more effectively to the community in which we are living.”
Taylor also explained that for some of the congregation, there is “the fear of the unknown.
“Eastminster has become primarily a congregation of older people,” Taylor said. “The Korean congregation is younger. And we now have a Sunday school and a youth program, which we’ve not had for a number of years.”
Taylor knows that the injection of the more vibrant, younger Korean congregation will provide a much-needed shot in the arm for the church.
“This will allow us, I think, to expand,” he said. “The Koreans needed a facility, and so it’s a beautiful melding of the needs of the two congregations. And this is going to allow us to do it, to give us the energy to do it, and to give us the resources to do it, better than what we could have done separately.”
Rev. Yoon Cho is the other pastor at New Life-Eastminster Presbyterian Church. The 48-year-old Cho is a native of Seoul, Korea.
Cho earned a master of divinity from the Presbyterian Theology Seminary in Seoul, Korea.
He was ordained at East Toronto Presbytery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1985.
After he was ordained, he served as pastor of a Presbyterian church in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada for six years. At that time he was also studying theology at Knox College at the University of Toronto. He received a master’s of theology degree from Knox College in 1989.
He applied and was accepted as pastor of the former Korean United Presbyterian Church at Northeast 76th Avenue and Glisan Street in 1994; he was there six years.
In November 1999 Korean United Presbyterian Church closed, and the congregation began meeting at rented facilities at Sunnyside Community Church in Clackamas. After that venue, the congregation began meeting at Rose City Park Presbyterian Church. After a year there, “I suggested the idea of merging with one of the local Presbyterian churches to the Presbytery of the Cascades,” Cho said.
Cho worked with Rev. Jack Hodges.
“He said it was a very brilliant idea,” Cho said of Hodges. Cho said that Hodges said there would only be a 25 percent chance that the idea would see fruition, “but he said it was very worthwhile to go ahead with the idea, because we belong to the same denomination.”
Hodges gave Cho a list of 13 prospective churches to apply. Cho said he, his wife and an elder from his congregation began visiting the churches.
Ultimately, Cho and his team visited eight out of the 13 churches. Cho said he took some photographs, and took a close look at the church buildings. Then he began prioritizing the churches.
“And this church was the No. 1 priority of my list,” Cho said of Eastminster. Cho said he let Hodges know about his “wish list.”
Hodges called Taylor at Eastminster.
“After getting a phone call from Jack Hodges,” Cho said, “(Taylor) opened his mind. That’s the beginning of this process.”
The nomad existence for the Korean Presbyterian congregation was soon to be over.
Cho frankly admitted that although his congregation had no official church building to call its own, the Korean congregation came to Eastminster with a building fund of $400,000.
Cho acknowledged that after the official merger of the two churches, constructing a new multipurpose building would be one of the first objectives.
Cho sees the goal of the new church clearly.
“The ultimate goal for this ministry is to become a multicultural ministry,” Cho said. In the meantime, he said the goal is to become bicultural. But including other ethnicities will be in the church’s future.
Cho said there have been “some successes, some failures” when it comes to combining the two cultures in worship.
“This is not a problem,” he said, “it’s an opportunity. The most important thing is communication between the two leaders of the church first and the two congregations. It’s a pioneering ministry.”
Cho admitted that for some of the older generation of Koreans in his congregation, there “has been some confusion, some negative feelings.
“But in knowing first generation immigrant Korean people,” Cho continued, “I could understand this, because their social activities are limited to the Korean community. They are in a very unfamiliar situation. For second-generation Korean children, they are very happy. They are the future of our church. I think we have to focus on them.
“There is a common ground for both congregations,” Cho explained. “Our common ground is reaching out to adopted Korean children and their American families.”
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