I must again note though that concerning my example, I agree with that you said. 1 Cor 10:31 says in ALL things, I would hope that it would be for God’s glory. I do not believe in an ostrich mentality, where we stick our head in the sand as soon as we are confronted by culture. I believe God’s grace is absolutely essential in dealing with culture and so we guard ourselves against blatant hypocrisy and self-righteousness through the examination of our own sinful nature. So is Korean school in a church inherently evil? No, absolutely not.

But is Korean school in a church that HINDERS a corporate of God on the Lord’s Day wrong? Yes, I strongly believe it is and I think you do too. Our current church worships at 1:30p because we rent a church building. In no way do I give the people in my congregation a list of what they should not do in the morning. I don’t say to them, “You should not golf, or watch TV, or watch a video, etc.” on Sun morn before church. But I DO tell them how keeping our hearts and minds focused on Him benefits our souls and gives us a heart hunger for God that certain distractions in our lives do not. I do not think going to the movies on Sunday morning or learning Korean on Sunday morning is a sin, per se. But I think, given our sinfulness and biases, generally they do not give us a yearning to worship Him with the Body of Christ.

My point of that example is that culture is not evil. But culture, in the wrong perspective, can lead us away from Christ, rather than drawing us towards Him. And frankly, I feel as though in the Korean Church, culture quite frequently, even unknowingly, can and does trump our pursuit of Christ.

Culture, for better or worse, is largely the medium through which we communicate – it is the water that we swim in. When the Gospel is introduced, to maintain the analogy, it challenges us to leave the water behind, but sometimes a change like that requires certain increments that allows people to follow along without the change in pH alone to kill them. I know it’s not a worthy metaphor, but for instance in the example that you yourself gave, based on the people’s attentiveness dropping in Sunday worship due to a Saturday Korean school. By simply making Sunday worship the primary focus doesn’t necessarily make the people focus on worship, if that makes any sense. And to cut out all other options to worship in an effort to purify it is much like training a dog without distractions in the privacy of your own home, which is to say, the dog won’t listen to you outside the home. In other words, if we could get people to understand that Korean school can be worshipful, that Monday through Saturday can be made worshipful, that culture is not antagonistic to Jesus, but must be redeemed in every way, perhaps then our culture will be redeemed (and not just on Sundays!). But the polarization of the faith and culture is detrimental to both elements and what we are trying to do ultimately through our discussion is to delve into how our faith can influence our culture, not the other way around, which as you rightly say, is currently how the KA churches seem to operate.

Needless to say, you’ll not hear any glorifying of the KA church here – nor of any South African church either if you can point us to one. However, I think that the road to critique, especially according to biblical standards, is to speak the truth in love, which is where many of us commentators can easily stumble. I, for one, will be spending the rest of my life proving that my faith in Jesus is more important to me than my Korean heritage, even if Koreans should disown me despite it, but I’m not giving up on them nearly as easily.

Mr. Foley is writing to a KM, and I know David, that’s what you’re asking the reader to remember. You’re asking us to keep in mind that he is trying to get the KM to get EMers to not outright reject EM/KM because of culture alone. But that seems to be the inherent problem, as I noted in my response last time. Culture too often trumps faith in KM/EM circles. In my previous EM experience, we had a conflict that typifies this. The KM church I was ministering at had a Korean language school that met on church property on Sunday mornings before worship. The kids and volunteers for that Korean school were so exhausted after that school, that I found their attentiveness during worship to be far from sharp. When I addressed this with my Senior Pastor that we consider moving the timing of the Korean school, he said that it would be inconvenient for the parents to have it any other day. And that is exactly the problem. For these Korean KM parents, there is a syncretism between culture and Christ. Their assumption is that because they are learning Korean language at a church, it is a spiritual thing. And this syncretism, in my humble opinion, is the greatest challenge for the Korean church, here and in Korea. If Kimchee making in the church does not have the ULTIMATE goal of leading people to worship Christ, then it shouldn’t be in the church, or it bears the same effect as the moneychangers.

I in no way think commenting on the Korean church should be left solely to Koreans. That is chauvinistic and narrow-minded. If I as a Korean can go to South Africa and make an assessment of the church there on the basis of biblical standards, then surely anyone can do the same for the Korean church, to our ultimate benefit. But the key is the biblical analysis, and not just mere opinion. I think what I do not see enough of in Mr. Foley’s articles is how all of this is in light of the Bible. Even the unique virtues lack biblical anchors, even thought I agree with some of those virtues. But are they biblical virtues simply found in the Korean church? I hope so.

I do not want to brush in broad strokes, so I want to back up and say that there are many KMers that I appreciate and admire for these same virtues. But I simply hope that we can have a balanced perspective on this issue by giving the other side.