The Words of the Kim Family from 2009 and 2010
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The Words of the Kim Family from 2009 and 2010 |
On Saturday, November 14th, friends of Dr. David S.C. Kim gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Dr. Kim's mission work in America, and Dr. Kim's 94th birthday. Dr. and Mrs. Kim joined 48 friends, including some alumni and staff of the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS) where Dr. Kim was president from 1975 to 1994, at the Orient Buffet in Poughkeepsie, New York for this historic celebration.
Masters of Ceremonies and hosts of Grandpa Kim's monthly Interfaith Circle, Robert and Laura Brooks, assisted by their son Andrew, kept the program moving at a brisk pace. Prayers and heartfelt testimonies were given. Dr. Sandra Lowen and husband John, members of the Interfaith Circle, lead an inspired blessing. Gale Alves, friend of Grandpa Kim, tearfully spoke and read a proclamation from Rev. Michael Jenkins, president of the American Clergy Leadership Conference.
Three UTS alumni -- A. Ferrantello, his wife Dr. D. Ferrantello, and Steve Kearney -- reported on the Unification community's efforts to renovate Dr. Kim's HK Poughkeepsie House. They reported how dozens of UTS alumni and friends have opened their hearts and continue to give generously to the HK House Restoration Fund. Successful restoration so far has saved the house from major repair problems and created hope that it could become a Unification Church historical site and library in the future.
During lunch, Alexa Ward, president of the Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP), testified what it was like to be Dr. Kim's neighbor living on the same Poughkeepsie street. Lisa Ellanson, one of the original UTS staff members in 1975, gave beautiful testimony to her experiences with Grandpa Kim at UTS. UTS President Dr. Tyler Hendricks earned some chuckles when he related his story about being a graduate student under Dr. Kim's tutelage. While studying in Dr. Kim's New Yorker Hotel suite one night, he waited for a profound direction from President Kim; instead, Dr. Kim instructed Tyler to "brush his teeth after every meal," and then left.
As the meal concluded, all the guests sang "Happy Birthday" while UTS alumna Anne Nilson and her husband Mark Nilson cut and served the cake. The ceremonial ritual of each person standing up to read his/her fortune cookie was followed by additional remarks by Grandpa Kim on how appropriate the fortune cookie message (from Confucius) was for each person.
Dr. Michael Mickler, a Unification Movement historian, gave an overview on the historical significance of Dr. Kim's pioneer American mission. He said that Dr. Kim's mission had a "three-fold legacy."
First, Dr. David Kim was the Korean-born movement's first foreign missionary. According to Dr. Mickler, when Sang Chul Kim joined in Korea, a "voice from heaven" through Mrs. Se Hyun Ok, told him, "your new name is David" and "your mission is foreign missionary work." From the start of our early church, Dr. Kim "had the distinction of being the first to go overseas as a UN scholar to Swansea College, University of Wales in 1954-55." While there, he delivered "an impassioned appeal to the International Convention of Apostolic Churches, which resulted in their sending a representative to Korea who helped in the first English translation of the Principle."
Building on that success by joining the first missionary to America, Dr. Young Oon Kim, "Dr. David S.C. Kim became the movement's second missionary to America, arriving on September 18, 1959 and serving for the last 50 years." Dr. Mickler captured Dr. Kim's own words about himself in which he attributed his "never-changing faith and spiritual power" to his specially coined term, "Unification optimism." For, as he described, our beloved Dr. Kim said he "always tried to figure out what Reverend Moon wanted ahead of time" and asked others not to be "leaders waiting for instruction" but to be "thinking leaders."
Secondly, but most importantly, as mentioned in Dr. Mickler's historical assessment, Dr. David S.C. Kim was the "pioneer who set the foundation of the Unification Movement's interfaith activities. This interest pre-dated Dr. Kim's involvement with the Unification movement -- when, as a government official and deacon in the Presbyterian Church, he dreamed of uniting the established Buddhist and Christian denominations." Dr. Mickler explained that Dr. Kim's idea was "to re-formulate a new religious structure, incorporating the good points of other religions based on Christianity." Then, Dr. Kim began his own group as a "United Faith movement." During his years as the first president of UTS, "he initiated a broad-based conference program which gave birth to the movement's earliest ecumenical and inter-religious organizations, The Global Congress of World Religions, The New Ecumenical Research Association, and the International Religious Foundation."
Thirdly, the legacy of Dr. Kim's contribution "as the Unification Movement's first church historian may be less known," as Dr. Mickler said. Although others had "offered testimonies, no one had put together a sustained, systematic treatment of the Unification Church Movement until Dr. Kim's three-volume Day of Hope books (1974, 1975, 1981). These volumes gathered source materials and provided multiple perspectives of the movement's dynamic 1970's activity. He inspired subsequent would-be Unification historians to maintain what are undoubtedly the movement's most complete private archives. Unwilling to let even the humblest event pass without documentation, Dr. Kim continually reminds us that everything and every person is important. In this extraordinary attitude and in his interfaith and missionary endeavors, Dr. Kim conveys core aspects of God's heart."
Contributed by A. and Dr. D. Ferrantello, UTS Alumni '83, '82