The Words of the Kim Family after 2009
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The Words of the Kim Family after 2009 |
Rev.
Kim in Japan
Later, I was dispatched to the town of Hwengseong. I visited members throughout the town and found that members completely ignored me and were even hostile toward me for being their local pastor. Previous pastors had caused nothing but trouble and local members considered those pastors to be people that would only accumulate huge debts for the local church and run away. The last pastor had left a debt of W300,000.
First of all, I did not want to cause further trouble, so for purposes of self-sufficiency, I sold three patches of rice paddy from home, opened a small shop and even raised two pigs. Later, when I circulated the area, talking of God's heart, the community leaders and members responded unconditionally. Even those who previously disregarded me and did not let me enter their homes, brought radishes and rice to our district headquarters.
The first time I attended the Gangwon Province local district pastors meeting, the provincial head scolded me for bringing back little result. I suddenly flew into a rage and snapped at him saying, "You let the debt accumulate to W300,000 and did nothing about it. Are you telling me to pay back the debt? You pay it." I refused to show him the business book when he asked to inspect it. Receiving a monthly financial audit just as in the secular world by the so-called provincial district pastor, an executive in the Unification Church that did not trust me was not only embarrassing but something my dignity could not stand. Hence, I did not obey his instructions. I placed all responsibility over the financial problems of air gun sales into the hands of the provincial district headquarters.
Nevertheless, I felt sorry in front of Heaven because of the W300,000 debt the local district headquarters carried. Being fully aware that the debt would not be resolved without countermeasures, I instructed the local district headquarters not to buy even one grain of rice until this W300,000 was paid off.
My oldest daughter Eun Ja had been recently weaned and we tried to feed her noodles, barley and corn, but she could not digest them and discharged the food in its intact form. Whenever we tried to give her some noodles or barley, she would refuse and start crying. Members pleaded with me that Eun Ja alone be allowed to eat rice, but I could not let my child be the source hindering a decision child be the source hindering a decision that had been made and becoming the basis of accusations. I flatly dismissed their pleas saying, "Even if she has to die as a result, that is fine. She will die a martyr." Fortunately, the child no longer had any difficulties digesting any food and grew well. Then members of the church in Goshi took her under their care. When I would travel around the Goshi area, I could have easily visited and stayed the night in members' homes if it were not for Eun Ja. However, because people might accuse me of sleeping in nice home using the baby as an excuse, I would secretly avoid those places and travel the distance back to our family's home.
My wife lived at the local headquarters and took a hundred bars of soap out to sell each day. Yet, even our austere lifestyle to reduce expenses and the small shop we ran to make money did not make paying off the W300,000 debt possible. We could barely make ends meet.
With the goal of paying off this debt within the year, I set up a strategy to sell eighty air guns and mobilized all the members to take part in a special forty-day prayer vigil during which we sold one air gun per day, forty air guns in forty days. After these forty days, we could not sell a single air gun anymore. Without a doubt, Heaven had helped us sell these forty guns. I distributed the remaining forty guns among members who diligently offered conditions and actively tried to sell them. Finally, we sold everything, paid off the W300,000 debt and even made more than W200,000 in surplus.
In 1969, I was dispatched to Cheonan. That was a time when the Korean church was rearranged into thirty-four districts and Cheonan was promoted as one of those districts. However, Cheonan did not have the appearance of a district headquarters in all respects. Members were lukewarm about church development. Securing a church building, however, was the most urgent matter. As part of the plan to resolve the problem of securing kinds for a church building, I sold the house we were living in and rented a place for six months until we could finally buy a 140-pyeong plot with the donations made by all the members. We had planned to build a forty-five-pyeong church but first had to resolve the immediate lack of living quarters. We decided to build a house. We had difficulties making ends meet, so my wife had to sell a snack, flat round bread filled with hot brown sugar, from a vending cart. We had to move in before the place had doors and even before the cement had dried; a sheet of veneer covered the doorway. Despite such living conditions, we could not the garner money needed to build the church.
Rev.
Kim and his wife with Keith Mitchell, the prime minister of Grenada,
where the Kims are national messiahs.
Sleeping in the house, albeit without a door, while the church remained unfinished went against my conscience. I told Heavenly Father that I would not sleep a. home until the church was built. I began staying up overnight at the holy ground. Once, the police took me in, having mistaken me for a North Korean spy. After twenty-one days staying up all night at the holy ground, word spread throughout the provincial district that the pastor was staying up nights because of the church construction problem. Members at all the churches -- students, young adults and others -- rose up to build the Cheonan headquarters. They took the lead in conducting special projects. One member even offered to sell her engagement ring for the building and a member I had never seen before made a huge donation. Thanks to all these efforts, we completed a twenty-four pyeong church.
A woman that was working at a textile factory remembered the church from her youth and returned. I offered conditions for that member and encouraged her to take up the mission of evangelist in her workplace. She was very active and even brought in fifty to sixty people on one occasion. About twenty of those people took part in the 1,800-Couple Blessing Ceremony.
I also taught school subjects at the church. Seonghwa students increased to about forty and we had sixty or seventy regular members. With over a hundred members coming for Sunday service, the church in Cheonan now had the prestige of a provincial district church both in name and reality.
My eldest son Myeong Won entered sixth grade that year. He could no longer study at the church, so we sent him to a relative's house in Subi. Soon, I was on my way to my hometown, Subi, in order to transfer my son to Subi Elementary School. Even though it had been four years since I last visited my hometown, I went there at night and left early in the morning. During the beginning days of the Unification Church, it seemed as though we were on the cusp of something happening, but now even the church in my hometown had closed down and out of embarrassment I could not hold my head up high.
Myeong Won had changed public schools five times and even though his clothes grew ragged, his shoes wore out and he did not have a notebook, I did not buy him anything. It was all up to his mother. Still, she never complained or blamed me but endured suffering. Later, the church marshalled women, including my wife, to go out witnessing. Just before she set off, one of our four children was experiencing bloody stools and was not eating. My wife asked if she could go after the child got better. I firmly said, "If he dies, he'll be a martyr," and forced her out. My wife cried all the way to her mission area. Her eyes were so swollen from crying on the train that she said she could not see straight. This was how my wife left and our three children fell into my care for some time. This experience helped me realize just how difficult it is for mothers to raise their children. I felt sorry for scolding my wife in the past when she slept first, holding one of our children or when she tried to skip prayer sessions at the holy ground early in the morning. (Rev. Kim expanded on this recently. He told his wife that she could not provide the medical attention the child needed and she might bring a curse down on him by delaying her departure. The boy recovered quickly and had no blood stools once she had left.)
We decided that a good way the church could make a deep connection with the local residents was to run a preschool. I went around asking parents to send their children. Soon, it was overcrowded with more than a hundred children. We provided free education while supplying snacks once or twice a week. Later, the mothers realized how wrong it was not to pay and started collecting a monthly fee of W500 per child. Whenever a birthday came, the mothers would collect rice and we would have a party. They would also give the church some kind of compensation. Since many of us then were surviving on W700 per person, it became a source of great strength. The mothers became members; they took part in rallies and were very cooperative.
We strengthened our bond with local administrators and community leaders through lectures on anticommunism. We attracted people that had participated in Victory Over Communism workshops and organized the Victory Over Communism Friendship Association. The police station would provide a venue and lunch once a month. Once everyone convened, I would only lecture. Every year, the International Victory Over Communism Federation hosted the September 28 Reclamation of Seoul Speech Contest on Victory Over Communism for students, office workers and soldiers. Once the members of the VOC Friendship Association became dedicated to the organization and its education, we could connect them to the church and provide religious education. The police station would bring chairs and other necessities in their vehicles. The church did not provide even a single bowl of noodles. The police chief would give lectures, provide lunch and even bring many gifts. Particular circumstances had led the police to become this helpful. Once, an officer saw our members eating boiled barley and beans with soup made from dried radish greens on the floor; this made a deep impression on him. He might have then spoken about our circumstances at the police station and other institutions because whenever I offered to buy lunch, they would decline my offer and tell me, "Please buy one more radish with that money for your members."
In 1972, Father gave me W15,000 to buy some new clothes. That was a time when we were building a church in Byeongcheon and were short on funds. I felt it went against my conscience to buy clothes and donated the money instead. Afterward, I somehow received three sets of clothes all at once.
Rev.
Kim, (second row, third man from the left) in front of the Guri
church built while he was the leader there.
In March 1970, I was put in charge of the church in Mapo, Seoul. Members with strong faith that lived in Mapo provided much support to the church. We had rented the building with a deposit of W650,000, but the landlord sold the building and disappeared without a trace. We could not reclaim the deposit and were in dire circumstances, likely to be kicked out.
We needed at least W1.9 million to acquire a new church. The headquarters agreed to provide us with W1.2 million and the church itself was to provide 1 million. We planned to divide that amount and collect it from among the members, but when I first visited members' homes with this in mind, I saw that they all were living in poverty. Five or six people would live in a little room and spend their days peddling on the street to make ends meet. When I saw that, I felt I had to offer conditions for our members. Before the early morning service started, I would light a holy candle around 4:00 am, reminisce about and pray for members from a list I had. Around 5:00, members would come and we would have a prayer session together.
Each night, I would go to bed around 11:30 pm, so a rumor spread among the members that I did not sleep much because I was offering conditions for members. Afterward, all the members could donate some portion toward securing a church building. We received more than we had expected in donations and were able to get things we had not planned on, such as an organ, new linoleum for the floor and curtains.
We visited the local police station in order to see about conducting the Victory Over Communism lecture series. When we entered the police chief's office, sitting there was none other than Se Young Lee, the Cheonan police chief, who was now the Mapo police chief. I was so glad to see him. He instructed all employees in the district office, district office chiefs, association presidents and New Village Movements leaders to attend a meeting to hear the lectures. Following this, we went from company to company and from school to school giving lectures. It was so difficult at the time that I lost my appetite.
I worked at the church in Mapo for a year and six months before heading to the church in Guri on July 20, 1975, for the summer witnessing period. I mentioned in my inaugural address that I was not there to teach about faith but to learn about faith.
The Guri church had more than 1,5(X) members coming from the Tongil Heavy Industries Corporation, Il Hwa and other businesses and organizations. It was certainly a large congregation. I spoke every day during the forty-day witnessing period. The service on Sunday had the atmosphere of a Christian church, so much so that it was hard to distinguish between long time members and new members. In the beginning, we had services in the main hall of the training center but the headquarters often held workshops there, so we had to hold services elsewhere -- at times in a tent, a school auditorium or even in a grassy area around the front gate of a school. The continuously changing venue, however, added confusion to the atmosphere. To understand the underlying causes of the situation, I tried holding special assemblies of families and associations, but these drew only a quarter of the anticipated turnout.
I sought out those in charge of the companies. I asked for their cooperation regarding the faith of members, only to hear them explain, "Church is church and business is business. The two can't be done at the same time." I sought various ways to bring members to church based on their faith, doing everything I could. However, it was difficult to effect changes among the members and too many incidents happened that exacerbated everything to the point that no other measures worked out When I was in the countryside, I had heard from members that those working in companies did not often come to church. I thought that was strange and did not believe it. This, however, was true. Some young members would go fishing or hiking on Sunday and others spread downright scandalous rumors. It was so surprising that I hesitated about whether I should frankly report this to God or not. I thought that I should not just bottle this up inside, so I reported it to True Father, who at first said nothing for a long time and then lamented over it.
I felt that I should pursue a resolution to these problems one after the other after erecting a church building. With this in mind, I decided to go ahead with plans to build the church. So we bought a 256-pyeong plot of land where the current church is located for W33,000 per pyeong, for a total of W9 million including other expenses such as commissions. We used all the funds that we had saved to that point for the construction of the church building just to purchase this land.
Next, at an administrative and financial meeting I raised the issue of constructing the building. Opinions clashed between the elderly members that were against the construction and young members that were for it. The elderly ones asked, "What are you going to do if the building funds dry up?" They suggested that I did not have to build a proper, formalized church. While young members said, "A congregation of a thousand members being unable to build one church is a problem of faith. Let us have faith and construct a proper church building." Many members conceded to the plan in an evening meeting but the following day, members that were against the construction came to me, protesting and even seriously rebuking me.
Up until this point in my ministry, I had sheep-like young congregants, and it was quite excruciating to feel the lack of control being pulled here and there and completely overwhelmed. I felt as if I were not capable of moving ahead; consequently, after some pondering, I prayed for more than twelve hours one night, asking God to transfer me to another place because I could no longer continue my ministry there.
Then I heard the voice of God rebuking me, "You! I went through hell and high water, having suffered slander, criticism and persecution, yet I lived without keeping score. Now you feel wronged just because members do not recognize you..." I thought, Oh Lord! I have not passed the test again.
After solving several problems, I finally requested that architect Deok Moon Aum draw up a master plan for the church and construction began. Members took full charge of the labor. We met our donation goals and were able to complete the long-awaited church. With the church building built, the faith of members began to stabilize and we could organize administrative and financial committees and other departments. We established a kindergarten and the New Love Senior's Course; we even opened a New Village Credit Cooperative.
To bring solidarity and unity among the members, I planned a consumer's cooperative like the one we used to operate in Yeongyang. I started a store called Lucky Retail through the New Village Credit Cooperative. I trusted and assigned a few members to operate the store, but they ended up being in the red by a few million won within five to six months. After the first failed attempt, the church started a New Village Credit Cooperative, which turned out to be an asset worth W3.4 million. Thanks to this, we could erect churches in three local districts. Again, changes in personnel and the failure to engage talented people forced us to return the principal and close it down.
Despite the challengers, I will continue to live for God's eternal nation and his will in the future.