More Than A Church

I’m not unfamiliar with church. In fact, I grew up in church. Some of my earliest memories are of trying to watch Sunday morning cartoons while my mom would try her best to get me cleaned up and dressed for Sunday service. Maybe it was the language barrier between my mom’s Korean and my English, or maybe her word choice was deliberate because she wanted to be sure I understood what she meant. She would always say things like, “let’s go to church” or “bring a book, we’re going to be at church for awhile after service.” Phrases like those had me convinced that church was a place where we met and nothing more. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I really began to understand that church was something more. It wasn’t just a building, it was a place where people gathered to encourage and uplift each other in their faith.

“I am a member of the church,” the pastor and the congregation belted out maybe a dozen times during my visit to the morning service at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. The voices were energetic and passionate, and although I was unaccustomed to the culture of this particular church, I enjoyed the experience. Growing up, I regularly attended a predominantly Korean church—it’s mixed-race now—and Shiloh Missionary reminded me of that. It’s a meeting place for people of a common faith; it’s also a meeting place for people of a common culture.

Photos by Young Kim