Chicago Central Korean-American SDA Church
Location: 611 W. St. Charles Rd., Lombard, IL 60148
Contact: Pastor Bryan Choi
Email: bibleboost@gmail.com
Church ministry website: http://ccksda.webs.com
Chicago Central Korean SDA Church is one of three Korean churches located in the Chicago area. In fact, the Chicago Central Korean SDA Church was the first church established among the early Korean immigrants of that area.
Fast forward to the year 2013, and we find that this church has decided to establish an English ministry for the youth and young adults. The problem? Our membership was pretty much starting from the ground up. Just with a few members, how do we attempt to bring people in? How do we grow? Especially while there are three other Korean churches in the Chicago area, that are well established and have youth programs which would make it impossible for us to compete against.
Instead of expecting to find ways to attract Korean members from other churches and have members migrate from the major Korean SDA churches, the answer was simply to evangelize outside the churches, to the community. During 2013, our members completed the study on the book “Last Day Events” and from those studies, we had a clearer purpose of our mission not only as a church but as individuals, our responsibility to bring the message of the three angels to the world, every nation, kindred, tongue and people.
Our small group has been involved in literature evangelism, passing out Steps to Christ, GLOW tracts, magazines, books like the Great Controversy. We also have visited nursing homes and started a Korean language school that is open to the community.
However, the most exciting thing that we have been doing in evangelism is to reach people in a way that has not been utilized to its fullest potential...a church-based internet ministry project. Our primary focus is not only to reach the churched, but the un-churched, by developing media that would not only bring light on various Bible topics and questions, but also to create an awareness that our church exists should they need help or a place to worship and fellowship. We also provide online Bible studies that work according to people’s busy schedules. By God’s grace, we are seeing results. We have had visitors based on hearing a message, and inquiries via email based on the media our church has produced.
The current English Ministry pastor is Bryan Choi, working part-time while a full-time student at Andrews University in the SDA Theological Seminary. He has a wife name Miae and a one year old daughter, Chloe. He has been serving the church since February 2013 and has a burden for Adventist churches, particularly Korean churches, to get back to the roots of early Adventism, to answer the call of proclaiming a special last day message, to prepare a last day people for the soon return of Jesus.