Meet the new pastor of Valley Stream Grace United Methodist Church
From outsider to unifier, this pastor builds community through faith.
The Rev. Eumin Kim has been named the new pastor of Grace United Methodist Church.
When Kim learned he would be ministering to a congregation as ethnically diverse as the village where they live, he felt “excited,” if not completely in his element.
Navigating new social situations as the odd man out, settling into unfamiliar places, comes easy to Kim. The twists and turns of his life have kept him on the move and on friendly terms with change. A roving pastor’s son, Kim’s idea of home was never fixed. His youth was spent shuffling from one church community to the next, living among different ethnic and cultural populations from the Midwest to the Northeast. Most who surrounded him did not look like him or share his cultural Korean roots.
A lifetime of navigating through differences in good faith
“I’ve always had to live my life predominantly in the context of the outsider looking in,” said Kim.
He felt that tension in school in Ohio as the only Asian kid in class, taunted by classmates. That tension for him became more dangerous, more serious as a United Methodist missionary in Kazakhstan, a Muslim-majority country.
“I was there to help churches grow and establish a United Methodist presence in a part of the world where only a sliver of the population were Protestant Christian,” said Kim. “There was a risk of being arrested or deported every single day, and there were certain run-ins that I had with the police and the migration police. Yeah, so it wasn’t your normal sort of ministry experience.”
Kim attended Boston University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology and earned a master’s in divinity from Yale Divinity School. Before his current role, he served as lead pastor of Community United Methodist Church in Jackson Heights.
While some may resist the life of a perpetual outsider, Kim, 52, has thrived because of it. It feeds his spiritual conviction to seek out and embrace others different from him and unite with them through a faith that transcends all differences.
“Where some may see it as a challenge, I consider it a strength,” he said.
At Grace United Methodist Church in Valley Stream, the pastor, and a father of two could not have asked for a better community that lets him play to his strengths.
“The nature of a church is very exciting for me because it’s challenging when we have different cultures, different contexts, different languages, sometimes different ways of seeing things,” said Kim. “But at the same time, yeah, if done well, you can draw upon the gifts and unique aspects of each of those cultures.”
Turning cultural challenges into community strengths
Evangelism Committee chairperson Andrea Owen-Boyd said that Pastor Kim is more than suited to unify the variegated congregation of the church and build on its robust social service arm.
“We don’t have pastors who are stuck in the pulpit or congregants stuck in the pews. We prod one another to establish relationships with the broader community,” said Owen-Boyd. “We have a thrift shop to serve the village, a prison ministry at Rikers Island, and we are discussing with pastor Kim the best way to maximize the space made available with the closing down of our nursery.
“This is the Methodist spirit of collaboration, giving back, and togetherness.”
When asked to define the present challenges of one of the oldest religious institutions in Valley Stream, Kim admitted he is still in the thick of getting his bearings and listening to what congregants need.
But one core message to glean from his early conversations is that congregants wish to sustain and expand the church’s historic commitment to community service and engagement beyond the bounds of the building.
“I know historically this church has been very active in connecting with the community and has a great ecumenical spirit,” said Kim. “There is no personal holiness without social holiness, so I want to connect with other community organizations and leaders in the area and see ways to how we can work together.”
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