{"id":52503,"date":"2023-06-07T07:13:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T11:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/?p=52503"},"modified":"2023-06-22T14:04:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T18:04:46","slug":"jinwoo-chun-sth01-left-his-comfort-zone-to-extend-hospitality-to-immigrants-addicts-and-the-previously-incarcerated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/jinwoo-chun-sth01-left-his-comfort-zone-to-extend-hospitality-to-immigrants-addicts-and-the-previously-incarcerated\/","title":{"rendered":"Jinwoo Chun (STH’01) Left His Comfort Zone to Extend Hospitality to Immigrants, Addicts, and the Previously Incarcerated"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in <\/em>focus<\/span> magazine, the annual scholarly publication of the BU School of Theology, in May 2023. The full magazine is available here<\/a> and this article can be found on page 23.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

God Didn’t Leave Me Alone<\/h2>\n

By Steve Holt<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The call to become a pastor came to Jinwoo Chun at around six years old\u2014 an age when most of his peers would have been preoccupied with the newest toy or cartoon. Chun had watched <\/span>his father lead and minister to Methodist congregations of thousands across South Korea. His father\u2019s lifestyle, one he characterized in Korean as \u201csharing and caring,\u201d was most attractive\u2014a lifestyle Chun\u2019s father learned from <\/span>his <\/span>father, also a Methodist pastor.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jinwoo Chun (STH’01)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI can say if my father was a police officer, I probably would have dreamed of becoming a police officer at the time,\u201d says Chun (\u201901).\u201cIf <\/span>I became a pastor, probably I would be able to live like him. But I knew nothing about the pastor\u2019s life at the time.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

More than four decades after that first call to ministry\u2014romanticized as it may have been\u2014Chun has pastored churches from Boston to Coventry, R.I., to Belfast, Maine, to Acton, Mass., where he now serves St. Matthew\u2019s <\/span>United Methodist Church as its lead pastor. It\u2019s a congregation he says is developing a reputation for hospitality to those from all walks of life, including refugee families, individuals reentering society after incarceration, those who are LGBTQ+, and those suffering from food insecurity. His role, he says, is to help parishioners\u2014 many of whom work in academia and skew white and wealthy\u2014exit their comfort zones and build relationships with neighbors who are hurting or marginalized.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSometimes I got looks from my own congregation: \u2018Why is our pastor hanging out with the guys with tattoos who are swearing all the time?\u2019 But that\u2019s kind of normal to Jesus\u2019s life. That became my second home.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe church started with a passion to do something,\u201d he says.\u201cMy role is to transform it into something relational, so it\u2019s not about <\/span>just fulfilling needs: <\/span>\u2018this is something I have, and this is something you don\u2019t have.\u2019 [These acts of mercy are] based on Jesus Christ\u2019s greatest commandments: loving God and loving others.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Out of the Greenhouse<\/span><\/h3>\n

There\u2019s a Korean word for a child being raised in a sheltered, overprotective <\/span>environment that translates to \u201cgreenhouse\u201d in English. Chun characterizes his younger years as a greenhouse, untouched by the harsher realities of the world. As a preacher\u2019s kid, he attended megachurches his father led in mostly affluent communities in Seoul. But once he began to pursue a life of ministry and mission,\u201cGod didn\u2019t leave me alone to continue living in the greenhouse,\u201d Chun says. He attended Methodist Theological Seminary in Seoul, and after briefly considering a move to India to become a missionary, Chun entered the MDiv program at BU.<\/p>\n

One of his earliest memories of stepping out of the greenhouse came during an internship at the historic Church of All Nations in Boston\u2019s South End, where Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS\u201955, Hon.\u201959) once trained while studying at BU. One day, Chun was volunteering with the congregation\u2019s feeding ministry and sat to eat with one of the guests\u2014who was unhoused\u2014 only to become physically ill at the unshowered man\u2019s stench. He left sick and in tears, ashamed of his reaction to a fellow human who God loves. His perspective expanded further when he met a young woman working through the trauma of being trafficked to a drug dealer by her father, and encountered a mother and her young son running away from an abusive father who was addicted to drugs. \u201cIs this real?\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cI thought that was only in extreme, violent movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

These experiences, along with gentle nudging from his mentor, Rev. Gary Shaw (\u201978), led Chun to consider staying in New England after graduating from BU to pursue a ministry appointment here. In 2009, he was ordained into the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church. Coming from Christianity in South Korea, where some churches had hundreds of thousands of members, Chun didn\u2019t know if he\u2019d mesh with New England\u2019s smaller congregations. In the end, he says, \u201cGod really touched my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cGod chose me for St. Matthew\u2019s…to do my best to help people understand how your faith works in that process\u2014why we are doing what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His transformation didn\u2019t end there. Chun was appointed pastor and elder at Belfast United Methodist Church in Belfast, Maine, in 2010, where, in addition to traditional preaching and counseling duties, he began attending a Narcotics Anonymous group that met in the basement of the church building. Not being an addict himself, Chun felt like an imposter at times. Still, he continued to show up, week after week, to sit with and learn from neighbors who were on their own journeys from brokenness to healing. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI saw myself as broken,\u201d he says. \u201cBut being broken, I had the faith and hope that they would have a different ending in their story, either on the earth or in the life beyond this life.\u201d He never tried to get his new friends to attend services upstairs; if anything, he worked to make the congregation\u2019s worship services <\/span>more reflective of the authenticity he experienced at the NA meetings. Over five years, members of the NA community became his friends, and Chun would spend time with them outside of meetings. \u201cSometimes I got looks from my own congregation: \u2018Why is our pastor hanging out with the guys with tattoos who are swearing all the time?\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cBut that\u2019s kind of normal to Jesus\u2019s life. That became my second home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A Home For the Marginalized<\/h3>\n

In July 2020, Chun was appointed lead pastor at St. Matthew\u2019s United Methodist Church. Leaving the friends he\u2019d met at NA was one of the hardest aspects of the move, he says. Every now and again, someone on his NA group chat will suddenly stop responding, and Chun knows they have succumbed to the disease they fought so bravely. <\/span><\/p>\n

Moving to a new congregation in the middle of a pandemic presented other challenges and opportunities\u2014beyond the implications of uprooting his family. (Chun\u2019s wife, Hyeweon, works as\u00a0 <\/span>an organic chemist, and his son, Joshua, studies biochemistry at Northeastern University.) The first services Chun presided over were remote because of the COVID-19 pandemic, making group worship and congregational cohesiveness difficult. At the same time, Chun scheduled one-on-one and small group sessions with each member, <\/span>where he focused on spiritual formation and relationship- building.\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the reasons God chose me for St. Matthew\u2019s,\u201d Chun says. \u201cWe had a lot of different outreach programs because they have passion for justice, and I\u2019ve been trying to do my best to help people understand how your faith works in that process\u2014why we are doing what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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St. Matthew\u2019s United Methodist Church in Acton, Mass.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And under Chun\u2019s leadership and inspiration, the congregation is doing a lot. Despite the relative affluence of Acton\u2014and many of the parishioners at St. Matthew\u2019s\u2014the area still has plenty of opportunities for social justice work. St. Matthew\u2019s members minister to individuals being released from prison through their WELCOMEBACKpack program, which provides bags full of everyday necessities to those who are reentering community life.As he went from room to room in the church building, putting items like toiletries, notebooks, and books in the 48 backpacks the congregation gave away in 2022, Chun says, he was reminded of the metaphorical journey incarcerated neighbors have taken to and away from prison. \u201cI was praying for them, and I was able to participate in their hurt, their journey,\u201d he says. Chun says he would like to now help lead the church\u2019s new mission, outreach, and advocacy to expand beyond meeting material needs to making <\/span>more relational connections, like traveling to prisons to visit inmates.<\/p>\n

The congregation\u2019s commitment to refugees and migrants is also near to Chun\u2019s own heart, in part because it\u2019s his story. Chun preaches regularly what he sees as a clear scriptural directive to welcome \u201cstrangers\u201d and \u201caliens\u201d in a foreign land and reminds parishioners that even Jesus was an immigrant. In early 2022, the congregation adopted two Afghan families who the International Institute of New England helped resettle in nearby towns. Members, including Chun, would drop by to say hello, take them out for ice cream, and generally ensure they had what they needed as they settled into their new lives in the United States. A few parishioners who work in higher education are helping an older teenager in one of the families plan for life after high school, whether that\u2019s college or something else.<\/p>\n

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The outreach has made an impact. Last summer, after Chun dropped off an air conditioner for one of the families as temperatures soared in Massachusetts, the father sent him a text asking how old the pastor is. When they realized Chun was a year older than the Afghan father, the man started calling Chun \u201cbig brother.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy big brother,\u201d Chun recalls the father writing, in broken English,\u201cwe cannot thank you enough. It\u2019s more than just one air conditioner, it\u2019s our heart.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in focus magazine, the annual scholarly publication of the BU School of Theology, in May 2023. The full magazine is available here and this article can be found on page 23.\u00a0 God Didn’t Leave Me Alone By Steve Holt The call to become a pastor came to Jinwoo Chun at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19846,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[200,211,203],"tags":[347],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52503"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52693,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52503\/revisions\/52693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}