Korean Pastor Analysis

What is Expected of Korean American Pastors
In addition to the many hats the Pastor of an Western predominately Anglo church wears, Korean Pastors often serve as intracultural social service workers. If the Pastor is English/Korean bilingual, as many EM Pastors are, the number of requests for help with non-church related administrative issues increases. Eunhee Chae writes, “it is well known in Korean immigrant community that the pastor and lay leaders in a Protestant ethnic church provide various non-religious services such as information on counseling on employment, housing, health care, legal matters, family problems, and so on.” Her dissertation also found that Korean Pastors, on average, get 50 of these types of requests from church …show more content…
FG Korean Americans firmly believe that all Pastors are called by God, and that they must be among the most spiritually mature people in the church. Pastors are to be prayer warriors who attend early morning prayer religiously. They must also always make personal sacrifices to serve the church faithfully (Jin, 2009). These characteristics give the Pastor legitimacy to exercise authority over the congregation. In order to be a strong leader, it is important for the pastor to be an authority figure, due to the strong Confucian influences that are present in the Korean culture (J.Cho, 2017; Kim & Wolpin, …show more content…
A common rift is one between the EM and the KM. The source of the splits goes much deeper than simple misunderstandings. Studies show that EM/KM splits occur due to multiple and complex reasons, but almost all of them are related intergenerational sociocultural clashes (Hong, 2010). The themes of poor communication and differing cultural value systems are the main reasons for EMs leaving the Korean Church. They are essentially the same themes that highlight the main sources of tension between FG parents and their SG children in Korean households (I.Park, 2007; Hwang, 2006).
Acculturative Family Distancing (AFD), describes the distancing between immigrant parents and children, it occurs because adults and children acculturate at different rates (Hwang, 2006). The two main factors of ADF are communication and cultural values. Over time, AFD’s impact increases risk for mental illness and family disfunction (Hwang et al., 2010, Hwang, 2006).
What happens between an SG EM and FG KM in a Korean church could be referred to as “Acculturative Church Distancing” (ACD). The long-term effect of ACD is another source of distress for SG EM Pastors in Korean

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