463. The Seed 10th Year Anniversary
This year, the first week of June marks the 10th anniversary of our English-speaking congregation, The Seed. Since we are one church with a Korean-speaking congregation, we only celebrate Mokmin Church's anniversary. But 10 years feels like a significant milestone, so we want to do something special.
We are preparing a celebratory program and special food, along with free anniversary T-shirts, to encourage VIPs to attend. We're also planning to take the very first group photo of the entire English-speaking congregation in the new T-shirts.
I'm not someone who typically likes to make a big production of things, but this idea came to me last year while I was envisioning this year's ministry. I'm not someone who looks back often, but I felt strongly that, rather than being the only one who remembers how God's grace has carried us through these 10 years, it would be meaningful to look back together with the members of The Seed through the ministry records. When we're caught up in the busyness of ministry week after week, year after year, it's easy to forget the grace God has given us — but if we take special time to reflect, I believe we'll find ourselves freshly moved by just how great His grace has been.
The English-speaking adult congregation first began in 2012. At that time, we held separate services — one for adults and one for youth. However, attendance at the adult service was low and not growing, and even students who had graduated from the youth group felt awkward there and kept attending the youth service. Around that time, I heard that the English-speaking congregation of Vision Church in Orlando (called "Harvest") was doing Intergenerational Ministry, so I went to observe. I saw great potential, but still didn't have a strong conviction. But I felt like God was nudging me to give it a try — so, in a spirit of obedience, I decided to merge the two ministries in 2016 under the unified name, The Seed.
When the two ministries merged, at first, I was simply satisfied with the larger worship attendance numbers. But as we continued, I discovered many unexpected blessings. Worshipping together naturally fostered friendships across generations, helping preserve and pass on the faith heritage—and, as a result, we began to see a smooth transition from youth house churches to adult house churches.
Currently, we have 6 adult house churches and 6 youth house churches. Growth has not been rapid, but starting from a single prototype house church 13 years ago, we have grown even this much, and I am deeply grateful for it. I hope and pray that through this anniversary service, we will experience not nostalgia but strong anticipation of what God could do through The Seed in the next 10 years.
