With thanks to the Presbyterian Outlook for confirming the news, we now know that the Rev. Jin S. Kim has been unanimously endorsed by the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area as a candidate to stand for election to be the Moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The Rev. Kim is the founding and senior pastor of the Church of All Nations in Columbia Heights, Minnesota.  Much as we joked about Bruce being the hometown boy with a home-field advantage at the 218th, it looks like Jin will have that distinction at the 219th.  Yet to see if that is an actual advantage.

At the present time the Rev. Kim has a single Moderator web page as a part of his personal blog New Church Rising.  On that Moderator page, in addition to his stock bio (it is essentially the same as the church bio, except he dropped the ice fishing reference, and his bio for the Belhar Special Committee is a condensed version) the page has his “Reflections on our life together as a Presbyterian family…”  That reflection begins with:

In a post-modern, post-ideological, post-denominational, multicultural age often marked by uprootedness and loss of meaning, how do we “do church” in a way that testifies to the reconciling gospel of Jesus Christ?  In an individualistic culture that tends toward alienation and isolation, how do we lead our congregations, ministries and presbyteries to become high-risk, low-anxiety places, to lead God’s people to confess who they are, to experience healing in intimate community, and to be a witness to the liberating power of the Spirit?

He goes on to talk about how this age requires a new “conceptualizing” of leadership, how we need to transition from the institutional model to something daring, prophetic and countercultural.

The Rev. Kim is widely known in the PC(USA), speaking regularly at conferences and according to his blog he is a speaker at the Institute for Multicultural Ministries going on right now at Princeton Theological Seminary.  He preached for worship services for the 216th (2004) and 218th (2008) General Assemblies, and as I mentioned above he is a member of the Special Committee to study the adoption of the Belhar Confession.  I look forward to his future writings on his blog and his view of the present situation in the PC(USA) and where the church should be headed.  (And you have to respect someone who gives their kids middle names based on ancient creeds – check the last sentence of his bio.)

I can not conclude this post without mentioning that in doing the research for this story I came across the blogs of two pastors that discussed some confusion in the process on Saturday when the presbytery elected their GA commissioners.  While the specific details are not fully covered there seems to be some misunderstanding and disagreement about voting on the slate of alternate commissioners the Nominating Committee put forward and the presbytery voting to do it differently.  Pastor Paul Moore titled his post “That didn’t go well” and draws two conclusions: 1- “We need to learn how to disagree better.” 2- “We have to value the process less.”  The second blog, by Pastor Stephanie Anthony, pretty much sums up her point in the title “Where’s the trust?”  This is a follow-on to Rev. Moore’s writing and makes the point that we have the process for a reason, but within the process the presbytery needs to put some trust in the committees, in this case the Nominating Committee, that they elect to do the work.

UPDATE:  1. The Presbyterian News Service released their article about Rev. Kim this afternoon. 2. Blogger Viola Larson has read through Rev. Kim’s blog and weighs in with some criticism and concern about what she reads there.