{"id":460,"date":"2009-02-20T12:52:36","date_gmt":"2009-02-20T19:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbcbeacon.wordpress.com\/?p=460"},"modified":"2009-02-20T12:52:36","modified_gmt":"2009-02-20T19:52:36","slug":"charter-member-hwa-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/2009\/02\/20\/charter-member-hwa-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Charter Member: Hwa Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Moon Choi<\/em><\/p>\n

When Hwa first arrived in San Diego after coming from Maryland, there had already been a strong Christian base with believers from KACF (Korean American Christian Fellowship\u2014the precursor to today\u2019s CCM, an parachurch ministry found at UCLA, UCI, and UCSD), of which Peter Lim was a part of. Peter had already been leading a group of guys at the \u201cold Dennison house.\u201d Hwa then met John Yi and Eugene Park. To give a relative idea of how ten years ago felt like, Hwa also met Pastor Patrick Cho as a junior at UCSD and \u201cguys like Mike, Min and Albert were seniors or had just graduated.\u201d The mostly male collegians\/singles (note that there is no distinction between the two) were guys who all lived together were like-minded with each, especially when it came to the gray area issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cChurch was always a priority and Sunday was long and fun. There was no youth and Jenna was the oldest at about 6 years old.\u201d Hwa also recalls that \u201cin no time people started to come out and visit,\u201d but also noted that the families that came to visit did not come back since there was not much of a children\u2019s ministry. That was not the only challenge that the church faced in the early years. Hwa also mentioned how difficult it was for Pastor John as he had a full time job to support his family, on top of being the senior pastor. And though the shortage of ladies at Lighthouse had been a challenge for the men at Lighthouse, Hwa fondly remembered Suzie Jung and Beverly Kang who were still teenagers at the time. \u201cI remember I used to help Suzie pick up and drop off the drum set every Sunday, it was backbreaking work but looking back, it was well worth it.\u201d He could not recall any other challenges as \u201cwe had plenty of single men willing to do whatever it took for
\nthe church\u201d and mentioned that they were at church for half of the days of week \u201cand it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

In those early days, everyone in the church family knew each other and all the men were able to have Pastor John as their small group leader. Hwa said, \u201cWe were all single, no kids, no mortgage, ready to save the world\u201d with which he quickly followed with, \u201cBut the current blessing of having a spouse, kids and even a home is pretty cool too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through it all, Hwa points to God\u2019s faithfulness and sovereignty in bringing the \u201cright people at the right time\u201d and even with the people who stayed at Lighthouse. He pointed out how Lighthouse was able to grow because the Titus 2 principle is actively applied and that when a new need arises, there are trained men and women ready to meet it. \u201cIt\u2019s more exciting now than it has ever been,\u201d Hwa said, referring to being able to see the church grow, people getting married and having children.<\/p>\n

As for any lingering nostalgia for the good ole days? \u201cThe good old days were good but aren\u2019t all that great. Life gets better every year and His blessings abound evermore. Yeah, the small church was great, we played golf every week and played ball without checking with the wife but now I have a foxy wife and all the benefits that come with that, a daughter who thinks her daddy is the kind of the world and now a son that pees all over the place, can\u2019t get much better than this…\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Moon Choi When Hwa first arrived in San Diego after coming from Maryland, there had already been a strong Christian base with believers from KACF (Korean American Christian Fellowship\u2014the precursor to today\u2019s CCM, an parachurch ministry found at UCLA, UCI, and UCSD), of which Peter Lim was a part of. Peter had already been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-member-spotlight"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}