Meet our Fellows

Eugene Kim, New Wine Collective

Boston, Massachusetts

Building an online platform for spiritual community

Eugene Kim began to worry about what he saw as an epidemic of loneliness and disconnection just prior to the pandemic of 2020. A pastor in local church ministry for 25 years, Kim recognized that his congregants were longing for deeper community and found himself thinking innovatively about an alternative to the current model of hierarchical, traditional church.

New Wine Collective was created as a start to this new ecclesial model – a different way of being and doing church.

“I started tying in, not just theology and ecclesiology, but also trying to incorporate technology because that is the shape of our world today. We’re creating a new technology to support that new ecclesiology. We’re trying to create an online platform that empowers people to start their own spiritual community.”

This online platform, basically an app, supports that new ecclesiology and functions as a tool that facilitates conversations and community anywhere, offering people the chance to come together and have meaningful conversations, along with support and possible content for group discussions.

 Kim’s goal is to create a structure that is flatter than a typical church where leadership is shared and flexible. His app provides a structure for people to take turns in leadership so that everyone to feel ownership in the group. Facilitation tools will make sure every voice has a turn and time to share and uses timers to promote equity. Finally, Kim hopes to create a crowd sourced library of content so that each group can function autonomously and discern what is needed for their own spiritual journey. Content creators will be available to facilitate groups in their particular areas of expertise and can offer teaching, coaching or spiritual direction for the each group.

About Eugene Kim

Eugene Kim grew up as a third culture kid in the New York City area, a child of Korean immigrants. “I grew up in a fairly traditional conservative Korean immigrant church. That was a formative experience for me, being in a church that didn’t make sense to me because of the language barrier. And growing up in Korean American church, you’re never sure where Christian Christianity begins or where Korean culture ends and Christianity begins. All that was sort of rolled into one – culture and faith and community.”

 When Kim was in high school, his parents returned to Seoul, Korea. “That was a huge culture shock for me. I thought that I was Korean, growing up in New York around all these Koreans. When I went to Korea, I realized I’m not Korean at all. I’m very American.”

Kim graduated from high school in Korea and wasn’t sure where to go from there. His siter gave him an application to a Christan liberal arts school and two weeks later, he was on a plane back to the US, ending up in a small evangelical Bible school in Massachursetts.  “I declared biblical studies as my major out of curiousity and skepticism.”

Kim went onto work as a youth pastor and eventually moved into a lead pastor position. “I went into ministry because I wanted to love and serve people. But I ended up doing a lot of production, a lot of management and organizational stuff. I was involved in national leadership.” After recognizing the loneliness of his parishioners, Kim began asking questions about the model of church and took some time off to begin to explore a new model of ecclesiology.

“I love the people who go to church come to the church every Sunday, you know, they're wonderful people. But my heart has always been for the people who are never going to walk through our doors.

“I wanted to start with a very simple basic premise, just shedding all of the excess baggage that has been piled on the institutional church over the years. And start with the essence of what church is at it’s core. And that comes down to community gathered around the practice of love.

We’ve made the church way too complicated, too hard to access. Church should be simple. Church should be accessible. Anyone should be able to do church anywhere because church is the people gathered and practicing love for God and for one another. “

That lead to the formation of the New Wine Collective as a place  to take a look at these bigger questions and to create a new model. “ it’s a new way of being church. You choose your own time and place. It’s non-denominatnional. The theology is broadly Christian, but discussions could also incorporate wisdom drawn from other traditions.”

“That is the work that the New Wine Collective is doing – trying to create a new way of being and doing church in the world. “

Profile by Anita Flowers