Inside Story~ South Korea Daesung Kim
Food for the Soul
When I started pastoring the Seoul Central Seventh-day Adventist Church, office buildings surrounded the church and it was very difficult to meet people in the surrounding vicinity. As I was thinking about how to make contact with the people who work nearby, I thought that it could be very practical if we operated a restaurant because most of the people would want to eat lunch. I was thinking that if we provide very fresh food, friendly food-like a family, the people would like it.
When I first approached the church about starting a vegetarian restaurant, most members were against it because they had already tried to operate a restaurant several times but had failed. I assured them that I wouldn’t use the church budget, and that many times Ellen White had said that if we established this kind of restaurant in the middle of the city, it would be very successful. At last the members agreed.
Legally as a church, we were not permitted to own a restaurant because the church is a non-profit organization, so I decided to organize a health association, and invite those working in the surrounding offices to join so that they could eat very fresh vegetarian food in our restaurant. During the next three months I visited office by office in the surrounding buildings, and invited each person to become a member of our health association. I explained that we would provide the freshest vegetarian food and that by becoming a member of the association that could eat this delicious vegetarian food every day, Monday through Friday. The membership fee was the equivalent of US$100 per month. There was a lot of interest and many people signed up.
In addition to personal office visits, the church members and I distributed between 500 and 600 free meal tickets to the surrounding businesses. Each recipient was entitled to one free meal on a certain day at our newly opened vegetarian restaurant. Thinking that perhaps only 300-400 would come, we were happily surprised when nearly 500 guests arrived.
As they were enjoying their free meal, I announced that if they became members of the health association, they could eat this kind of food every day. Many joined.
To operate this kind of restaurant is not easy. It is important to have a good building. The church pastor should have a good relationship with the community. But while starting this restaurant may be difficult, once started, it will be successful.
We also learned that the taste of the food is very important! If the taste is not so good, the guests will not continue coming. A few years after we started, we lost our cook, and her replacement wasn’t as skilled. As food quality went down, so did the number of guests. Once we replaced her, food quality improved and again membership in the health association rose.
We found that there are many benefits to the church for hosting a vegetarian restaurant. For example, in Korea, most of the other denominations believe that the Seventh-day Adventist church is heretical-an unwanted sect, and because of this mindset, most were reluctant to visit the restaurant.
But as our vegetarian restaurant became more and more well-known, other Christian church pastors, monks, and priests decided to come too. After getting to know us, these people now have no prejudice for our church, and instead have only praise. Many of our guests have a high status in the community and they enjoy eating lunch here.
By God’s grace, our vegetarian restaurant at the Seoul Central church has been successfully operating for more than 12 years now. It is one of 117 centers of influence in South Korea.