KALI at General Assembly: The Yoke of an Easy Mask
By Daniel Jung
Masks, Not Necessarily Negative
Nathaniel Hawthorne writes in The Scarlet Letter is “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” In the context of the novel, masks are synonymous with deception. Rightfully so, as masks are often an apparatus used to conceal duplicitous and devious motives.
But wearing different masks are part and parcel of being a Korean American pastor or elder, especially when they help us understand our different roles within different segments of our communities. They help us “play the part” within each group, so to speak. In our communities, masks are not just necessary, they are vital. For pastors and church leaders, they serve some beneficial functions, to which I’ll name a few:
They keep healthy boundaries between pastor/leader/congregant relationships.
They protect the pastor’s/leader’s families from unnecessary and intrusive encroachment.
They provide needed structure and social “train tracks” for which we operate.
They are a mindful admission that the Holy Spirit is the intermediary between any gathering of God’s people.
American culture sees masks as both restrictive and disingenuous. I grew up with countless stories and movies about breaking free from societal expectations and “being true to yourself,” which entails a kind of social unmasking that is predicated on a complete disregard for family and community. This is evident in and reinforced by people who live by some form of the mantra, “I call it as I see it” or “What you see is what you get,” implying that they are the same person to everyone. Unmasked.
But Koreans, and most minority groups in America, easily spot the foolishness and utter selfishness of this message (Do you know who are the only ones who can operate this way in our communities? Babies. Only they can wholly be themselves without giving two cares as to what others may think). Being true to oneself is an impossibility outside of the context of family, neighborhood, community, and country. We are, and always will be, someone who exists in relation to a larger group of people. We are hyungs, noonas, halmaes, samchons, Joshua Appa, Ji-hyun Umma, Teacher Janice, Kim Moksanim… and we proudly don the appropriate mask. Call it a “hat,” call it a social wardrobe, call it noonchi, masks—in the sense that they provide context to communal roles and responsibilities—are an essential tool for defining relationship parameters within a group of people.
In Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son, we see an example of when refusing such masks creates familial disharmony. One of the underlying themes of the entire narrative is the attempt by both sons to live outside their familial roles and responsibilities. Both brothers create discord by taking off their masks in their attempt to be “true to themselves.” As Tim Keller notes in his book, The Prodigal God, the younger brother’s enfolding back into the family came at a tremendous cost to the older brother, an imperfect metaphor for the sacrifice of Christ, the true-and-better older brother. There is no me/myself/I apart from us/ourselves/we.
The Burden of The Mask
While there is no absolute unmasking in our culture, they become detrimental for one main reason. The expectation of the role becomes too great, forsaking humanity in favor of functionality.
The 2024 film, Joker Folie à Deux, provides insight to the coverings we put on our face and how its expectations become detrimental. In a scene early in the movie, Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), meets Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) in prison and falls in love with him. But we soon realize she doesn’t really love Arthur, she is infatuated with his alternate persona. Before going to Arthur’s murder trial, Lee grabs her lipstick and begins to draw on Arthur’s face saying, “I want to see the real you.” It’s clear that Lee doesn’t love Arthur, she loves Joker. Arthur doesn’t meet her expectations. Joker does.
Melodramatics aside, this scene is peculiarly relatable to Korean American ministry leaders. One of the leading causes of long-term ministry fatigue is the continual need to decipher and meet our people’s expectations. The reality of being a Korean American pastor is that we carry varying degrees of ministerial-noonchi and a significant portion of that awareness is to know how much of the mask we need to keep on our faces. But for many of us, this mask never comes off.
It’s not the mask itself that causes burn-out, it’s the ceaseless need to live up to its expectations, whether perceived or actual. When the pastor-mask becomes the only mask, there is no room for respite or reprieve.
An Easy and Less Burdensome Mask
This summer, over 2000 commissioners representing over 1000 churches will convene in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the 52nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. The formal meetings and committees are crucial administrative responsibilities that are vital for the denomination to continue its mission to be faithful to the Scriptures, true to the Reformed Faith, and obedient to the Great Commission. KALI has written about our roles in the greater PCA and how to best prepare for them, especially if this will be your first GA.
But the reason people from our community keep coming back, the reason these four days in June are highlighted in our calendars, is because GA is the first time many of us experience a mask that was always there, but rarely worn with prestige…a distinctly Korean American Ministry mask.
Though we grew up in different states, minister in different cities, and lead in different cultural contexts, our experience as Korean American Leaders is near universal: we are too Korean for America and too American to be Korean. We’ve experienced this cultural disembodiment at the conferences we’ve attended, the seminaries we've trained at, and for some of us, even in the churches we’ve led (or are leading).
But for four days every June, we are shaped, and sharpened, by what it means to operate as a Korean American ministry leader.
Pressing deeper, it’s not just the content of what we learn, but the manner by which we learn it. The experience is fully immersive. There are official KALI events that promote connection and brotherhood—Wednesday Night Dinner, a sponsored seminar, a KALI table in the MNA City Park booth. There are also countless “unofficial” events that span all hours of the day and night. We share confessions, fears, and heartaches as easily as we share meals, Airbnbs, and Ubers. And throughout our time together, we are transported back to treasured moments of our Korean American church experiences, recapturing joys of when the grace of God felt most tangible in our lives. For many of us, this was during our church youth group days. “GA is like (the best of) summer youth retreats, but for pastors/leaders,” is an oft-shared sentiment.
Our General Assembly experience is not a generic ethnocultural validation, but a deeply contextualized, ministry-specific validation. To put it another way, it’s not reclaiming our heritage of ramen in a broader cultural sense, it’s reclaiming the spiritual heritage of kimchi bowl ramens from the last night at summer retreats.
In the same way that Jesus doesn’t promise a yoke-less existence but a lighter and less burdensome yoke (Matthew 11:30), General Assembly gatherings are an opportunity to embrace a lighter and less burdensome mask. We boast in the both/and status of our Korean American Ministry masks as its own viable asset, and in the end, the general consensus is that everyone leaves GA with a renewed sense of purpose, having embraced our Korean American Ministry mask, quite possibly for the first time ever.
Daniel Jung is a graduate of Calvin Theological Seminary and a teaching elder in the Korean Northwest Presbytery. He lives in Northern California, where he serves as an associate pastor at Home of Christ in Cupertino. In his spare time, Daniel loves the 49ers, good coffee, and writing about the intersection between faith and pop-culture. You can find more of his work here.
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