A reflection from our 2026 retreat — Acts 2:42–47 · Isaiah 43:18–19
If you were going to sum up a church in one line, where would you look?
I've been sitting with one line this week. It's at the tail of a famous passage in the book of Acts, easy to read past, easy to treat as a footnote:
"And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." — Acts 2:47
One sentence. But it reframes everything.
The Lord added.
Not the apostles. Not the programmes. Not the preaching strategy or the community groups or the way they structured their gatherings.
The Lord.
Eight and a half years in
King's Cross is almost nine years old. And when I look back at what God has done here, the honest thing to say is this: we are doing many of the right things. Sharing meals. Reading Scripture. Praying together. It's not perfect. But it's real.
And yet — the growth was never ours. It never was.
God planted this community. He carried us through hard seasons. He opened doors we didn't open. He kept adding when every human calculation said we should have fallen apart.
It's easy to take credit for that. Acts 2:47 won't let us.
And if God is the one building this, then our job is not to uphold this community. Our job is not to protect what we've built. Our job is to follow where He is leading — and to make room for what He wants to do next.
I've watched churches grow. I've also watched churches grow themselves hollow. They kept all the forms — the services, the programmes, the gatherings. But somewhere along the way the center shifted. And nobody noticed until it was already gone.
I don't want that for King's Cross.
So the question I keep returning to this season isn't how do we keep doing what we're doing? It's something quieter:
As God continues to add to us, why has He called us here at all?
Three answers have been sitting with me.
1. We gather around what matters
Two years ago I was in Mongolia, visiting Pastor Tsende's church. Walk in, and there was nothing impressive about the space. Old building. Narrow. Uncomfortable seats. Nothing about the room said this is somewhere special.
And yet as the people gathered, there was a strong sense that everyone was turned toward the same thing. Not the experience. Not the building. Not even each other.
Their love for God.
If I'm honest, some Sundays I walk into our beautiful new space — our sound system, our worship band — and I wonder if we're centered on the right thing.
There was something in that tiny church with the uncomfortable seats that I couldn't explain. Something that had nothing to do with the building and everything to do with who the room was centered on.
When people walk into our space on a Sunday, do they feel what I felt in Ulaanbaatar?
Impressive things don't create that. And the moment we start gathering around our space, our experience, our reputation — instead of around Him — we've started building a tower of our own.
We have too much to offer this city to become a tower for ourselves.
2. We gather to make room
Our theme for 2026 is Make Room, and it comes from Isaiah 43:18–19 — words God spoke to a people in exile. Their city was in ruins. Their temple, gone. They had been carried off to a foreign land.
In that darkness, God speaks. And notice what He doesn't say. He doesn't say, here's my plan to restore the temple. Here's how we get back to what we had before.
He says something more surprising:
"Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing."
Not because the past was bad. But because what God did before was never the ceiling. It was the floor.
If you spend your life trying to recreate what God did in a previous season, you will miss what He is doing right now.
And then He asks a question that crosses every century: "Do you not perceive it?"
The Hebrew word there is yada. It doesn't mean to know something in your head. It means to know by experience, by being present to something, by paying attention.
Are you awake to what's moving right in front of you?
Since our move last December, I've watched people find their way through our doors. Hungry people. Suffering people. People who didn't know they were looking for God until they walked in.
We haven't done anything different. It feels like God simply decided to open a door we didn't open ourselves.
That's humbling. It's also sobering.
So we're going to try to do one thing well this year: make room. Make room for Scripture. Make room for the stranger who is still finding the door. Make room for God to do what only God can do.
3. We gather to be sent
Here's something we could easily take for granted: the makeup of our community. Nations worshipping together. People from almost every continent — different countries, different languages, different food, different prayers — sitting in the same room, singing the same songs, sharing the same table.
Travel the world and you realize how rare that gift is.
But God didn't gather all of these nations into one room so we could simply enjoy each other. Look at what happens in Acts 2: the Spirit comes, the community forms, the devotion deepens — and then they are sent. They scatter. Not because the community breaks down. Because the community becomes the fuel for the mission.
I've watched this happen at King's Cross over and over.
Jeremy and Taylor came through our doors figuring out life in Seoul. Young kids. Busy like everyone. But God had been speaking to them about Mongolia. They joined a trip last year. This past March, they didn't just go — they led it. When Taylor talks about Mongolia now, she cries every time.
Liwon first came in as her boyfriend Daniel's plus-one. Cool. Hip. Skeptical. Week after week she kept showing up, and something in her face began to shift — like someone who had been holding something for a long time was slowly putting it down. I had the honour of baptising her in Phuket with a small group from our community. She and Daniel are married now, expecting a child who will grow up with a mother who found Jesus in this community. That's not us. That's the Lord adding.
Calvin and Esther came through our doors a few years ago, running at a fast pace with a lot of dreams. God got hold of them. He called them to plant a gym. I know — a gym. But you should see this place. It might as well be a church. Calvin trains a young man who was struggling, and the boy's father shows up at our service every week with donuts — because someone finally saw his son. That's what happens when a community gathers around Jesus instead of itself.
God doesn't just add people to this community. He transforms them and sends them out — to the city, to the nations, to the gym down the street.
That's what I pray never changes at KX. Not our size. Not our reputation. This. The transformation that happens when ordinary, broken people like you and me gather around the living God and leave with our eyes open to the world He loves.
But how?
How does a community of broken, busy, far-from-home people actually do this? How do we keep giving ourselves away when we're already running low?
The answer is not try harder.
The answer is remember what was done for you.
There is One who looked at a world that had turned inward, that had built towers, that had closed every door to the God who made them. And instead of turning away, He came to be the door.
In John 10, Jesus doesn't say I will show you the door. He says, I am the door.
The one who had every right to close every door against us chose to be the opening. And to keep that door open, He gave everything. Humbled Himself. Emptied Himself. All the way to a cross. So the door would never close.
Through that cross, He made a table possible — where the broken are welcomed and the far-from-home find a Father. And one day, He's building a city. Not Babel. A city where every nation, every tribe, every tongue will gather around Him. No more goodbyes. No more transience. No more wondering if it's worth investing.
That's why we do this.
We make room because He made room for us. We keep the door open because He became the door for us. We give ourselves away because He gave Himself away for us.
We are an open door because He is the door. And for anyone walking past — that is more than enough.
Thinking about visiting?
If you're new to Seoul, new to faith, or just looking for a church home — King's Cross is an English-speaking, international, gospel-centered church in Songpa. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, whatever you believe right now: you are welcome here.
