Hyuk Cho: Becoming an Intercultural Church.
Companionship in a Wounded World.
Geneva: WCC 2026, 210 pp.
ISBN: 978-2-8254-1943-4 — eBook ISBN: 978-2-8254-1944-1
Open Acces PDF: Becoming an Intercultural Church Web (2.29 MB)
Materialzusammenstellungen IRB-Archiv
— Interreligiöse und interkulturelle Theologie >>>
— (Post)-Kolonialismus >>>
— Stichwort „Kirche“ in der IRB >>>
Many churches, particularly in North America and Europe, find themselves between inherited certainties that no longer hold and futures that are not yet visible. Attendance declines, assumptions shift, and practices long held with confidence prove more fragile than anyone imagined. Becoming an Intercultural Church asks whether what is so often named as decline may also be a site of formation.
Hyuk Cho draws a clear line between multicultural and intercultural. A multicultural church can be diverse in its pews and unchanged in its centre; an intercultural church is one in which the centre itself is altered by the encounter. Moving the church from servanthood to companionship, Cho follows the liturgical year from Advent to Pentecost, drawing on intercultural theology, postcolonial critique, and his own pastoral ministry in The United Church of Canada. He exposes “crumbs theology”—inclusion without shared power—and turns to Turkish hüzün, Korean sallim, and the Haudenosaunee Two Row Wampum for ways of remaining with one another across difference. Each chapter ends with questions for reflection, and the book is written to be read together—over six sessions or six months—by ministers, lay leaders, and congregational teams.
About the Author
Hyuk Cho is an ordained minister of The United Church of Canada and a theologian whose work in intercultural theology, postcolonial critique, and ecclesial formation converges in a theology of companionship. He teaches at Vancouver School of Theology and serves in global ecumenical leadership through the cetnral committee of the World Council of Churches.
A Korean immigrant to Canada, Cho writes as a settler of colour who has learned to live between worlds. His years in congregational ministry, including at West Point Grey United Church in Vancouver, shaped many of the convictions in Becoming an Intercultural Church: a commitment to racial justice, to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and to communities affirming of diverse sexualities and identities.
He is the author of Relation without Relation: Intercultural Theology as Decolonizing Mission Practice (2025) and, with the late JungHee Park, co-author of Decolonizing Diakonia: From Servanthood to Companionship (2025).