Church of the American dream

FIRST-GENERATION immigrants who run Korean restaurants, dry-cleaning shops, grocery stores and other small businesses are a bedrock of the congregation at Cheltenham Presbyterian Church. Many work 12-hour days (or longer) six days a week.

And on the seventh day they rest - a relative term - at the church and its wooded grounds on the Tookany Creek Parkway.

The church has three Sunday services in Korean (with English subtitles on a screen), followed by one in English (with a rock band). A packed slate of activities - Sunday school, Bible study groups, children's services, youth orchestra rehearsals, preschool classes - fill the sanctuary and a nearby annex building almost to bursting from early morning to 3 or 4 p.m. on Sundays.

At midday, church members pause for a lavish weekly potluck of restaurant-quality Korean food. (The chef-owner of Seo Ra Bol in Olney and the owner of Lansdale's Umai - both Yelp favorites - are both members and contribute dishes to the spread.)

Why all the bustle?

"They [church members] want to worship God - it's the center of their mind," said senior pastor Jung Kwon Choi. But because they're people with jam-packed weekday schedules - doctors, dentists, teachers and other professionals are well-represented in the membership along with the business owners - Sunday is their only day to get together as friends.

Who we are: The 31-year-old congregation has about 500 members, making it one of the larger Korean Presbyterian churches in the Delaware Valley, but not the largest. (That distinction probably goes to Horsham's Young Sang Presbyterian Church, with 2,000 members.)

Where we worship: The church and its annex are at 7507 Tookany Creek Parkway in Cheltenham. Korean services are at 6, 9 and 11 a.m. Sunday.

English services start at 12:30 p.m. for younger members who are second-generation and "1.5-generation" Korean-Americans. (The 1.5's are those who immigrated as children.)

There is also a Wednesday service at 8 p.m.

What we believe: Pastor Choi said the main tenets for his congregation are these: That there is one God who exists as the Holy Trinity, that the Bible is the literal and infallible word of God, and that salvation is through God alone. They also belive in heaven and hell.

Match made in heaven: According to Pastor Choi, a conservative Presbyterian creed resonates with Koreans because many are conservative by nature. Presbyterians evangelized in Korea starting in the mid-1880s. Today there are close to 3 million Presbyterians in South Korea and perhaps another 75,000 Korean Presbyterians in the U.S.

Good works (outreach category): The Cheltenham congregation supports ministries as far afield as Turkey, Uganda and Argentina - and as nearby as North Philadelphia.

Teens and young adults from the congregation help teach summer school at the Logan Hope charter school and Abundant Life Church, alongside volunteers from other Korean Presbyterian churches.

Good works (incoming): Each year, the church hosts four school-age Korean orphans for a month, taking them on field trips to Washington, D.C., and to Ivy League colleges including the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Harvard.

The idea is to "expose them to the wider world," said Daniel Kim, pastor of the church's English-language ministry. "We try to give them a new vision."

While none of the students has matriculated to these selective American colleges so far, "almost every one of them goes to college in Korea," Pastor Kim said. "That's a big success."

Great audiovisuals: One of the most distinctive touches in the church's spare, modern sanctuary is a set of large, flat-screen displays. During Korean services, the screens display English subtitles for the sermon, the congregational announcements and some hymns.

Background visuals of blue skies and clouds are peacefully ethereal.

God is ... Love, said Pastor Choi. "God gave his own son for us. I was thinking about that. I am a father. If someone asked me, 'Give me your son,' I'd never allow that. God did it because he loves us."