How it all started
New Community Church was founded in July 1998 with an initial vision from Chicagoland Korean immigrant church leaders to address the problem of a disappearing generation of young Korean Americans from the immigrant church. These leaders also saw a need for starting a church within the city of Chicago because of the increasing movement of young people from the suburbs back to a changing Chicago landscape. To help start NCC, Pastor Brad Paik was recruited to take on this challenging task.
Expanding & refining the vision
Since our beginnings when 6 people gathered to meet weekly, God has continued maturing NCC through continuously refining our vision as a church to better reach the city of Chicago. In our first 17 years, we met on Chicago's north side, and then the Gold Coast (Ogden Elementary & Fourth Presbyterian Church) and South Loop (Jones College Prep). During this time, NCC strove to be a biblically functioning community by being a "grace"-centered and "community"-based church.
After years and years of being a congregation that primarily emphasized grace and community in ministering to the needs of the church body itself, we realized that God’s calling for us wasn't just to be a community of God that meet the needs of the people who attended it, but to be a movement that actively sought to change the world. This led us to East Garfield Park, where we met at the Breakthrough FamilyPlex. It was during that time when NCC underwent its greatest time of transformation as we sought to better understand how God was asking us to serve others while helping us further understand where and how we could meaningfully reach out and minister to the city.
After years and years of being a congregation that primarily emphasized grace and community in ministering to the needs of the church body itself, we realized that God’s calling for us wasn't just to be a community of God that meet the needs of the people who attended it, but to be a movement that actively sought to change the world. This led us to East Garfield Park, where we met at the Breakthrough FamilyPlex. It was during that time when NCC underwent its greatest time of transformation as we sought to better understand how God was asking us to serve others while helping us further understand where and how we could meaningfully reach out and minister to the city.
Where we're headed
Since returning to the West Loop in 2018, God has given New Community even more opportunities to discern how and where to reach out to a generation of people living in Chicago seeking answers to the emptiness and hurt they've experienced from false promises of fulfillment generated from their surrounding cultures. Knowing this universal condition of the human heart, we seek to continue fulfill the Great Commission by making mature disciples who will obey God by replicating themselves through maturing other disciples. for a season, this led us to minister on the campus of UIC in 2022 and now in Wicker Park since the Fall of 2023.
As we continue forward, it's our hope that people of different cultures and backgrounds here in Chicago and in other parts of the world will experience and know the fullness of God's love and grace so that they can find the only true fulfillment of joy - the fulfillment that comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
As we continue forward, it's our hope that people of different cultures and backgrounds here in Chicago and in other parts of the world will experience and know the fullness of God's love and grace so that they can find the only true fulfillment of joy - the fulfillment that comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
