04. Dreaming of music ministry...!

04. Dreaming of music ministry...! Through such experiences, I became familiar with music in my own way, and among the three subjects that I thought would be helpful for ministry, namely philosophy, language, and music, the one I could naturally choose was church music, and perhaps because I remembered the clubbing from my seniors in the brass band in high school, I chose vocal music as my major. This was a brilliant moment where the innocence and extreme of that country bumpkin shined again. This is because I have never received vocal training or been polished through practice. Therefore, music is music, but is vocal music really that easy? Even if I had diligently polished myself for at least 2-3 years, it wouldn't have been easy... It's not like I had a natural talent for singing like my senior in a rural elementary school and a singer, Jo Young-nam, but I chose vocal music as a subject that would be helpful for ministry, and this clearly shows that I don't know much about the world. And of course, there was no school that I could go to when I was completely unprepared for vocal music. But did you say, “Seek! and you will find!”? Without knowing the circumstances, I searched diligently and found a school that had a slight possibility of admission. It had been two years since the school opened and was now accepting third-year students. Would people with outstanding musical skills come to such a school? Perhaps because the talented people were not interested, 43 people applied for the 42-seat recruitment, and I sang a song in front of the interviewing professors in the practical test and proudly and honorably beat one person and passed the music department. It was definitely not because I was good. Was there someone who didn’t enroll at that time? That’s how my school life began, and I attended that school with gratitude and joy, studying hard. Sometimes, among some students, “The school’s level...Transfer to a better school...!” Even though I said that, I was so grateful and happy and joyful that I was given the opportunity to study here. (However, how could I have known! After a long time, my singing eventually became somewhat amateurish, but after my ears opened, for a while, no matter where I went, when other people sang, except for a few special ones, I was not happy or even found it difficult to listen. It took a lot of time to overcome that. Later, I heard that people working at the Korean Language Research Institute also experience similar phenomena regarding Korean language and grammar.) I started studying music theory again here and studied advanced music. However, my weakness was still my major, vocal performance. Since it was a new school, there were not enough professors for the major, so graduate students studying at graduate school were assigned to be our major instructors. One day, a female teacher who was studying at Ewha Womans University Graduate School was assigned as my major instructor. But the problem was that the teacher, who had been watching me for a couple months, who was making emotionless sounds like the sound of a piece of wood breaking, said, "You should try love once and then learn to sing!“ Imagine a love song sung by a robot! A person who has never experienced any emotion of love or the twists and turns of life singing about life and love! How dull would that be? But that's what I did at that time. No, I couldn't help it. But how heartbreaking must that teacher have felt, wanting to help his old student find a sense of singing? In this way, I, a blank sheet of paper in singing, tried to improve my vocal skills by practicing my voice day and night, staying at school late every night to look at Mt. Gwanak across Anyang from the foot of Mt. Suri, and tried to sing in my heart, but I was so numb in my senses that I couldn’t understand anything abstractly, and without a good vocal model, it was just a vague sound worse than the barking of a dog. And after a long time, after living a life of always singing hymns, one day I finally understood the song. It was a really frustrating and miserable time. Anyway, no matter how much I practiced at that time, my skills were just going around in circles. Then, I gradually became more and more interested in ‘church music theory.’ Having already fallen for the fun of music theory, I studied on my own how music is used in the church and how it is connected to the gospel, and I began to develop another dream. It was to become a music pastor. When I entered the church music department and studied, I was not prepared for the practical skills, so naturally I saw my peers falling behind in the practical skills, and so I started to delve into the theory. It was the music ministry, the essence of church music. Even if I was not good at the practical skills, I tried to study how I could manage and utilize all of those people in the church to create resources for evangelism and missionary work and enrich worship services. So, I followed the church music professors of each university to the winter and summer music schools that each church held during vacations for conductors, accompanists, soloists, and choir members, and studied the various necessary parts that a music pastor should have along with church music from various church music experts. I also purchased and read all the books on church music that were published at the time, and studied systematically and thoroughly in my own way. Maybe that’s why I now not only grasped the basics of what to do and how to do church music, but also how to apply it in the church. And in Korea, to do something, you need two qualifications: internal qualifications and external qualifications. Internal qualifications are skills in that field, and external qualifications are certificates, or degrees. So now, in order to further improve my external qualifications and internal qualifications, I applied to Dankook University’s Graduate School of Education and studied music education. However, after being accepted to graduate school, I didn’t have the tuition. So I had no choice but to ask a trustworthy friend for the tuition. My friend said he would lend me the money without any conditions, but he was willing to pay me without accepting it. I made two conditions. First, I couldn’t promise when, but I would definitely return the money. Second, I couldn’t pay interest. My friend smiled and said, “Okay,” and readily lent me the tuition, so I was able to enroll in school. While I was enrolled in the school, I studied as a lecturer and received a stipend from my church as a student instructor and a choir director. It didn’t seem easy to live with my family and pay for my next tuition with this money. While most other assistant pastors received about 400,000 won in case fees, I was working as an assistant pastor at a church that gave me about 600,000 won in case fees. Even though I spent all of that 600,000 won on living expenses, I was living on 300,000 won and saving 300,000 won for 6 months would be 1.8 million won, so I thought about how I could afford the tuition, which was about 2 million won at the time. However, I found out that the church was collecting scholarship money and supporting me. So I cautiously requested the scholarship, but the result was completely different. In the Presbyterian Church, becoming a pastor would be the best thing to do, but I was fired at the end of that year for doing something wrong. In the worst case scenario, I thought I could afford the tuition if I received the case fee from that church, but when I was kicked out of there, it felt like the sky was falling. However, God worked in a different way. A deacon who was the head of one of the districts of that church said, “Pastor Kang, are you having a hard time? We also know this because our baby’s father studied late in Japan. Fortunately, in addition to the district offering, the district members collected membership fees to support missionaries and struggling seminarians. Then, the seminarian we were helping graduated and it was time to help another place. We will support Pastor Kang’s tuition, so please study hard and do your assigned duties somewhere else.” After saying that, they really supported his tuition. This was truly God’s work through them. And I was able to graduate from the graduate school of education and wear my graduation cap. And that later became a tool to demonstrate my ministry capabilities in the mission field. I am so grateful that I still can’t forget those who volunteered to be tools for God’s work. And eventually, in the mission field, I guided and taught seminarians so that they could properly lead local people who lacked musical ability to praise and sing.