Jerry Iamurri (right) former EPC Assistant Stated Clerk, prays for freshly installed 43rd General Assembly Moderator Joe Kim as previous Moderators and Stated Clerks lay on hands.

Joe Kim, Teaching Elder in the Presbytery of the East, was elected Moderator of the EPC’s 43rd General Assembly on June 20. Kim serves as planting pastor of Hope Philly in Pennsylvania, which consists of two micro-churches in the Philadelphia area with a third launching soon.

In his opening remarks, Kim told the Assembly that the EPC “has been a haven from a world that more and more no longer tolerates difference or disagreement; where suspicion and even outrage is way too normal.”

Yet he emphasized that the EPC “does things differently.”

“Beyond the essentials, we often all don’t agree,” Kim said. “But even so, there remains in every single one of us a persistent conviction to view those we disagree with as co-laborers in the gospel; brothers and sisters to whom we resolve to extend the right hand of fellowship.”

Kim described how Hope Philly defines grace as the place “where blessing and benefits normally reserved for friends and family are given to strangers and even enemies in hope that those strangers and enemies become themselves friends and family.”

“When we come here,” Kim concluded, “we are amongst family—a family bound together not because of race, or politics, or social orientation, but by the gospel and the gracious hospitality it drives us to extend.”

Kim was ordained as a Teaching Elder in the EPC in 2015. Prior to planting Hope Philly, he served as the English Ministry pastor of Korean churches in New Jersey and New York. He also has served as a children’s ministry director, choir director, and youth group director.

Kim studied Music at Temple University in Philadelphia and later finished his degree at Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa, Ga. He came to faith in 1995 and received a Master of Divinity degree from Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pa., in 2005. He is a regular contributor to Reformed Margins, a blogsite that provides a platform for Reformed Christian thinkers from various ethnic minority backgrounds to join in the broader Reformed and Evangelical conversations.

Kim has served on various committees in the EPC, including the Ministerial Committee for the Presbytery of the East, the General Assembly’s Ministerial Vocation Committee (MVC), and the Revelation 7:9 Task Force.

He and his wife, Emii, have two daughters. He enjoys reading, guitars, theology, all Philadelphia sports teams, and spending time with his family.

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