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Eugene Cho / Found faith, and wisdom, in 'the least of thy brethren'

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BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES

There was no epiphany, no blinding light. The closest thing to a guiding hand was lent by Raymondo Gonzalez, a janitor who only spoke Spanish.

Eugene Cho was an achieving but unhappy student, fighting expectations and struggling with being a Korean immigrant. Cho had finished four years of high-school Spanish, so he was able to get to know Gonzalez, who worked in a Bay Area IBM building where Cho's mother operated a deli. Cho was steaming toward college and, his parents hoped, a career as a doctor or lawyer.

Gonzalez, as near as Cho could tell, had little of what we define as success. All he had was faith and contentment.

"I actually enjoyed rebuffing him," says Cho, founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Interbay. "One day he was sitting at the cafeteria, and I went over to see what he was eating. He was reading his Bible. He read from the scripture, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but in every word that comes from the word of God."

Cho never forgot that moment or Gonzalez. In fact, he actually envied Gonzalez.

A few years later, Cho decided to disappoint his parents and become a minister. ("Talk about the silent treatment; it was brutal.") At 21, he was on scholarship at Princeton Theology Seminary and ministering to Korean immigrant kids in a New York borough.

Cho is 36 now, and has crafted a multicultural church based in a spacious warehouse, which doubles as a coffee shop and community center. He and his wife, Minhee, had led a Korean-American church in Lynnwood for two years, but five years ago he felt the need to do more and do it in Seattle.

Cho doesn't appreciate the cultural antagonism that some powerful right-wing Christians have perpetuated and refutes the notion that Seattle, "un-churched" by national standards, is "God-less," as some say.

"Seattle is a great marketplace for philosophy and ideas, and as a Christian I have to earn my right into that larger marketplace. I don't mind. There is something within each of us that yearns for meaning and asks, 'Who am I, and what am I doing?' Seattle, in fact, is very spiritual in that regard.

"The majority of the people who came to this church ask those questions — and, in contrast to Raymondo Gonzalez, they have everything, jobs, cars, education and the rest."