October 1, 2026
SUWANEE, Ga. — On Aug. 9, 2026, Sugarloaf Korean Baptist Church in Suwanee, Georgia, celebrated a milestone: 50 years of service.
Lead pastor David Chang Dae Che said the event was a celebration of 50 years of grace and 100 years of discipleship. “Just the fact that we get to be part of something like this is an honor,” Che said.
Many encouraging words from the multiple speakers, including former pastors and Georgia Baptist Mission Board Executive Director Thomas Hammond, were featured along with worship and the message.
“It was just a great day. The worship was incredible. The spirit of the people was celebrated and joyful. It was great,” said Gwinnett Metro Baptist Network Executive Director Brian Parker.
The church honored previous pastors and longtime members at the celebration ceremony. Those members were brought on stage and given plaques. “They honored their former pastors beautifully, respectfully and significantly,” Parker said. He saw joy and unity from its members. “They’ve got a strong sense of family and corporate togetherness. It was beautiful to experience that,” Parker said.
Consistency and long-time members are the secret to the church's success, Che said. The church has had only four pastors in its 50-year history, and many members have been attending for more than 20 years. Eight families have been members for more than 40 years. “it just shows our church DNA that we're a church that respects pastoral authority. We’re biblically sound, missional focused, and making disciples. All of this matters,” Che said.
Church planting has been a part of Sugarloaf's DNA since its beginnings. At the ceremony, Che announced the latest church plant in Dacula, Georgia, Dacula Korean Baptist Church. DKBC began services Aug. 16, 2026. “We knew this year, we needed to do something big,” Che said.
SKB, the first Korean Southern Baptist church in Georgia, started as Georgia New Seoul Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta on Aug. 15, 1976.
The congregation soon found itself in cramped quarters and needing a larger facility of its own, so the church relocated to Tucker, just outside the Perimeter, where an enclave of Koreans did not have a church.
In 2006, Tucker was undergoing a steady shift of its Korean congregation, with almost everyone moving to Duluth in Gwinnett County. Virtually the entire congregation had moved away, but was commuting back to Tucker for worship services.
SKBC Pastor Emeritus Bong Soo Choi led the congregation to move to its current location on Old Peachtree Road in 2009 and changed its name to Sugarloaf Korean Baptist Church. While officially located in Suwanee, it shares an identity with fast-growing Duluth, which is the county's largest Korean community. The subdivision behind the church has a Duluth address. The congregation now averages 650 in Sunday morning worship.
“If we hadn't done that, we wouldn't be like this. That's the single most important decision that was made that allowed our church to flourish like this. The location matters,” Che said.
Che said it’s a lesson in ministry also. Staying in one’s comfort zone too long may lead to fewer ministry opportunities. Churches grow, expand, and continue to do God's work by staying on their toes and obedient to the Great Commission so the lost can be saved.
“I feel like the reason God called me here is to not let the church be 50 years old and just safe where it is. We need to be thankful to God for the 50 years that we've had before, but we need to look forward to the next 50. Where are we going? What does our church look like, and how are we going to get there? That includes being patient, passionate, enthusiastic, active, and alive while building a solid foundation, Che said.
Church planting has been a part of the congregation’s DNA from the day it was constituted as the Convention’s newest church. Within three years of its opening, the Korean congregation had planted its first church, Savannah Korean Baptist Church. The next year Hinesville Korean Baptist Church was launched, followed within months by Valdosta Korean Baptist Church.
Congregations were planted in Macon in 1982, South Atlanta in 1986, and Columbus in 1987. Within an eight-year window, six Korean congregations were sharing the gospel with the state’s slowly growing influx of Koreans.
Since that time, Montgomery Korean Baptist Church in Alabama, Berean Community Church at Sugarloaf, New Wave Korean Baptist Church in Buford, and Meek International Baptist Church in Duluth have been planted.
SKBC has multiple outreach ministries. Those include visiting Korean supermarkets every Saturday and Wednesday. They also have a Korean School on campus on Saturday mornings, and Sugarloaf Senior Academy on Fridays. Both programs draw 100 non-members per semester. Each year, they participate in a teacher appreciation meal for 600 staff across Parsons Elementary, Hull Middle, and Peachtree Ridge High School. They also have booths at the Multicultural Festival in May and the Public Safety Fall Festival in September hosted by Gwinnett County.
“I feel like those are ways that our church is being intentional in reaching out to the community and serving. You gotta go where the lost people are,” Che said.
Parker said Sugarloaf has been a big part of the Gwinnett Metro Baptist Network team, leading the way in both Korean and English ministry. “They’ve got a pastor that's supportive of the network," he said, "that is concerned and supportive of the other churches in our network regardless of the languages that they speak, and he is a pastor that is deeply prayerful for his congregation and for the spread of the gospel. And he is just a model representative of what a pastor should be.”
He also said Sugarloaf sets the bar for what a ministry should look like in any language. “They preach the Bible and seek to live it out with sincerity. They have a joyful, unified congregation. They are planting churches; they are making disciples. They are leading people to Christ and seeking to live out the Great Commission every day,” he said.
Che said the future of Sugarloaf includes more small group attendance where people share life together and starting a one-on-one discipleship program where everyone is discipling somebody and everyone is getting discipled by somebody. “We're gonna be a church that makes disciples. The main question is how many disciples are you having and how many disciples of Jesus are you producing every year?”
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