Bundang St. Luke's Church

History & origins

Bundang St. Luke Parish was established on January 26, 1999, after separating from Bundang St. Matthew Parish. It first began as “Geumgok-dong Parish,” celebrating Mass in a commercial building. Although the community had become an independent parish, it did not yet have a church site of its own, so obtaining land and building a permanent church became a major task in the years that followed.

On March 31, 2007, the parish purchased a site of about 1,873 pyeong in Dongwon-dong, where the present church stands. On March 10, 2009, the parish name and patron were changed to “Bundang St. Luke” and St. Luke. A groundbreaking ceremony for the new church followed on February 6, 2010, and the completed church was dedicated on October 14, 2012. It therefore took roughly thirteen years for the community that had begun in a commercial building to secure its own land and permanent church.

In 2024, a Mass marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the parish. In preparation, the community offered rosaries, copied the Bible by hand, prayed for inactive Catholics, supported neighbors in need and social-welfare facilities, and published a twenty-five-year parish history. The diocese also recorded that by the anniversary the community had fully repaid the debt on the church and improved its parish environment after the COVID-19 pandemic. These developments show that work continued after the dedication to maintain the building, stabilize the community’s finances, and renew its pastoral environment. The history of Bundang St. Luke therefore traces the growth of a small commercial-building community into a parish with a permanent church and an established practice of sharing with the wider community.