KOREAN-AMERICAN: In his first Sunday sermon since...

KOREAN-AMERICAN: In his first Sunday sermon since becoming a United Methodist district superintendent, the Rev. Brandon Cho of Chatsworth will preach 11 a.m. Sunday at a bilingual service in Korean and English in Woodland Hills.

Cho--born in Korea, reared in Hawaii and educated in California--began a six-year term Wednesday as superintendent of the 60-church Santa Barbara district, which includes the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Cho, a former Long Beach pastor, was named to the superintendency this year.

Sunday’s service, on the lawn of Woodland Hills United Methodist Church, 5650 Shoup Ave., will be the first combined worship of the 160-member Korean-speaking congregation that merged with the 180-member predominantly Anglo congregation in 1989.

“We had rented space to the small Korean congregation for about 10 years before we decided that it made sense for two small churches to become equal partners,” said the Rev. Steve Isenman. The pastor of the Korean congregation is the Rev. K. C. Kim.

NEW EDITOR: Tod Tamberg, 29, of North Hollywood, has been appointed editor of The Tidings, the official weekly newspaper of the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese.

Tamberg had been acting editor since May, when Alfred Doblin resigned. He is the second youngest editor of the paper in its 97-year history. The Tidings, printed in tabloid form and featuring color photographs, has a circulation of about 40,000.

David Moore, executive director of communications for the archdiocese, praised Tamberg as “one of the brightest young men in Catholic journalism, who has a keen sense of church, community and news gathering.”

After graduating in 1981 from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, Tamberg went to the University of Notre Dame and earned a bachelor of arts degree in theology in 1985. He came to The Tidings last November as associate editor after working in a comparable position at North Carolina Catholic, a paper serving two dioceses there.

LUTHERAN MUSIC: About 120 Lutheran choir directors, organists and other musicians from Western states are expected to attend a four-day conference starting Sunday at Cal Lutheran University.

Conference Chairman Marshall Bowen, music minister at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in North Hollywood, said that a hymn festival at 7 p.m. Sunday in Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks will feature arrangements of “The Church’s One Foundation,” “A Mighty Fortress” and other Protestant favorites. Tickets are $8.

Featured speakers at the conference will be Paul Westermeyer, professor of music at Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., and composer Dale Wood, executive editor of the Sacred Music Press.

Bowen, who will hold a workshop on leading a band during a worship service, will do just that at the concluding Communion service for the conference at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday.