Questions about Ministry

1) As an asian-american believer, do you believe you've been called to return to a chinese church (which I guess what your doing now) or does that not really matter?

I think the foundational question is where would you want to plant your membership? The reason why I point to this is because where you decide to plant roots and where you plan on committing, that's where you serve, find community and grow. I've grown up in an Asian-american context my whole life and have attended Chinese Baptist Church all my life. However, i have seen how a lot of churches run and attended all types of churches - multiethnic, dually ethnic, single ethnic, etc. And the thing is that they are all good churches....they preach solid gospel centered messages, a focus on the ordinances, and living out their philosophy of ministry in their context. There's only One church.

So why go back to an Asian church? I think for me personally, it was a matter of church membership over everything first. I felt like I needed to honor my membership until God has made it clear that i was supposed to serve somewhere else. Another reason why I decided to come back was because I saw how difficult ethnic churches were. I mean, growing up I followed a group of pastors that really did church well and their congregations were responding and then i would look at mine and go, "Uhh...what in the world is going on? Is this even a church?" And very gently, God convicted me to stop hoping for the next big thing. He went, "Hey...instead of knocking poor churches, why don't you invest and use whatever i have given you to serve?" That shut me up pretty quickly. I also saw a disturbing trend throughout undergrad and seminary. A lot of young seminarians and pastors would leave their churches to pastor the next big thing and would leave their home churches at their own folly. Nobody to teach. Nobody to discipline. The attitude was "Forget that...let them suffer"

So my plead is "Don't go...we need you" We need biblically trained, gospel focused, enduring pastors to come back and shepherd the ethnic churches. And for some reason, as detached as i was, there's a resemblance with the people you minister to. You have gone through what they are going through. You can relate to them (for the most part). And if i have already bypassed the first hurdle of appearing different...perhaps we can begin to minister. Yes it's our parents church...yes, asian people tend to be stuck in their ways...yes, lunch time smells a bit odd at church...but they still need the gospel preached to them and they still need a shepherd.

2) Do you feel called to Youth ministry? This question meaning do you picture yourself working with youth for awhile or has God also laid on your heart other things such as reaching the unreached (missionary work), etc.?

I thought i wanted to do youth ministry because it was fun and i could eat pizza for the rest of my life. I mean, how hard can youth ministry really be? Just have events and make sure you look cool and the kids will follow you all the days of their life...well at least till they graduate and drop out of church life. I went through 6 youth pastors as a youth. That's almost one a year. And when i did the research, the normal turnover rate for a pastor is 3 years. The turnover rate for a youth pastor is half that. Asian churches...the stats are more grim. So when God made it clear that I was going to serve him through ministry i had to rethink a lot of stuff...2 things stood out the most:

1. The thing that scared the mess out of me was this: a senior graduating the youth group and going "man, my last 7 years was so fun...i didn't learn anything and have no clue what i believe, but winter retreat was awesome! i'll try to be a better person for the rest of my life" NOOOOOOOOOOOO! So i sat out to change everything up with youth ministry - how we teach, what we teach, how we understand ecclesiology, sunday school, events, leadership, etc.

2. I realized that youth ministry was not going to be easy. Not only do you minister to the youth, but you have their parents, your youth leaders, and yourself. I needed a foundational theology that pushed my philosophy of ministry. I also had to come to terms that i wasn't the senior pastor and that i fit into a system (a broken one at that).

So yes, i feel led to youth ministry not because it's easy and not because it's only fun. I'm here because the youth at CBC and the people that they interact with need gospel-saturated lives. And if i can pastor here for the next 30 years and have my leaders run with me for that long...then i'm in. And so my job now is the be as equipped as i can so that i may teach the youth - that's why the MDiv and Dmin. I never wanted the youth to get the scraps of theological garbage that people just tossed at them. So until God clearly tells me it's time to go...i'm here for life. I pray that you continue to find your place and plant and run hard.

The Call To The Ministry: C.H. Spurgeon

How may a young man know whether he is called or not?

1. The first sign of the heavenly calling is an intense, all-absorbing desire for the work. In order to a true call to the ministry there must be an irresistible, overwhelming craving and raging thirst for telling to others what God has done to our own souls; what if I call it a kind of storge, such as birds have for rearing their young when the season is come; when the mother-bird would sooner die than leave her nest...(Do not enter the ministry if you can help it)

2. In the second place, combined with the earnest desire to become a pastor, there must be aptness to teach and some measure of the other qualities needful for the office of a public instructor. A man to prove his call must make a successful trial of these...

3. In order further prove a man's call, after a little exercise of his gifts, such as I have already spoken of, he must see a measure of conversion-work going on under his efforts, or he may conclude that he has made a mistake, and, therefore, may go back by the best way he can...

4. A step beyond all this is, however, needful in our enquiry. The will of the Lord concerning pastors is made known through the prayerful judgment of His Church. It is neeful as a proof of your vocation that your preaching should be acceptable to the people of God...

Spurgeon, C.H. Lecture To My Students. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954.

From the Church to the Church | A Testimony by: Justin Wong

The Path to Nowhere Fast: There’s a part of me that chuckles when I stop and realize where I am in life. Growing up in an overtly religious context of Southern Baptistism, I was quickly immersed in “all things Christian” straight out of the womb. In one hand I would have strained beans and in the other I would have a baby New Testament.

My parents came as immigrants from Hong Kong looking for an American education at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was my mother who wanted to pursue her Master’s in church music and my father followed her and decided “Oh well, I might as well get a degree while I’m here”. Ironically enough, it was my dad who decided to pursue the whole ministry deal. And in the middle of studying Greek exegesis and surviving off of Church's Fried Chicken, my parents graciously allowed me to join the journey (if you know what I mean). It turned out that I would come back to the same seminary, almost the same apartment, that I was raised in (but more on that later).

As a pastor’s kid I saw “The Game”. I learned very quickly the in’s and out’s of church polity and religionism. I knew you were supposed to call everyone sir and ma’am (well “uncle” and “aunt” in our Chinese world) and you were never supposed to talk back to deacons. This was my path for 12-13 years…I mean my folks were pastor people, I really couldn’t do much else.

So I did what every typical pimple-faced, adolescent growing up in church did – youth camps, bible studies, DNow. I must have collected like 29081 t-shirts and bibles during this time. I honestly thought that that was what Christianity and Jesus was all about. It was a collection of bible stories about these heroes in the Bible, not cursing in church, not smoking pot, not talking back to deacons, and memorizing “Friends are friends forever”. And the thing was I pulled that façade off perfectly. I mean, I knew what to say, what not to say, how to dress, and pretty much play the game. But soon enough it got really exhausting really fast. You know that feeling where you can do something on the outside but inside, you knew you were a liar? Or you get to a place where you’re just doing things for the sake of doing things? I hated that feeling. It felt like a perpetual cycle of selling out, but the worst part about it was that I didn’t know what to do about it. Little did I know, my frustration with church and religion was about to lead me down another path.

Captivated: God revealed himself to me late into my junior year of high school. After learning and understanding all the facts for so long, the Holy Spirit struck a chord with me and it was over. What I mean is that Jesus became a real person to me; I actually & literally trusted that he died to bear my sins. At that moment, I realized my life was completely empty and wholly frustrating and I knew that nothing on this earth really brought fulfillment. But in the person and life of Jesus I found that. I finally knew him; not just know about him. As I look back at my “conversion” experience, it’s always interesting because I realize that it is not about understanding, but rather the working of a sovereign God calling me as his child to himself despite who I was. And who would have known right? I mean, growing up as a pastor’s kid, people would just assume that I floated around with the Holy Spirit and had audible conversations with Jesus. It isn’t like that though…apparently, that was my time and God captivated my heart, unveiled my eyes, and drew me unto himself.

Baggage, Drama, and Frustration: And here comes the irony. Even though Christ saved me and redeemed me there was all this “baggage” I carried with me from my past. It was so confusing though because in church we would hear of these testimonies that once Christ saved you, you would never struggle again and all your problems would be gone. But for me the story went a lot differently. I mean, Christ saved me yes but all of that “baggage” was still there…which frustrated me even more.

The thing with growing up in church and as a pastor’s kid is that you see every facet of the church world. You don’t attend once a week and that’s it. It’s every day – meetings, fellowship, camps, bible studies, and phone calls like none other. And my sister and I experienced the drama of church at a very early age. We would hear members of our church call and leave messages on our answering machine telling my dad just how lousy a pastor he was and that he should quit. And I remember thinking to myself, “What in the world!? Stupid sheep biting its shepherd that’s leading them?” And I see it all over the place in the church world (any everywhere else I suppose). Why? Because it’s so easy to criticize when you’re not the one who’s responsible. It’s pride right? “I can do things better than that that. Even though I have no experience or studying, everyone should listen to me because I sit back and just talk without any action”. I suppose it is Romans 1 being manifested on a human-to-human level. I got so frustrated with church people. I did. And the more I saw it and honestly, the more I saw my dad not fight back and take it, the angrier I got with the church. I remember thinking, “I love God and will follow Jesus…but there’s no way I’m ever going to be a pastor”. No way. It’s a lot of mess without any reward (more on this later). So I headed out to do what every typical Chinese-American is meant to do – medicine.

Our family wasn’t of the elite social strata (well I mean, my dad was a pastor my whole life and my mother was a part-time piano teacher) so finances were always tight in our household. So I applied to Houston Baptist University the spring semester of my senior year of high school. Yes, I know that wasn’t the most responsible thing to do (Seniors, apply early) I knew that they offered a sweet scholarship for pastor’s kids and I had the chance to stay home and save money. I was all set in my biology/business major and the plan was to get out in four and apply to medical school and make billions (just kidding…gajillions)

Joining the Fight: This time it was my junior year of undergraduate when God decided to take me for a spin. By this time my parents had left our home church in Houston and pursued a starting church in Atlanta, Georgia. Chinese Baptist Church in Houston had been without a youth pastor for a good 6 years and because my friends and I grew up in youth ministry, it was appropriate that the church would ask us to help out. So we did. We started to plan events for the youth group, teach bible studies, and lead small groups. And the funny thing was that I smelled it coming - this ministry thing. I was like “Uh oh…they’re going to suck me in and then I’ll have to be a pastor and then I’ll have to get a comb-over.”I fought it off as long as I could, but during a winter retreat back in 2002 that I had organized I stood in the back of the room during worship and looked over the youth and thought to myself, “If I could do this for a living, I would”. And so I joined the fight.

When God called me into the ministry it wasn’t a calling to a job or a career. I had all these reservations that I had to ponder and fight though. “How am I going to survive financially? Don’t you remember what happened to your parents? Do you even know anything about the Bible?” Tough call. I think if you study biblical leadership and historical callings of men and women who went into the ministry, they realized that they couldn’t do anything else but go into the ministry. For me it was the same way…it was the most satisfying, efficient, and effective thing I could do. So when God called me into the ministry, he called (and equipped) me specifically to fulfill the role of the pastor. This isn’t a position at a business, it’s not a default, back-up role that you just so-happen to assume, but it’s a divine calling placed on someone’s life. I don’t know how many times I come across people who think being a pastor is taking on a job. For me it is a calling placed on my life from God to dedicate the rest of my time to equipping the saints for the works of service. It is a hard, humiliating, prophet-esque, grateful position that I wouldn’t ever pass up.

Positioning Myself: I can remember a time in my walk where everything was so peaceful and I felt so connected. But recently I have yet to feel that experience and I wonder why. Like the early gusto of my faith has faded into routine and meetings (it’s always meetings that do it to you) I know that I am to position myself under the waterfall of God but I know I am lazy. I'm too lazy to study scripture at times and too lazy to listen to sermons (those that have historically brought me to that place). So maybe I’m just making excuses for me not wanting to be there and instead I just want an instant quick-fix. Are you like that? Have you been positioning yourself or do you want a quick fix? Are there sins of commission and sins of omission that you have been avoiding/committing? Do you know what you ought to do and yet refuse it? Is that what is really going on? It is for me friend. I'm lazy right now and I can justify it till the monkeys fall off the tree. But I know this stuff doesn't come without work. And now I realize that it truly is my joy that is at stake. And i've heard it time and time again but Jesus really does line you up with how things are...how things are created...and it truly is the best possible life that we're chasing. The fracture happened at Genesis 3 with sin and Jesus stands in that gap and now we look towards him for that fulfillment.

The Weight of Pastoring: I feel like sometimes it’s just easier to quit. I sit here and find myself completely overwhelmed with the pressures and anxieties of ministry. It’s always meeting after meeting and event after event. And what’s frustrating is that I can see other people’s ministry and I see that it works – like people are coming to know Jesus and not just church. They’re being connected with one another and it seems so well-functioned. And I’m like “I wish we were there…” But I think God continues to show me more of himself in this. And the more I complain the more God just says, “Do you have short-term memory or something? Look at all the things I have blessed you with and all the moments where I shone brightest”. It’s so true though. I can’t do anything else now…believe me, I tried to step away and go another direction. But in my heart and in my mind I know that for me, this is it. You know that feeling when you’ve experienced something and you can’t recover from it? I think that is how I am on this journey. I have experienced just a little bit of Jesus and I can’t settle for anything less. There is joy in that though…and perhaps I’ll be able to get to that point in my life where I count it all but loss and would rather to depart and be with the King. I mean, my mind is there…but my heart is still inconsistent with it. Until then I continue to have faith guide my feet and wisdom guide my heart…for great is our Lord Jesus who has overcome the world.