by Richard Shin

You just got mar­ried. You’ll grad­u­ate soon. Then you’re going to help plant a church. All this within a year. Are you com­fort­able with all the changes?

Actually, I won’t be grad­u­at­ing for another year. I’ll be fly­ing up and down every week like some of the Eastbay (now Evangel) guys. That’s some­thing Kathy and I had to think about and pray about. We weren’t sure in the begin­ning if we wanted to go up after I fin­ished, or fly up and down every week. So we prayed about it indi­vid­u­ally, and it’s some­thing I had already saved up for, to fly every week. So it wasn’t about the finan­cial aspect. It was about whether she would be on board with me on that. And actu­ally last Saturday, she was like “yep, we should do it.” So I was like “yep, I agree”. Hahaha. So by December I should be done.

In terms of your ques­tion, no I’m not com­fort­able. But then that’s the story of my life, and God has always been faith­ful through those times. The way that’s been for me is that I’ve always been cau­tious in terms of get­ting my feet wet. I’ve never been the guy to be reck­less; I’m more the guy who has to be pushed and that’s what Pastor John has been telling me, to take more risks. God’s basi­cally led me that way. I remem­ber my whole plan in sem­i­nary has been: be in sem­i­nary for four years, be an intern for four years, and then think about going into pas­toral min­istry. But then all of a sud­den I’m 23 and I’m asked to be a youth pas­tor; I wasn’t ready for that. But God led me that way and I can trust Him. I had never been exposed to the youth before, I had never worked in this min­istry, and I had never been in youth group. So that was a big change. But I trusted in God. And He made all these things work out.

Same thing with mar­riage. I was kind of freaked out before I got mar­ried. But just because I’m uncom­fort­able, who am I to ques­tion God? So that’s been kind of my story. I’m back in that famil­iar place where I’m not com­fort­able with tran­si­tions. But with God lead­ing me that way, I have no rea­son to not trust Him; I have every rea­son to trust Him. I’m ner­vous about what it’s going to be like when I grad­u­ate, I don’t know what our life is going to be like up there, what if we have a kid, that’s a pos­si­bil­ity, what if some­thing goes wrong with fly­ing and the preg­nancy and all that. But as long as I trust in God, I know he’ll work out all things for good for my life.

As a follow-up to the ques­tion above, what doctrine/passage from the Bible has encour­aged you the most dur­ing these times?

Well my life verse at least since a cou­ple years back has been Philippians 3:7–8. That verse has been true in me. I know I’m called to do every­thing out of my love for Christ it’s not so much about the church plant but it’s more about am I doing what I’m doing because I love God and would I throw every­thing to gain Him? When that res­onates in my heart and when­ever I remem­ber that, every deci­sion I make would be a right­eous deci­sion. It’s not even about doing things for God, it’s about me want­ing to be with God and be close to God. Having that verse has always led me right. It led me to the church plant, and it led me to mar­ry­ing Kathy.

In terms of a more prac­ti­cal sense, Proverbs 3:5–6 and Proverbs 9:10. I real­ize can’t trust in myself or my abil­i­ties. That’s the thing I always fear, my lack of wis­dom but I real­ize I need to fear the Lord. Not trust­ing in my own abil­i­ties, but trust­ing in the Lord with all my heart and acknowl­edg­ing him in every­thing I do.

Matthew 28:18–20. I just can’t get around that verse. You know, make dis­ci­ples of all nations. That’s the mis­sion state­ment of Lighthouse, and that’s the mis­sion state­ment of my life too. I don’t know… how do you get around that? As author­i­ta­tive as Christ is, He gets up on that moun­tain and says go and make dis­ci­ples of all nations and to teach them to be like Him. You don’t argue with that; you just go.

What will you miss most about LBCSD? About San Diego?

Nothing so much about San Diego…I mean I like the weather here, and as beau­ti­ful as San Diego is, I grew up in Hawaii…so SD has always been kind of like sec­ond class to me. The beach is nice, but I real­ized I don’t go there a whole lot any way. Oh, one thing I WILL miss is the zoo! Everyone knows I love ani­mals. I’m going to miss using the zoo pass because that’s been one of the most wor­ship­ful expe­ri­ences for me, going to the zoo and thank­ing God for His cre­ation. So I’ll miss that for sure.

But really I’ll miss the most is the church, the peo­ple. My heart’s always been in the min­istry. There’s noth­ing in San Diego that would make me stay, but the rea­son that made my decision-making so hard is the peo­ple. Some of the guys who I’ve invested in, some of them will stay here to serve the church here. Some of my clos­est friends will be here. My grooms­men, half of them will still be here. The youth group, I’ll miss. I had hopes of see­ing Zach go through high school with the other youth kids. You know the rela­tion­ships I’ve devel­oped here… that’ll be the biggest thing. The rea­son I stayed here is the church, so inevitably, the thing I’ll miss the most is the church.

What would you like to see hap­pen­ing at LBCSJ in the com­ing years?

As gen­eral as it sounds, I want to see Christ exalted in the church. I don’t want the church to be about our­selves and this man-centered agenda. I really want to see Christ glo­ri­fied in every­thing. I want to see all the mem­bers on board with that. To let go of our self­ish­ness and pride, and see God glo­ri­fied. I want to see every­one ultra-passionate in pur­su­ing that, and not be sat­is­fied with being com­pla­cent. It’s hard for me to say what I want to see in terms of prac­ti­cal goals for the church plant because that’s hard. Fruit is the Lord’s work. What I want is our team to be faith­ful to God’s call­ing. But do I want to see the con­gre­ga­tion to grow to be 100 or some­thing? I don’t know. That’s not the mea­sure of suc­cess to me. The mea­sure of suc­cess is how faith­ful we are. I’d like to see the team to be hum­ble before each other and learn to work together. I want to see the younger guys step up into lead­er­ship, and some of the older guys to help lead them. I would like to see the San Jose com­mu­nity be impacted whether it be through us or the other churches there. I love Lighthouse and I love what it did to me per­son­ally because the teach­ing that Pastor John, Pat, and the elders pro­vided really changed me and helped me strug­gle through col­lege. And I know there are oth­ers in San Jose who don’t have the resources and I would love to help pro­vide that.

Let’s say you stepped into the build­ing of LBCSD on one Sunday morn­ing ten years from now (should the Lord tarry), what would you like to see?

I would like to see Tim Yu have at least 2 kids and hope­fully one of them is a boy and so if we have a boy, we can have them play together. I want to see Eugene Park mar­ried. I’d like to see Pat just doing his thing as Senior Pastor. I’m excited to see how that’ll turn out. I’m ner­vous for him as I watch him strug­gle through some things right now. I’m excited to see what God’s going to do. I guess Cameron Preslar would be in youth group, so I would want to see what they look like. Hopefully I see more brown peo­ple come out. I would like to see the youth group grow… that’s like my baby. I want to see whoever’s tak­ing over the min­istry to step it up and have the min­istry flour­ish in the Lord.

How can we as a con­gre­ga­tion encour­age you and Kathy in the upcom­ing year?

Be pray­ing for us. For both of us to be indi­vid­u­ally grow and stay close to the Lord indi­vid­u­ally. When that’s set, together we’ll be a strong cou­ple. And together we’ll be an effec­tive team for the church plant. Pray for us to work together as a fam­ily. Pray for my school­ing. I would like to end at the end of 2010 just to make things less com­pli­cated. So I can also open myself up for the church plant as much as I love sem­i­nary. Pray for the team, that’s been on my heart as well.

Any last words?

I love Lighthouse Bible Church San Diego. I really do. I hope you real­ize that it was a very hard deci­sion to make. I fasted for ten days! And I’m already thin! Youth kids, I hope you real­ize how much I love you, and it kills me to be apart from you. But I know this is what the Lord’s call­ing me to do, to plant churches. I’m going to miss you guys a lot, a lot, a lot. And I’ll be pray­ing for you. And the church body: Know that my prayers will always be with you. You can always e-mail me if you want prayer sup­port. I’ll for­ever be thank­ful for the guys who have invested in me, and I mean…I know who’s going up, but the ones who are stay­ing… Pat, I want Pat to know that he would have been the main rea­son for me to stay because he invested so much in me. Be pray­ing for him a lot. I don’t want him to think I’m ditch­ing him.. and for guys like Peter, Mike, and Tim Yu, and Ted who will be here. All those who have invested in me either as men­tors or as broth­ers. I don’t give up on my friends eas­ily. And all the ones I’ve invested in. You’re not off the hook, man. If I come here in ten years and you’re not in shape, I’ll take you up to San Jose with me, and lock you up in my base­ment. Hahaha.. I’m just kid­ding. I’m in prayer for you guys too. I dis­ci­pled you guys in light of what could hap­pen (the church plant). The whole pur­pose was to get you guys equipped for min­istry to grow in your char­ac­ter to be avail­able and to really mobi­lize for God. Just be avail­able to do that, and let God do amaz­ing things through you guys. To God be the glory!

to be con­tin­ued next week with Pastor John…

Probably Related Posts

• Church Plant Interviews — Pastor John (part 2)
• Church Plant Interviews — Pastor John (part 1)
• Church Plant Interviews — Pastor JR (part 1)
• Interview with John Yang (Youth)
• Match Day Interview — Kevin Tse

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 1:00 am and is filed under Lighthouse News, Member Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.