all right everyone welcome to the grace point what is this the official unofficial grace point podcast i have bad host this is a show where we talk about all things grace point the good the bad the ugly and today we are going to talk about the question why the hate why the hate why the hate so let's start yeah so i think isaiah why do you hate me we're not we're not talking about that here we can talk about that later outside the um i i think one thing that a lot of people whether that be our people or um i don't know people who are checking out our church for the first time and searching on us google us on google um one of the first questions i think a lot of people have is whoa this church has a lot of just hate online and a lot a lot of a lot of bad press yep and why does a church of this size have just proportionally like so much about them yep and so we want to talk about that and i mean i don't know exactly um so obviously there's you know i've read through a lot of it personally um okay so i haven't read you haven't very much of it yeah i just choose not to yeah i i like it actually it's kind of it's kind of interesting um so i mean as i've read through a bunch of it um and so i mean so obviously this is sort of our take on it like we're not the authorities on this but i do feel like might be helpful just to talk about that and um yeah so basically what we're gonna do is we're going to talk about our top three yeah what are the top top three reasons top three we're gonna give our top three we're gonna talk about it um and see how this goes yeah so how about this well we'll go from three to two to one sure save the most important one for last um and we'll just count down say it at the same time and see if we get the same things okay okay all right this is mind meld okay okay you count you can't okay all right one two three conservative korean culture oh okay very different okay how about you go first all right well yeah i mean i think one of the reasons why we get a lot of hate is because we're big target right so you said about like it's like disproportionate right um and i think to agree that's true it's it's sort of like i i you know like let's say you're you're a newcomer at like you know coming to one of our newer churches a church plant and it looks really small you you look us up online and it's like what is this torrential like outpouring of stuff right that is true but the thing is is like yeah maybe that person thinks like we're just one small new church of like 30 but the reality is that we're on like it's like 70 campuses now or something like that yeah so so it's really strange we we have the feel of a small family church close-knit community right but in actuality we are like a nationwide network this organization right but the nationwide work still feels very familial because like the leaders have years of relationship you and i know each other for 14 years right and in a lot of ways i think our church is going through like this transition where we like to think of ourselves and we conduct ourselves like a small family church but we are actually this big network this big institution yeah you know and there's a lot of things that haven't really caught up to that like systems and and and added in policies or best practices whatever it might be in a sense we kind of want to resist that too because we don't become institutionalized because that's not the greatest thing either because when there's like a movement when there's like anyway so we that that's like a whole other thing but i think that we are a big target and um and in some of our campuses we are the biggest target around and berkeley for sure oh yeah you know and um and i think that's why um we get all hate yeah that's a good one i didn't i didn't actually think about that um i'm curious about yours well i kind of cheated i kind of combined it into two things about our culture okay is uh conservative and very korean and i know nowadays i don't know if korean and conservative is sort of associated back in the day i think it certainly was um so i'll just talk about those a little bit but i think we're very conservative and i think most people like that's obvious right like we have a like we don't do we're kind of anti-media like we're like slightly amish um you know we're anti we say we're anti-drinking you know alcohol southern baptist or southern baptist i mean you know a whole whole lot of stuff with that and then um you know like the gender thing like dating we talked about that we talked about that before so we won't open that can of worms anymore uh but yeah so there's just a lot about us that uh if you didn't come from that kind of church it can feel very like restrictive when you come in and like yo why are these people like so uptight um so i think that's part of it and then i think um i don't know kind of relatedly we're we're we're our roots are very korean right um so okay tell me what that means because i'm not korean so yeah okay well i mean i meant oh on one hand just like literally yeah like literally the founding you know pastor couple of the church that grace point came out of you know they were which was not your parents not my parents yeah that was so you know we there was a church called bbc in 1981 and then we came out of them in 2006.

um and uh but yeah like up till i don't know up till at least the 90s i think pretty much our whole church was korean we used to be called kbsk korean baptist student koinonia which is like the worst name ever and then we changed it to asian baptist student that's when we just became koinonia and that's when we sort of entered like normal modern life okay i i kind of see that as that marker there yeah um but yeah i mean so we were very homogenous and very korean and that means a lot of things like to cuss at each other like if you cuss at someone in english then it's like i hate you but in korean like you cuss at people like you like it's an affection yeah it's almost like an affectionate thing anyway and so i think some of that um didn't quite make the the jump american culture in a very graceful way included in that is like the propensity to talk really rough with someone or like sarcastically or like or like yell at people like i remember one of my friend's moms um she told me a story of how um when she was young she thought her dad hated her because her dad would often tell her to go die in korean oh wow right and she was like you know american born so she didn't understand yeah how in korean like like someone telling someone to die is that's kind of it's kind of like funny and endearing right but if you say that in english yeah if you tell someone go die it's like oh my god yeah you you you want me to die right you hate that so anyway you know i get that because actually there are aspects of chinese that are like oh do chinese people do well it's not like to that extent but i've definitely had experiences where i've like literally translated what my parents said to me i'm like why how could you say that and then they're like what you know like so to a degree i think that's that's true yeah that might be an east west thing yeah so i i just think uh there was a period where our church was becoming more diverse but we were still behaving as if everyone was korean and still kind of talking to each other in a certain way and even you know when we came to spiritual stuff and the way we like brought stuff up and confronted it it felt very like rough because in your face that was what we were used to and i think maybe we're a little slow to catch up to that i mean which is our bad you know we we need to adapt to culture and kind of understand like what the culture is and what people can take and what they can't and what they interpret as love so i mean i think in some ways we're still i mean i think we've obviously come a long way but i do think in some ways we're still kind of like oh okay kind of unraveling the the threads of our culture that have been kind of interwoven into our church yeah um so that would be my number three okay should go to number two or yeah any other comments on that um no no okay let's do number two yeah all right you give us count cool all right one two three the internet oh what okay we're very different yeah very different yeah yeah i mean so again i you know i haven't read any of this stuff um but my my mine is more just like a i don't know sociological perspective a little bit you know like just kind of zooming out at our culture at large and hate on the internet is just like everyone knows it's there it's just perfect like there's that there's that wreck it ralph i've never seen the movie but i know wreck it ralph too there's a part where you know wrecks the internet goes to the comments he goes across the comments section and it's like oh we don't go there and then he's he's there and he's like you know and it's like everyone knows exactly what happens in the comments section you do right so you know everyone knows like there's some something about anonymity anonymity anonymity anonymity that's my chinese side coming out um but yeah so something about that like people don't know who you are so you can say what you want you can be completely unfiltered right and it's sort of like i mean i i say stuff in my head that's like i would never say out loud right because i but i know you know but god hears it so i should repent but but you know like that's that is what happens right but i think on the other hand it's not just like like you know that enabling very vicious language but like sort of people finding all kinds of things to hate on like and and being able to pick up on the weirdest things to hate on so and and just sort of like being able to really mischaracterize so so there's this really famous article that came out recently called um reality is a video game and we're all losing and it's taking this like people used to um so when the dark knight came out this sounds totally tangential totally when the dark knight came out no idea um they ran this campaign to advertise it where people were literally chasing clues in real life it was like like they got it like a card and was like me at this street corner here at this time if you could figure it out when you got you got there you got the next clue the next clue so it was almost like a real life like puzzle yeah and then at the end of it they like each got clown masks and it was like it was like part of this like you know oh why it's so serious it was the unveiling of the why so serious like tag and so it was this real life thing and it was like a small community of people at like i think it was comic-con where they were like whoa you know and that became kind of a thing for like companies and gaming and people to do the most famous was this guy that buried like a hundred thousand dollars in like britain or something like that and then people were like all over the world trying to figure it out someone finally found it right but it was like a real life video game so there's a known genre and so what happens is there's this culture that gets created about it running where people are like looking for clues and stuff and they start kind of it's almost like confirmation bias they're starting to look for things yeah now that the whole point of the article is like oh that's kind of weird but people are noticing that that that's like heightened to another degree you know i mean you see that with like conspiracy theories right right that guy that like invaded the pizza shop because he thought there was going to be like a sex yeah yeah yeah yeah so like people are sort of making the weirdest connections yeah and like able to paint the most sinister picture yeah and like create something really hateful out of something that's not even there yeah and i think they do that with political tribes that aren't like them i think that like whatever is their target they will they can find ever more things to hate on yeah and you know like i i've heard about some of the things that people write about us and then some of this stuff is ridiculous it's ridiculous what you know but but then i think that's what's going on okay yeah okay so so just to qualify one thing you said like i don't like i just want to make it clear like i don't think you're saying this either but like that doesn't mean that everything on there is no right like obviously people have like real hurts and yeah yeah yeah and we need it and we need to acknowledge that but i do see what you're talking about because yeah i spent a long time reading through what's online and there's some ridiculous stuff and i mean some of it i know is ridiculous because it was about me right like there was a claim that like this this one guy online just just made this claim that my dad bought me a house and that just didn't happen yeah right but he and his justification was oh i looked at your linkedin a little creepy by the way but i looked at your linkedin yeah and you saw your salary what you made and then i looked at like the housing records and basically there's no way you could have made enough money in that time to get that house right and so therefore you're lying and your dad bought you this house because i went on there and said i didn't my dad didn't do that right and he's like and he's like no you're lying and i was like uh okay i mean i don't know what to tell you at that point but i i do think yeah like there's a certain extent to which okay you've been wounded you've been hurt for sure right but then people take it to this next level where now because they're seeing everything that filter like everything is sinister and everything like we are like you know we're the illuminati now and like every move of ours is kind of analyzed and thought through so okay that's that's kind of where i'm coming from like no for sure there's like stuff on there that's like serious it's like whoa you know but like i i think the the way it gets compounded is this like internet yeah dynamic so it kind of becomes it kind of gets out of hand and yeah okay i mean so mine was very different yeah what was yours again i said bait and switch okay yeah i think a lot of people's experience of our ministry on like especially like the college campus is that we seem to promise one thing or kind of front load like niceness people use like the term love bombing and things and say like oh you you just try to recruit people with these like fake tactics right um i mean i don't know like i i get it because it can seem like that like a lot of our flyers you know people will accuse us of like oh this flyer is very deceptive because it says like free food you know i mean but it also says christian group at the bottom but sure like okay i i can see that and you know people feel like oh like they try to they try to get you in the door right through their like nice tactics um but then what they're really looking to do is to like enslave you you know and to like get you part of their system like plugged into the matrix and there's that kind of thing um and i mean i i think in some ways like okay so i feel a little mixed about that i'm a little ambivalent about that one because yeah i can see it in some ways like like there have been times so we did that used to do this thing called cooking for a question we stopped because we got so much cookie for questions yeah yeah i think it became a meme on the berkeley meme page yeah we got famous but you basically go on campus and you say hey come ask a question about god and then you get a cookie right which perfectly legitimate very upfront sort of ministry yeah like tactic in my opinion but then what some people started doing some like students actually not staff but some students started doing is they would go to people and they could be like hey you want a free cookie and then the guy would be like okay and they'd be like okay but first you got to come ask a question about god and be like oh okay now i don't want a cookie yeah i don't want the cookie anymore so so i can see that like people being like over eager over zealous and doing stuff like that for sure that happens yeah or like you know yeah you want to get free green barbecue or like you want to get free dinner or food whatever and we offer free food at our events yeah it feels like we're trying to trick people with food we do say christian on the flyer yeah but still i could yeah but so so i mean i don't know i i do so so on the one hand yeah we're guilty and i think we we've told our people we've told our people i've told my people like don't be bad and switchy you know so our welcome night now is just called the good news right to be very upfront like this is a christian thing you're coming to a christian thing um but on the other hand i do think like one thing to understand about the college campus is that it is a recruitment like sphere like everyone's recruiting the frats are out there recruiting all the other christian group i mean like it's not just us like christian groups do this all the time offer free food with their events and stuff and like that's kind of what's expected you know and obviously like i'm not just giving you free food because i love giving away free food yeah right i'm trying to get you into something i'm trying to get you into so that you'll hear the gospel right but it's not because i want your money or because i want your labor right i'm trying to do something which i think will really benefit you you know eternal life so that you don't like what else am i supposed to do am i supposed to like act mean right yeah so so i mean again that one's kind of complex and and i get it and i think we we were bad at this in the past and we're trying to get better and admit in some ways we still need to be better well i think like i think that's true so a lot of like the recruitment aspects bait and switchy but i think you said something else that i think we can do a little bit longer on which is kind of like the experience of like you first come and you're really welcomed and then suddenly there's all this expectation on you or like something like the in your sophomore year the switch flips and like there's now things you're being asked to do you know and it's like what you know and that wasn't like not clear yeah part of me kind of wonders like why wasn't that clear don't you see that the upperclassmen are serving or something like that a little bit and like you know but but like no but i can see how you would experience that that can feel like another element of bane switch that's just sort of like whoa like i was i didn't sign up for this you know and and so people kind of give out and then by that time they've like made that all their friends are in our church right that's hard and then when they realize like okay i don't want this you know and then they they need to find out you know they decide to go find another church whatever that process is really painful yeah i mean so again we've actually talked about this before with like all of our staff and i think one thing that we've tried to do is like and be a little more upfront like with people like hey we are an intense church i think even this podcast is one effort to do that honestly just to give people like an inside look like hey before try before you buy a little bit you know like we are kind of different in this regard um but it's hard you know because it's yeah i mean like your dad like you know at certain retreats i've heard people go look like leave earlier you know i mean like even started saying to that extent like this is the time to leave if you're thinking because this is what we are about yeah what we're like we don't want you to experience that pain so and so but then we do that and it's sort of like you guys are too quick to kick people out you know until that's 22 yeah it goes both ways cool all right move on to the last one sure all right number one okay ready one two three talking conversations okay same thing same thing okay so i said talking to people tough conversations you want to share your thoughts first yeah yeah so um this is like i think one of the toughest things about ministry and i think most of the hate out there is because of this it's just tough conversations gone wrong um and yeah there's just so so you know as we're trying to disciple people as we're trying to raise and become like christ you know like every you know what what is it that we do and you know for me the picture of that is ephesians 4 right it's it's speaking the truth in love it's acts 20 paul's paul's saying you know i admonished everyone like i did not withhold anything that was profitable i modest you day and night with tears you know and you read those and you're kind of like okay that's like you can just gloss over those words really easily right but what is it what is that about that's that's like i'm i as a leader have the responsibility to shape you into someone who's more and more like jesus in every of your life and in every aspect right and that's really intense you know but but you know i'm gonna do it with as much wisdom as i possibly can with like the strength of relationship all that but that means i'm gonna have to have moments where like i have tough conversations with you about things that i'm seeing you know and like i'm not trying to be mean i think those things are going to help you right but those are really hard conversations to give but also to take and think about how many of those conversations have happened in our church because of like how long we've been in ministry and how many people have come to ministry and then like they're college students so they're young they need a lot of shaping frankly yeah yeah but then it's like it's you know it's like yeah you're young and you're you don't take that the best way and no one talks to you like that maybe not even your parents you know so your parents talk you to talk to you like that yeah yeah i mean i grew up really church so maybe that's why but um but i think you take that and then you take the fact that like we have a lot of leaders and a lot of young leaders and then it's not like professionally trained you know or anything like that it's like you know people who are kind of you know learning maybe they picked up some of that korean culture-ness you know them they're just doing what they're doing yeah they receive and there's just there's probably been a lot of mistakes there have been a lot of mistakes and people have been hurt and relational hurt like that is the worst kind and so that results in pain anger disappointment and then that just kind of just all comes out you know on and people feel like they can't talk to people about it so they talk you know type on the internet yeah yeah so um i think basically the same thing for me i think one verse that captures it for me is colossians 128 him we proclaim warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in christ for this i toil struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me so i mean to me that sounds yeah to me that sounds more than like hey let's meet once a week and talk about the bible right it's like a little more than that because i don't know if that counts as struggling with all of god's energy that he works in you right like that means like i'm trying to deal with your character i'm trying to help you grow as a person i'm trying to like confront your sin issues i mean you look at all the things that paul had to do had to go through with like the corinthians you know and all the things that he wrote in his letters just the many different topics he was addressing like that was not like you know that was full life discipleship that he was doing and i think we as a church we really believe in that we believe we are called to do that like we have to do that like out of obedience to christ but we also well the other element of that is like we're living so close yeah that you see like like we're in each other's home yeah like i can't ignore it like right there in front of me yeah my kid will be like there was no one coming over today you know like that's the extent right and then so it's right there and it's like yeah okay to a degree i need sometimes i need to just let those slide but then after it's happening a lot it's like oh i'm gonna talk about that you know because like i see it you know if you obligated to do that yeah yeah so then i mean and you know it's tough but i think as i think about as i think about my own life like not only that's like oh we're supposed to do this out of grim duty but like as i think about my own life and you know feel free to chime in with some of your experiences but um as i think about my own life all the times where i really grew and like took a big step forward in my faith were times where often it was precipitated by some tough conversation you know so i mean just quick example that i always go back to is you know i went to taiwan my junior year to serve as a missionary honestly i had no heart for the taiwanese i didn't know where taiwan was on a map i didn't like taiwanese food i just went because my friend really wanted to go and he needed a buddy to go with them so i was there surely out of grim duty i didn't like it i had a bad attitude and i was like breaking down the team and then one day my leader just sat me down and he was like yo you know what like i think you're just really immature you know you need to grow up and that was tough to hear because i fancied myself a mature person which is hyper deluded of me but um but that's what he said to me and there it was and i had a choice to take him up and you know take that seriously or to be like you know you don't know me like whatever you know and i mean thankfully uh i i listened you know and i said okay you know i'm gonna try i'm gonna start trying to like really love these people and try to make the most of this time and it ended up being one of the most transformative like months semesters of my life you know i got to see one of my dear friends to this day come to christ this total non-christian guy and i mean yeah there's there's so much to that that i could go on about but i i think back and i'm like gosh i'm so thankful that my leader at that time talked to me because otherwise i would have just missed out and maybe it would have been worse like i might have i don't know i don't know what effects i could have had ultimately but i'm so thankful because i got to be a part of that now and i get i can look back with like a lot less regret than i otherwise would have so like yeah and so i think about that in the lives of the people that i ministered like i don't want to rob them of that right even if it is costly in the sense of like it's hard to have those kind of conversations so yeah yeah no so that those are like the best stories and i for sure have experienced that i don't even experience leaders like saying stuff like you know i'm not sure about this but like this is kind of i'm seeing like is this the and then they're like they back fine first and they kind of explore and ask more questions before they you know and then they go okay is it this or this and it's more like this okay and then they trust so i think for the most part even within the tough conversations my leaders have been really gracious with me actually i really appreciated that it's been blessing but i think for me like like like well here's a question do you are you more confrontational are you like like or do you think you could you should grow like where where do you find i'm not confrontational okay i'm like an enneagram like i'm kind of an enneagram nine or five one or the other but yeah i my issue is that i don't confront enough but i know you're sure yeah yeah this is really surprising people because they think i'm nice in fact one of your guys that you're mentoring once was like man like you know what what if i was like under you what if you're my leader and i looked and i was like you don't want to be because i knew it was under you you're used to a certain kind of leader right very different and i so yeah for me i definitely had a long like kind of period of time and i'm still growing through it but like where i was like a little too confrontational and maybe even like a little too smothering a little bit like really one of my guys who are really pushing them and not putting the ball in their court enough you know that sort of thing kind of not recognizing boundaries that well i remember those times we've been talking about yeah yeah and you i had conversations with you where i was like recognizing that and i was like it was really painful to to to grow out of that because like i started realizing these different conversations like oh maybe i shouldn't have done that and i went back to multiple guys and and this is actually just like right before church playing actually where i was like hey this tough conversation can you tell me if i like did anything like that you know and you know it was it was anything that was like yeah yeah that was too much you know and one of the guys was like no i needed that thank you for doing that and i don't think i have anything to fulfill so okay another guy was like no most part was good but there's just one thing that was a little bothered by apologize for that and there was one guy that was just like you know that season is very mixed for me and i i don't want to kind of i don't feel the need to like correct everything everything you know that happened i'm just you know like we're just gonna have grace about it you know and so like that was i don't know if i needed to i i felt like i needed to do that i don't know if like every leader needs to do that or something like that but that was just something that i needed to do and um like ultimately you know me ministering didn't depend on those answers it was just sort like me relationally with those guys i just wanted to know that right and it's just it's so hard and maybe sometimes like some people don't like i don't know like maybe sometimes some people don't recognize how hard it is and how fraud it is and how risky it is and then like you you kind of don't think about it you don't pray but you don't really feel the weight of it and you just really rigidly or mechanically just you know you say and then it's like oh you should have done that you know and i had to go through that kind of growing process or even i had to like process my own frustrations and patience and repent of those things too at the same time some of those guys are like no i need to hear that yeah and so it's a constant growing process yeah i mean i think gosh i know this is a little bit of an overgeneralization but i do think like people make blunders for sure and often that's just an issue of wisdom like oh you were foolish like i don't know why you had that kind of conversation with that person at that time like he wasn't ready for it right so those blunders happen um and there are times also when people are maybe a little like i don't know in an effort to be a good leader you know there's sort of this kind of perception that like a good leader is one who confronts which i think is true to an extent like you do have to be able to confront but maybe you know they don't balance that with the requisite kind of wisdom or thought yeah warming or even just warming up yeah we're just like like our relationship is not at that point and they misjudge that so i definitely think those blunders happen and i think those are the cause of a lot of pain and i think what you did was good because i think we we need to know how to apologize for that i i don't think i'm great at that i don't think actually a lot of people at our church don't know how to do that gracefully and i think maybe that's something maybe you should teach a workshop on that one day but no but i do think that's important to do um to to to acknowledge mistakes and to apologize and so maybe that's an area of growth for us but on the other hand i do feel like i can say with a fair amount of confidence for me for the people that administer to me for everyone i know as a minister that those conversations are never from a place of like i'm trying to benefit myself right and that's what i really find frustrating about some of the online criticism they they act so certain that these conversations that we have are because we're on power trips or because we hate these people or we're trying to like like that is i mean i'm not saying that never happens but if it does it's exceedingly rare it's like really rare because like you just got to think about it like why like what power do i really gain from that if anything i'm probably going to drive you away if i cared about having more influence and like more people under me i would just be nice to everybody right because then everyone would love me and everyone would stick around i i mean so i i know it's hard to prove to anyone but like i would just appeal like give give your leaders the benefit of the doubt like i'm not saying they do it well yeah i'm not saying they don't have anything to apologize for but at least their intent is it's almost never out of some personal gain you know yeah it's always it's always at least the intent with is for your good and i can say that right yeah yeah and i remember that was one thing you said to me actually when i was kind of going through that when i was like kind of wrestling i don't you don't remember oh yeah it was it was like i was like wrestling like man i don't was like did i do a good job that you know whatever and you're like hey you know um i know you you know and you did because you love those guys and i was like yeah i did you know and that's the most crucial thing and i might have made a mistake you know but it was out of love and and um you know so it's like i don't know maybe there's just like one takeaway it's just just to see more grace maybe on both sides yeah you know yeah and we're learning we need to grow we need to change we need to shift but it's like it's not like to air that out like all online and and all that like do we really need to do that it's not it you know yeah so yeah and and i mean like again there's there's things we got to improve and grow in like i think one thing is like i don't think we have a great way to reconcile those situations right now because sometimes the leader you're just oblivious yeah and i don't know if we've really figured this out like hey who do i talk to if i feel unfairly treated by my leader you know and we have like pastor ed's anonymous email inbox but i don't know that can be kind of complicated like i don't talk to the head pastor about this and also like i don't know how he's going to reply to me because it's an anonymous email like how do i have a dialogue about this i mean so that's something that i've kind of been pushing for personally like i think we got to talk about it more yeah so i'm not saying like we got this down perfectly like don't complain like i definitely think like let's talk more and if you have ideas about this if you're listening you have ideas about how we can do this better yeah for sure no i agree like in my 10 years of being college minister i think it's been twice where my leader said hey someone under you had this feedback for me yeah that's super hard to do yeah it's it's only happened like twice it's hard it's hard i agree and that's never happened to me but that's probably because i don't confront enough so anyway all right well this was a fun conversation yeah i'm glad we had it because i think um these are the things that you keep talking about um but hopefully that gives people some perspective because people have a sense of like how we feel about some of the things that people read online yeah um but um yeah so it's another episode of why they hate and you know unofficial official i can't get those straight dude the official unofficial grace point maybe you should do the intro okay i'll do the outro yeah well like subscribe and we will see you guys next time 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