all right everyone welcome to the official unofficial grace point podcast good to have you guys back i'm steven i'm isaiah and we are your co-hosts um so we are um we realized we jumped into this podcast i mean we don't know what we're doing clearly no yeah no idea um getting a lot of great tips and stuff like that but um we realized that we kind of jumped to this whole thing talking about how we're a weird church and that makes sense if you've been to our church and or you've been our church a long time stuff like that but actually you don't really know our church you're just getting kind of wow this is a weird church yeah you only saw all the weird aspects of us so yeah my brother was like i think you made us seem weirder than we actually are which was not our intention but looking back i can see how that's the case not a good first impression yeah so we felt like okay let's let's just go back a little bit backtrack zoom out a little bit yeah what the heck is this thing called grace point yeah who are we yeah and uh what makes us tick i think what we wanted to focus on so last episode was what makes us weird this episode is what makes us tick you know what are we passionate about and i think um if there's one slogan that really captures it um it's an axe to church in every college town yeah i mean that's that that motto slogan whatever it is that tagline is what's sort of animated us the last 10 years and yeah if you come to our building it's like it's posted on the walls website everything watch a video isaiah yells it at you in his narrations book words yeah i don't i don't do that because i want to really it's very stirring though i'm very thankful you thank you thank you steven you're welcome okay anyway moving on so we're just gonna um we're just gonna unpack that slogan and just kind of talk about like each part of it or aspects of it um that really kind of explain and capture who we are yeah yeah um and so actually maybe go backwards like acts two church in every college town okay so college and usually we think about college ministries reaching college students thinking about parachurch ministries like intervarsity crew you know navigators like all great great ministries um you don't think about a church though so how did that happen how did we end up was it like a grand strategy you know like yeah college you know that's how it was for those parachurch organizations you know not quite like that for us yeah so well so i can take this um this section of it because i was here for a while um so i i think most of the people even people who are like kind of staff a lot of them don't fully know the history of our church so it might be helpful to just tell it let's just tell the story and i i've heard it like a a million times and i still tell you i still ask you like yeah yeah yeah so um so yeah just to be up front this is our history so the story begins in 1981 when a korean couple um their names were becky and paul they started a church called berkland and it was called berkland because it was on the border of berkeley and oakland so henson and berkland berkland baptist church so bbc so you hear that phrase sometimes and they started a church on the berkeley campus for college students and that was always their vision they came out of another group that was also about college ministry um and so yeah they they they founded so the founders were not pastor and kelly yeah that surprised me when yeah oh i didn't know that yeah contrary to uh common uh belief they my parents actually didn't come to our church i think until like 1986 your dad knew like people but then he didn't even go there as an undergrad yeah so back in the day the korean christian community at berkeley was pretty small so they were all kind of friends so like his best friend was part of berkeley as well as like his best friend's younger brother who he was also very close to and a bunch of others um and so but my dad uh for just various reasons started coming to berkeley after graduation and um him and those other friends and and the leader couple were kind of the first generation of leaders of that church a lot of them became pastors a lot of them are still pastors this day at other berkeley churches bbc churches um but around 2006 not around 2006 2006 um the whole bbc which by that time was kind of a network of churches kind of similar to what grace point is today um decided to split go autonomous um so that it wouldn't be a network anymore and so our church became grace point what it is today incorporated as a new organization um and that became kind of i don't know in some ways that's the start i guess of our like modern history as grace point um so that was when i was in high school right right yeah and i came in i didn't know any of this as a freshman right when did you find out about them just curious when and how do you remember gosh uh i think it was like my freshman year and like your this q a session which we do all the time and your dad started talking about like our history and then started talking about some of the online criticism and stuff and i was like like oh what the you know and i went on a like i've said in other uh episodes um i i went on the you know saw all this online stuff and i was like whoa this is not my experience whatever yeah and then i just oh so that's how you've heard about the whole bbc history yeah yeah a little bit that's i mean and then i heard a fuller history from you know your parents and stuff like that um and from you as well um but like i think what i was intrigued by when i heard it was how like and this is maybe the other aspect of the motto which is like acts to church in college like how does that fit together like it when i i i think i have to say when i came i was like wow this is brilliant like i was really impressed by by just the faithfulness everyone the culture everything and i was like how did you guys like set out to do this like how did you and the answer was like we didn't set out to do this it all happened by accident you know and that was to me that was a pleasant surprise yeah and it seemed like during even before i was there during those days that that kind of because it was a college context and you're you're with each other all the time and college is that great flattening of just like social structures where like people you know it doesn't matter what background you're from and stuff like that you're just living in the same dorm room and you're just close right and then you see each other and then so there was that and then kind of you had to come to the homogeneity maybe a little bit of just being korean and asian whatever i'm sure it was close it was just really close and i remember hearing like first thing it came to our church like i've known this guy for 25 years i've never heard that at a church and so that stuck with me i was kind of in a place where what god was talking to me about at the time was about covenantal relationships actually because i kind of noticed that i wasn't like that just my friends were like going to high school they're all crying and i was like why you guys didn't know this was going to happen like i was kind of cold going to college yeah so i just noted that even my non-christian friends knew something about relationships that i didn't and i need to learn that and then i stumbled across grace point it's like we've known each other for 25 years i was like okay i think there's something here right so that what i've heard is like you're just living like you you lived in college you didn't really graduate you still went over each other's houses and yeah in some ways it was kind of intentional in the sense that there was kind of a turning point around i think around like the late 80s where kind of some of the some of like the younger staff as well as like some of like the seniors and stuff started talking to each other actually and saying stuff like you know what like what we've got here you know and i mean college is a special time where yeah it just lends itself to the pattern of acts two um where you're seeing each other every day yeah kind of whether you like it or not you're stuck within these like dorms you're seeing each other and you know you don't have much possession so like money and there's no like difference in social status so just in some ways it's like if there's any place where it's easy to experience and actually live at acts two it's going to be in college and people had been experiencing that as undergrads and there kind of came a point where people started talking to each other and saying you know what like this doesn't have to end like we can actually stick around so it wasn't just like people started sticking around like looking at each other like they actually started talking about it right because the bay area was not like the place yeah it was like orchards now uh-huh silicon valley was like an actual valley there was no silicon valley sf was not yet like a tech hub all the jobs were like in socal and other places um so it was kind of a radical thought that like sacrifice like you know we can choose to stay and to invest in this church and each other and build something really special here and so you know you hear about like peter choi the guy who coined this term acts two church in every college town who coined that slogan um you know he took like a job at like a computer parts minimum wage job yeah berkeley grad working a minimum wage job just so he could stick around you know other stories like that um and people started to kind of one by one make that decision to stick around so so lest you think that that was something orchestrated by my parents it actually wasn't like those sort of conversations started to happen actually like right around when my parents started coming to our church um in the late 80s and they weren't yet like the pastor figure so again it wasn't like you it's tempting to think of it as some like grandmaster scheme it really wasn't actually it was kind of kind of just happened it was a grassroots sort of thing and then over time that picked up momentum and i mean even i think when we were in college like we were kind of at the beginning edge of like this thing this phenomenon where like majority of the class was like sticking around now because even in even like in the 10 15 20 years prior like people would stick around but it was like you know okay it was like a handful so maybe like four or five out of a class of like 20 or 30.

um so it definitely evolved yeah over time kind of what i'm hearing you say is it's it's like people are close living out christian life together in college context experiencing acts too maybe they didn't even know it but that you know but to some degree that was like there's something special here and there's one inflection point which is where people are going like hey we you don't have this doesn't have to stop so then they're staying and so there's like that kind of family feel but then in when we were an undergrad there was kind of another inflection yeah it was kind of a jump where it was like suddenly this like the whole idea of every college town this this church planting on college campuses kind of took off right and i remember um our sophomore year 2010 having 2009 the uh thanksgiving retreat where like our austin peers came up right it was kind of the first group of students for the austin church plant and they sang thank you for giving to the lord and there was like not a dry eye in in the auditorium and like for me it was just as a sophomore i'm just like cool you know like it was great but i didn't know how much that meant to like the older leaders and stuff who had sent off that first team yeah yeah so back to backtrack a little bit right 2006 we became independent we became grace point and that wasn't like uh hey let's all go independent guys it was it was it was a tough time right i don't want to go into all the lurid details right but like it was it meant some lost relationships like personally all my best friends who i grew up with were on the other side of that split yeah and kind of overnight i lost my reference group in a way i mean they were my only reference group but i was a junior in high school and they were like definitely my best friends um and kind of in a similar way um we as a church were feeling just wow kind of i don't know i don't know if rudderless is the right term but definitely like well we're kind of alone in the world now and to plan a plan our first church as grace point in 2008 it felt soon like well we just came independent we're really going to do this it felt vulnerable like what if something like this happens again in the future and you know another split happens like what about that and there was just a lot of fears around it and so it was almost like yeah planning i've said this before planning a church in 2008 kind of felt like it would kill us like we thought we were going to die i mean looking back is a little melodramatic i mean because it's not like they were going to like i don't know antarctica they're going to austin in the states yeah you know i mean texas is different but it's not that different but anyway um so that church plant happened and then yeah what you were describing that first year when they came back and those guys were actually our peers yeah um so it's neat shout out to uh yeah francis david g lu all those dudes um so i mean because of that church plant those guys are here and we have the relationships we do and so because of that that sort of emboldened our church i think um and then 2010 and in some ways i think 2010 affected you a lot more than it affected me yeah well like yeah i mean just to comment on what you were just talking about like i love that that it was really out of a place of weakness you know um and and what i i think what i've learned a lot because you know i came from a charismatic vineyard church and even reading like the vineyard story kind of gave me a understanding that god works through weakness right anyway that's just one of the things i love about this story um but yeah in 2010 then we planted like you know three it was like three in a year three yeah we got both all of a sudden sd riverside and minnesota yeah and i remember that winter retreat where they were announcing who was going to be on those teams and i remember had my three mentors and it was like sd is you know uh richard lung and i was like oh it's one of my mentors and riverside abe yang oh that's another one of my mentors minnesota john kreeley you know all three of my leaders are gone me and my friends leave each other we're like who's leading us next year like what what's happening you know and it was just like will who left was like ah so that was i mean we never did it that way again because that was a little traumatic yeah yeah it was but um by the same time that that was actually for me when i started picking up on this vision because um i'm from socal and so i would go back for breaks and i would go on these domestic mission trips where i'd go to riverside and like bob was there our friend and good our good friend bob um and he would he would pick me up for service and stuff but then we would go on these like week-long where you know welcome week as as people are coming back to school we're just doing outreach and stuff and i just remember those mission just being so magical because you go out the day you you go you're like you're a missionary for a week you go out for the day all day you're doing outreach and meeting people you're talking about god you're just trying to play ball and just get to know them and stuff you're throwing on events and all that kind of thing you come back you just tell each other how god was working that day you celebrate that you eat good food unhealthy food you know college food and did it again and again and again each day went to other campuses like la and irvine like prayed over there prayed god would bring a church there and we're just thinking like i can do this for the rest of my life i want to do this for the rest of my life with these people and with this mission you know and um it was it was exciting and it took off and so we have like all these videos and we'll link some in the description of just like the growth of our church and and and all that and it's kind of been kind of crazy you know like to to because we're on 70 plus campuses now nationwide network and yes all the older ones they're like we didn't plan for this no way yeah and uh and then even just like when i tell people about the latest round of church planning 2021 you know thousand people signed up after covid to go on a church plant these are our bivocational you know members and then we sent out 300 plus to midwest and northeast 400 400 yeah i think so and philly you know the 30 of us in philly is is just part of that wave so then people ask us like how how right and so i guess my question is like okay yeah if you were to say what are the key ingredients to that like what enables us to do that yeah yeah yeah and we might be repeating some of the stuff we've already said but yeah what would be the key ingredients to like what we look like today you know yeah yeah so i think man there's a lot that goes into that but i think one thing that i often say and that you'll you'll hear different leaders around here saying is that like our our secret sauce like like okay when you look at any one of us we are not very remarkable people we're not especially smart i think we're probably like uh we're better at cs than most churches probably like that's something but it's not like we're super charismatic i like our our our preachers are not like amazing you know um we often say we have like a lot of leaders with no leadership um like like we're just very ordinary folk yeah yeah and like i don't think you know we're composed of these heroes of faith and yet you know when we you know go to conferences and other pastors like hear these numbers of how many churches we planted and stuff they're they're kind of dumbfounded yeah um and and when we thought about it like when i think about it i think the secret sauce of it it goes back to that very beginning of that experience of doing life together and deciding to continue that pattern of life that you had as a college student into your post-grad years and not stopping that yeah you know so that there's this closeness um that really and and closeness community begets courage you know when you have people who are doing it with you when you have people that you know you can trust that you are covenanted with then it makes you bold and makes you able to do things that you would never be able to do on your own and you know we always use this example um when talking about this but you know like if you're if you're on a you know lonely mountain road and your car breaks down you're by yourself yeah right that's that's a horror movie it's over like a disaster something terrible right but when that happens with a car full of friends yeah right then you just have to outrun the other guy no i'm just kidding yes is that how you think about okay i mean never to get stuck with you no but but if it happens with a car full of friends it's an adventure yeah and it's a fun story to tell later and all those things right and i think that's kind of our experience of of church planting it's like you know if we do it together there's not much we can't do yeah so what is it that your dad's like what looks like high commitment is just covenant is actually i wish i had a better memory yeah yeah well i think what looks like high commitment is actually just community yeah yeah and then the other phrase we always say is if you want to go fast go by yourself but if you want to go far go together and so you know coming at that for that like like the whole closeness aspect i didn't really appreciate that you know i don't think i like i i would have wanted to go fast because i was a church kid i wanted to serve you know and and i feel like god personally my story was like slow down you know learn to build relationships because that's going to be the strength for like a lifelong you know serving and following god yeah and that's like so true so i think um people might not know this but actually back in the day our church was not very evangelistic um we were like we were you know there's the seeker friendly movement we like to say that we were seeker hostile back then you know and we talked about that we're gonna talk about that yeah with pastor will and um kind of the some of the like truly cringe things that we did as a church back then um but in some ways i think because we had that period where we just got close and we were like not effective at evangelism you know i think we tried here and there but you know a lot of that we learned from saddleback and other groups later on but there was a whole period where we did like nothing but just fellowship and like get really close i think and i think in some ways like to this day we're kind of powered by that period when i look back like the relationships among like the deacons and the older ones were forged kind of during that time and yeah and and i think one thing that we've been feeling in recent years is now we're starting to starting to run out a little bit and so you know in some ways we have to slow down go back to our roots make sure that we don't neglect our relationships with one another as we try to go fast yeah you don't want to outpace kind of that ministry like you don't want that to outpace what's happening internally exactly yeah yeah both in our relationships and our relationship god and all that so yeah yeah one key ingredient i also thought was um just everybody a minister we say that a lot like you know uh church planning is hard it's hard on a lot of fronts and it's hard i mean even just from the financial aspect right but so many people in our church are bi-vocational like co-vocational they have full-time jobs and stuff i mean you know i worked uh three years in affordable housing um doing that while doing college ministry i mean you did how many years of you did your law school i did a video i did yeah random things yeah i mean yeah and then and then my wife like seven years in just tech company you know while doing ministry um there's something about that like where like and people worked really hard they knew how to sacrifice you know um for uh the work of the gospel and then in terms of like church planting and being able to fund that like and and do that i think i think bible accelerated sort of the church some of the church planting i think so that would be another ingredient yeah yeah and then just kind of going off of that like the whole everyone administered thing i mean i think that's also what enables us to do what we do because you know i don't have to be like the most amazing leader in the world and i look at a lot of other church planters that i meet now and like hats off to them a lot of them it's kind of a one-man show yeah you know and by the force of their like will and personality and talent they're able to hold a church together i don't think i could do that on my own but i have like a lot of very committed team members yeah you know and so i know that we can do this together and they're there to kind of fill in my my failures and my foibles and that that really helps i think yeah so you touched on this a little earlier just kind of like yeah like where we're at now as a church and going into the future right um so we talked about what makes us tick and um you know uh the things that that form kind of who we are now that led up to what we look like now and trying to make sense of that where do you see us going in the future maybe we could just end this podcast a little like maybe next five ten years you know yeah um what what is gonna continue you know or what was that look like yeah yeah i mean so i i've been thinking about that a lot and we've been talking about that i think because your parents are they're i mean they're about you know yeah they said today they're retiring in five years i don't know if that's true or they were just in that kind of mood today but that's what they said um but maybe i shouldn't have said that oh shoot but um but the the whole thing about like yeah where is our church going to be i mean i i think we're never gonna we're never gonna abandon acts to church in every college town like i think that's that's where we started we're gonna be faithful to that you know unless god gives us a clear sign to get out of that um but i think what's been really interesting in the past really the past year but maybe past five years or so is kind of this what we've been calling like the pivot to youth ministry um i feel like god has kind of expanded our vision um and i i think we need a whole new episode to like go into this yeah this requires a whole new yeah but i just in brief i think there's been a lot of signs that have been pointing us towards youth ministry whether it be just the all these big churches we we did kind of our own research and found that the top 25 biggest churches in america more than half of them don't have a high school group you know um we've been finding out that there's just all these churches especially after covid where the youth groups have just been decimated and yeah um a lot of just youth leaders quitting because it's so hard these days you can't find youth pastors yeah you can't find youth pastors anymore and so we've been just feeling like man we need to expand and not just think of ourselves as just a college focused church so for me i see it as as we're keeping the college ministry thing we're not in some ways we're even like you know incurred like for for questions to become youth mentors yeah and disciple them that way yeah because i feel like college college students are like the best people yeah it was college students who who led my middle school youth group and led me to christ and and in many ways who i am today is because of that because of them was such a formative period you know so i i love the pivot i think it makes sense and i mean i don't personally i'm like i'm not like a youth ministry you know like i'm not i'm not that charismatic youth pastor ministry like whatever thing but like yeah like you said like because we're doing it together yeah right yeah and um so i definitely think that i think that's in the future um i don't know i think we're gonna keep grace point the name like i don't know man i kind of think when we've planted philly we're like we want to do yeah story church i kind of think we got to let go of the name and but i mean that's my two cents that we should all just it's it's it's tough though it is tough i i don't want to prognosticate too much on that but yeah well i mean what do you what do you see five ten years what do you think oh man um i think we're i i don't know i would like to dream big um we're already international you know and we got our church in shiju taiwan but i think we will go more places international that's one thing but that's something i've been thinking about oh yeah a lot about kind of that being the next phase but anyway sorry go on yeah i'm just curious if you would like to go somewhere what would you want to go i don't know maybe we have to talk to our wife you know you know this is gonna seem super random but belgium belgium oh we met this one yeah i won't name him here um but we met this one law student from belgium this past year and he kept telling us non-christian guy but he kept telling us you know what there's there's nothing like what you guys are doing here in my home country yeah and christianity is hated here but if there was a group like yours like i would come and he actually became christian this past summer praise the lord that's a whole story in and of itself but i don't know that would be neat yeah he's like if you ever come to europe come to my country you know and i ever since then that that's kind of haunted me i've been feeling like oh man but i love that because it's like it's not because we have a great vision for belgium it's that connection we have yeah through that guy now yeah right um and i love the way that works so we'll see how god works and moves um but i'm excited you know and and just god willing we'll be able to just continue amen amen all right so that's a little bit of overview hopefully you got a better idea of of our group and and what we're about um and so we'll see you next episode hit like and i was told to say smash the subscribe button dude you can't say that you're too old you can only say that if you're young really weird that sounded super just click it just click click click all right thanks for joining us on the official unofficial grace point podcast