was the love at first sight no because all i ever saw was a line of pastors and a line of elders fist fighting each other and the police had to come and break it up and i'm like drinking my soup and i was like this is the church this summer we decided to shift our sunday service to the downtown area welcome to the official unofficial acts to network podcast we are launching lifelong kingdom workers from every college campus my name is stephen my name is isaiah and today we have dp and kata on our show i'm glad to have you guys thanks for coming on guys um so dp that's not his real name uh why don't you guys introduce yourselves actually yeah i'm uh dp i actually i'm i'm david but everyone calls me dp yeah so david park so that's what dp yeah and you guys based in chicago we're based in chicago i'm katarina no one calls me that either everyone calls me kata but you don't like kata right that's you know i didn't at the beginning but i was really shy and one of my peers was like really extroverted so she just introduced me to everyone as kata and then it's stuck and now i'm fine with it oh you're fine with it now so we actually both have nicknames that we did not choose our names were given to us wow it's very biblical yeah okay all right why didn't you like it i'm just because it's not my name kind of oh because um every time someone said hannah or anna i would turn around and then anytime someone said catalog i would turn around and then recently catapult okay got it nice all right cool well um we wanted to talk about um a few things um and we know that this past fall has been pretty some exciting things have been happening in chicago but before we jump into that let's just get to know you guys a little bit and um actually dp and i were roommates so i know dp fairly well from that um our relationship was kind of like uh like up like like russell and mr frederickson a little bit yeah yeah just our entire like peer class our yeah our friends were like mr frederickson so like i just just to get just so that people can know what you're like that there was uh our very first night like you know hanging out and then like we went to you know we're on the bunk we're in the bunk bed yeah we're in the bunk bed and i was just trying to get to know you trying to be relational asking questions talking but it was mostly me talking and then i asked like oh man entirely you talking it was entirely you were talking but it was actually you were yeah and i asked like in the middle of it i was like oh man am i am i talking too much so i asked you am i talking too much and you said i said uh no as long as you don't expect me to respond it's okay we got off to a great start it's a great start that's when i that's what i that's when i thought like oh was it a mistake that i moved into this house with these guys like oh man yeah yeah we had good times all right um but why don't we just like yeah how did you guys start coming out to our church how'd you become christian did you become christian at our church or was it before yeah yeah uh well i yes i grew up going to church um so the way i describe it is like i i started going to church around like second grade because my parents started going but because they were not believers yet i grew up in a kind of a non-christian household while attending church on sunday so i didn't grow up like with a lot of christian values in the home um but i did get the benefit of like hearing a lot of teaching on sunday so um i made some like you know significant realizations over the years especially regards to like you know just like seeing myself as a sinner and things like that but then it wasn't really until i came to our church in college that like it became real for me i so um i started you know so how i came to our church was through a family friend actually so i came to our church a couple years older and then um she invited me to use to welcome night so saw uh came and heard a pastor speak and uh i remember just hearing him say if you grew up in church and you have questions about the faith it's uh it's really up to you to get those things answered because there's a lot of answers out there and he named off a couple authors and so i started reading those authors and that began my journey and it was a few years a few months after that where i became a christian at the winter retreat yeah so that was freshman year freshman year yeah so how did you start coming out to church like as a second grader if your parents didn't go oh they started going to church so like some uh you know the korean immigrant church kind of network they i think they met some people within a church and then they started going to church as a result of that my dad had some catholic background they went occasionally i think when he was younger but they didn't identify as christian at all so um so it was it was really that like immigrant network and it was i think for them it was like just a way to get to know people and i think years after that they became christians yeah okay yeah yeah um so i was one of those like kind of de-churched disillusioned kids that came into college so i went to church pretty much all my life because my mom grew up um her dad was a pastor in korea so just through that lineage we kind of started going to church when we got to america and then in high school i think i went through a lot of church splits and um the most core memory i have of church growing up was me eating like um miyokgook or something in the cafeteria after sunday school korean soup seaweed soup and i see police coming in and it's a line of pastors and a line of elders fist fighting each other and the police had to come break it up and i'm like drinking my soup and i was like this is the church oh so after that i think i just attended church because i was curious about god but i kind of knew like man this is such a failed institution i don't really know what i'm doing here so my senior year i had completely left church and i said forget it and i'm not going back everyone's a hypocrite i'm a hypocrite and then um my sister who's two years older came out to our church as a freshman at berkeley and she changed so much um when she came back from a mission trip in cambodia and i was like what is wrong with you and she said i think i found this very biblical church and i distinctly remember my response was come on you and i both know those don't exist i'm like what did i know as like a 17 year old but that was my response and she goes no i know i know you know i understand why you think that but i really think this church is more biblical than anything i've seen so then i started hoping like that it was true but then i actually thought like i need to rescue her from these people i don't know what's going on but she's so different um so when i got into berkeley my internal response was oh good i can go check out her church because i really really want it to be true so then i was guarded but i came in as a freshman and then um i was kind of freaked out by all the lights and the fog fog machine at the welcome night i was like this is too well done like they're a little bit too like excellent i'm not sure are they biblical like i had no it can't be bivocally and excellent but then but then i heard pastor i'd preach and that was the first time like the bible actually made sense to me and i was like oh i just want more of this and then um a lot of people because my sister and i look so similar everyone came up to me as a freshman they're like you must be lois's sister we've been praying for you i was so freaked out but then yeah so despite that i actually stayed and then um i wasn't really looking for friends i was kind of you know uh introverted anti-social but then i did find a group of friends very quickly at our church um and they're all my friends today still yeah and then i think at the winter retreat freshman year same yeah same winter retreat when i understood like i never understood sin and i never understood the gospel before then it was very clear i've never been a christian i've never made that decision myself and then like two minutes later i was like wait a second i can make that decision now so it was a very clear decision for me and um it wasn't that dramatic i just repented of my sins and um confessed and yeah after that like i think i just had so much freedom because so much of my sin was about deception and then after that like after everything yeah came out then i was kind of free to like live life for the first time so yeah i think i actually really became christian in college maybe for the benefit of those who don't know who are some of your like friends that you guys you guys both class 2011 so maybe just yeah let them know who some of the people you've ministered to even sure oh yeah like um so point class 2011 so it's like mike park you know sam kim who had just a lot there's a bunch of us yeah oh oh oh shoot yeah so moving on yeah and then you know like like uh like vincent of who in berkeley like you know we did undergrad together we're saying major things like that so um but we've ministered to class of 2015 16 and then 19 in berkeley and that's that's like 19 was the last class we ministered to before we moved to chicago and it's kind of neat because a bunch of them are in chicago with us now yeah yeah grand reunion there yeah yeah you want to share some of your friends yes um my original life group in college was like angel churn jenny park um step play oh now i have to name all of them nancy um and then yeah later annie and fan and yvonne and everyone yeah and then emily huang who's my peer is in chicago with me so yeah we've gotten really close just ministering together that's right yeah we had asian am together you and annie yeah were some of the first upper class when i met in asian which was a terrible class it was it was we were at a study group we're doing a study group and i saw isaiah as a freshman like snickering in the corner with the laptop and we're all trying to study for the spinal and he's like laughing and so we all said i said what are you doing and he turned around you're like reading calvin and hobson yes this doesn't surprise me yeah i know yeah you know speaking about our upbringing though we have a lot of like parallel things in our upbringing so like uh we grew up both in socal you know currently making church that's you know thing but like our parents went through similar kind of financial struggles at around the same time we actually lived in the same neighborhood like a couple blocks from each other we didn't know each other in fullerton but you didn't go to the same high school no but we went to rival high schools i went to she went to sunny hills which better uh troy's better yeah troy is better call sunny hills scummy hills oh wow i don't know if that's still the case but um that was the case back then but yeah it doesn't matter we went to the same college yeah but then you know we we converged in berkeley yeah so it was like you guys were meant for each other oh yeah like was it love at first sight no because all i saw of him was the back of him because he's the kind of freshman that came to service and he would leave during the last praise song or right after it because he was he would come in gym clothes with the backpack and racquetball you know racket in his in his backpack racquetball racquetball yeah as we're coming out of church you just see him way over there like walking away i just i just came to church like on time left right away yeah friday bible study i would just come to the bible study i'd just come late for dinner leave early you know how's that kind yeah right so how did you guys like actually like when did you see the front of his like his face just going off your story no no i so i met lois first and then um yeah because because i think it's because the family friend that brought she was friends with oh yeah so i think i met that class first actually and then and i met uh and then i met kata and i thought she was lois so i was confused for a while i didn't realize there were two different people how did how did how did how did you guys start dating and and all that like oh we're going into that oh okay how do we start dating um i know you have on your podcast but you know oh you do yeah yeah yeah we have a whole yeah shout out to dpod yeah dpod um dating episode um how did we start dating i called her i called her and yeah she said yes that's how we started dating i didn't say yes you didn't wait okay so first of all it took me a while to uh yeah i guess muster up the courage to call her i actually this is kind of embarrassing but i i drove back and forth between hb and oakland yeah yeah yeah and and oakland airport which is like a three minute drive yeah just back and forth back and forth i'm like like trying to muster up yeah yeah yeah and then i was like this is lame wait why why did what do you do like did you like it for a long time or something or like what um i guess i guess it was because we had been good friends in college yeah and potentially this would make that would make it weird for the rest of my life yeah i think that's what that's all it was yeah but then um yeah so anyways i just finally said you know what i just needed and so i called her and i was like oh hi this is this is david i'm like i've never heard you know oh and she said i i know yeah because you know obviously she has my number yeah we've been friends she's had my hi david yeah i know i know and then she said she said she said no no no she just needed some time to think about it oh i see so how long do you make him wait like a week two weeks two weeks yeah two weeks yeah yeah that's not bad yeah i i i heard that um you gave katta some feedback on your third date why you gotta bring similar oh you're talking about timeliness there's a lot of stories at our church that like get like legendary accumulation and we just need to like cut you know we need to get to the facts yeah it's the facts facts to network the facts are just as bad was it the third date it was the third date yeah okay he doesn't remember maybe you should just tell it because i don't remember the um uh well if you know dp he's early to everything and i used to be late to everything not anymore but um but on our third date i think i was like 10 minutes late and i was just trying to look a little nicer so i was a little late and then i got to his car and i got in and i was like hi and then he he gripped he was gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead and so i was like oh maybe you didn't hear me so i was like hi and i was just gripping it and i was like what the heck is happening and then it's silent and then he goes he said um you know you know if you're on time you're late and in my mind i said what do you mean because if you're on time that means you're on time but he'd been there like 10 minutes or 15 minutes early because that's just who he is and so i was waiting for like 20 don't recommend it yeah i've been 20 yeah and you found it in your heart to forgive and be gracious so i didn't leave the car i stayed and said okay i'm sorry wow and then wow actually yeah because he's like that i have changed wow all right wow so maybe on the flip side how about tell us uh your favorite date story yeah unless that was it like our favorite date story he's kind of black out there i don't know i have a well tell us about i have a proposal yeah yeah yeah okay yeah yeah well you know the i guess i have a lot of i don't know it's my favorite thing but i have a lot of fond memories just trying to fit in dates with her uh just in the midst of busy schedule and we would occasionally do like 7 a.m breakfast yeah because we were serving in different ministry groups in berkeley to different we were was that when you were in grad school too or no no it was while we were working we're both working at sf yeah schedules were different things like that so then we would do like sometimes we would do like six something a.m breakfast and dt and maybe that's how he was so grumpy yeah but anyways the proposal story is that um so there was this you know you guys have seen that like 36 questions that lead to love or something like that yeah yeah yeah from stony brook yeah yeah oh really yeah from stony book originally but it was popularized in the new york times uh like around 2014 like they have just published an article so i just read that and so i was like oh hey like hey let's go through these questions like different kinds of questions like we get to know each other so i just we just did that for several dates so there's a lot of questions right and so then we just did that over like maybe four or five dates and then um and on the day that i was planning to propose i i planned it so that like we would finish the questions on the drive to the location and then um and then you know we finished like oh that was nice activity whatever and then we got to the place and i asked like you know can i ask one more question and then and then she said no no i'm kidding can you give me two weeks so one more question and then the funny thing is um and then we're like oh that's nice you know and then like yeah because it was at the start of the date so then it was nice because we got it over with kind of like emotional you know like my emotionally like it's like oh you know so we can kind of like relax for the rest of the day but we were waiting for the breakfast place we were going to we were like wait listed or whatever so then we were waiting for that that's when it happened and then we got to the restaurant and 30th later i started crying yeah i don't quite remember but she just my emotions in the middle of breakfast she's just like i don't know why i'm crying which yeah that is very indicative of me to know i don't she was happy she was crying from happiness very delayed delayed yeah wow yeah what are you guys enneagram types we're both intj oh enneagram uh i'm a three we're both intj but she's one i'm a type one one wing nine i'm a three wing four yeah people think i'm a one yeah i was confused about that so he's not a one all the ones say i'm not actually i'm not principal yeah yeah that's if you cheat every game that's like yeah anyway let's not talk about that yeah we'll talk about that another cool well um that that's a lot about just i feel like we've got to know you guys pretty well a lot of fun stories i've never heard a lot yeah that was good that was good so um so we can like fast forward um you guys served there at berkeley church college ministry can we talk about that a little bit like maybe just like a little bit like ministry resume like where have you served and how did you up to the point where you're at now at chicago's yeah so i wasn't just a 12 for a long time yes it's from graduating yeah berkeley a2f from 2011 to 2016.

so that was a 20 class 2015 for two years and then a class 2016 for three years um and then in the senior year of uh class 2016 that's when we got married so i finished that off the so she was in coin and i was in a2f so we were actually even after we got married we were in separate ministry groups so that's not that's not that common yeah for a form but it's just because you know like we i had seniors at the time just finishing off the last few months so um so anyways after that we went to coin and then we ministered to the home group of 2019 so yeah here's i was in i served in a2f for a little bit and then um when 2017 the great scattering that that happened uh when we planted in the east coast i i kind of backfilled for a lot of coin people that left and then um so i moved to coin i was staffed there and then yeah i was ministering to yeah yeah and so i was ministering to class of 2019 when they were like freshmen and sophomores and then he joined yeah oh you were with them all four years yeah and then um when the greats gathering happened that's when she went full-time for church yeah and then and then i joined oh i did yeah yeah she went full-time first actually yeah and then when did you guys move to chicago you guys are chicago now when you 2019 summer of 2019 basically after we graduated off class 19.

and what was the impetus behind you guys moving there like um well so so chicago's interesting right because um it was planted by like eight eight bros you know uh class 2015 bros they just went out there as single guys and it's awesome like i love that part of the chicago history um wanting to do something for jesus and and then you know like things were actually happening and you know and i guess from their perspective they're like okay we need a we need a leader uh so could you send someone and at the time a bunch of us like including you know you guys we were all in um full-time leads in training uh that year we were supposed to be a train for a year but i remember uh that summer when we were doing vision 2019 we we got called into a meeting and um it was during this it was during the middle of vision yeah yeah like hey can we have a can we have a meeting you know and um so i remember yes then i remember yeah we went in and so then they kind of told us about some of the latest thoughts about our training program like all of you guys you guys are going to do this and then um and then they said oh except deep in kata um would you guys be open to going to chicago to leave the church and we're like what what i thought we had six months left yeah yeah yeah can you guys go uh next month but yeah i mean yeah so we said yes to that and then that's how we ended up in chicago so mature and advanced they're like yeah you just just just go yeah yeah apparently what happened is that um i don't know if it's true but this is what they told me ben lue advocated for me so because he was he was uh he was with our staff in berkeley yeah yeah yeah and i'm sure um no and it said no to ize so my brother was on that team along with wait was anna already there yeah yeah she was she was with evanston oh part of ray ray okay yeah yeah so how was it going in there and um yeah going into that scene and leading those guys how was that um i i think i have a very um like modified memory now of that time because i remember with a lot of fondness yeah but um apparently according to kata and other people who observed me during that time i was really stressed yeah which makes sense yeah yeah yeah i think that first year was basically just getting to know them and trying to adjust to what it means to be a leader of a church and to lead these guys and also you know they had a year of experience on me right like on in terms of the campus and what they knew so i'm trying not to like change too much of what they're doing whilst trying to bring in my own thoughts and so that all took a while i feel like i feel like it took me a couple of years to just even feel comfortable with that role so yeah i don't know it was hard for you too yeah my experience of it was that i cried a lot and i laughed a lot yeah i laughed a lot and um it was the first time where it was such a cozy team there were like 10 of us at some point just the the mentors and we all fit in our small like two-bedroom apartment and we did staff life together cooked together and ate together all the time they watched emma who was one year old she was like 13 months old when we landed and um it was the first time you know we like left california to go somewhere else so even getting used to the winter with an infant that was new um but after that first winter it was like oh okay now i think i can tackle anything you know but the experience of it was um us needing to make a lot of decisions to lead a local church that we've never had to face before so then even after we had our first kid we really didn't fight we didn't argue about much um but then when we got to chicago we realized oh so much like we got so much help when we were staff in berkeley because so much got you know subsumed under the bigger infrastructure of the schedule like a lot of it's decided for us yeah and so we really just kind of focused on like people right in front of us but in chicago we had to make decisions about everything and that was a real like steep step to yeah big learning curve yeah yeah but i i really uh i still do think like i really enjoyed that first year especially and um there was i think i prayed more fervently than i have like like ever in my life and just because just feeling even though so much of like our ministry philosophy and things like that in our network is given to us and like there's a lot of training i've received there's there's this sense of like wow like i think god is trying to do something here and i i want i don't want to like get in the way of that and and i know that like i'm not this experienced person who knows like all this stuff and so like how do i balance you know just the needs and things of the staff in front of me and and the ministry and and then you know i've never private campus ministry is hard i mean that's a whole nother topic and just and there yeah so i just remember those prayer like prayer meetings we would have at cox lounge on the chicago campus just um sometimes we joked about after work because she would leave the prayer meetings but i was like totally not responding to her because i was just i was just praying about like all the burdens that i have like just in the corner by myself yeah i'm just having my own prayer meeting you know like yeah so um but it was just experientially it was um experientially i i it was a really sweet time i think of connecting with god so yeah that's good that's good wow so like you said um you uh private school so u chicago ministry on the chicago campus and so now it's been it's two five years since right but and uh this past fall there's a big change yeah right um so um yeah maybe tell us a little bit like just a short like what the change was and kind of maybe the larger context of chicago u chicago and and all that yeah like the evolution of chicago church yeah okay well maybe i can just start and then just fill in um so the big change was that um we shifted our focus kind of in our primary campus had always been the university of chicago which is in hyde park um we re this summer we decided to shift our sunday service to the downtown area because that's only about a 15 minute drive north um so it seems close on a map um but the reason we decided to do that is because hyde park we realized is a is a bubble like it's hard to get in and out unless you have a car um so you you look at like go on google maps and you look at the transit public transit system and you'll see nothing passes through the park right so then you have to like yeah it's a little out of the way so then so then um because in the back of our mind we wanted to um reach more students we realized recently that in the chicagoland metropolitan area there's like half a million college students wow so then um but you know we're like just working with like seven thousand seven thousand undergrads undergrads at u chicago so then uh we just felt like something needs to change um so that was a drastic we realized that we need a more drastic shift and we can't if we're trying to reach many campuses we can't like give them all rides or like where are we gonna like they need to be able to find us so then we wanted to go where it's most central so we actually have a venue like right on michigan avenue it's like on what's usually called the front yard of chicago and like overseas lake michigan buckingham fountain like um so we're right there yeah so right there it's right yeah so all the public transit leads to there so what is it congress possible it's like an old hotel um but yeah location's really great yeah yeah so you're you're moving from like a um like very campus based like we're just gonna focus and love this campus which is great yeah but you're recognizing there's all this other need there's all these other college students like how do we reach them too yeah and i imagine that that mean that's a good thing but there's some tough that must have been tough making that shift what what were some challenges that yeah to making that shift yeah i mean we really had to pay some costs in order to make this shift and of course the the biggest worry is um what about our u chicago students are they going to feel like abandoned in some way and um you know in in some ways there has been a lot of drop off um some for it's just practically harder yeah practically harder and um i've had some conversations with some of the students that say this is not the direction like i want to go in but you know kudos to you guys so i've been very thankful for those conversations um yeah so that was a cost we had to pay but also i've seen some of our u chicago and illinois tech students that we already had before this shift like i i feel like they've just really come alive and they're kind of the the older brothers and sisters that they didn't know they could be in some ways because there are some underclassmen and just new people coming out from the loop which is downtown chicago these schools that are coming and um just the sense of ownership i see them kind of taking over our you know our church service and student group like it's been pretty amazing seeing them put into practice in some ways some of the things that they learned like in concept with us as we kind of disciple them so what is it about the shift to the loop that has like enabled that like is more students coming out is it like yeah what's what's sort of what are some of the changes that have happened with this shift well it's it's definitely more students coming out i mean we our average attendance went from like uh maybe like 30s low 30s to um to like almost 80 now in the space of like a year in the space of like a month oh wow right because like i mean because we right because we just started immediately and you know like yeah so our first welcome night where u chicago students weren't even there or we did a welcome sunday like on sunday we did the korean barbecue we flyer for that that's even before u chicago started i think we had something like 130 students who came to that so that's complete without that they're all colleges in the loop yeah we're reaching maybe like seven or eight there's there's probably more there's more than that but we have about yeah so they're coming from seven or eight different colleges yeah primarily though from like three colleges okay yeah so it's uh so illinois tech got a huge boost so illinois tech i mean we had students coming from that but then now they're uh they're out there a 10 minute public transit right away so then they can just come themselves that makes a huge difference so i i really believe in like if you're trying to do city church or like try using kind of an attractional model then you have to be in a location that people can find you yeah and you can't rely on rides yeah because there's just something burdensome about that you know like oh you have to like get into someone's car and they're like coming to pick you up and you feel bad about yeah yeah so it's a little complicated yeah so i knew it's just the the lot of people i think having new people then the um our existing students have a chance to kind of show them the ropes you know sort of yeah yeah but also another shift was that we combined our college and international groups together oh yeah that's true and became a true city church and the impetus for that was because we sent out so many people from chicago for foreign missions and so in hyde park at least we we went from like 12 13 international stuff to like four yeah so it was a pretty drastic shift so they couldn't maintain momentum on their own so then we just enveloped them into our team and since they've so then everyone's been pretty much doing double dual kind of double duty yeah and it's been pretty awesome yeah and then we we did like explicit training on like you know hey how do you like so how do you talk to international students what are things to watch out for you know what are their needs um we found that like our our staff were like kind of intimidated by international students or like they just didn't know like you just don't know how to yeah yeah but it turns out they're mostly just shy and so then it's not that they're standoffish they're just shy and they actually really want to connect with you when that mentality shift happens suddenly they were like a lot more warm yeah and and so then i think our service is really interesting because i i see a lot of that like you know the mixing between what used to be complete separate domains so they're just more people for our students to talk with and kind of they they know a lot of our values and culture and they're kind of like yeah embodying that together which is pretty cool yeah can we talk shop a little bit so like what are what are some of the things you did to make this happen how did you get the word out like yeah what yeah what was the strategy yeah yeah so well well first of all we have to get buy-in from like internal buy-in right so i mean we had been so we had been talking about this idea for a while uh like two years ago when we started two years ago yeah like every like you know the every campus thing i was that about two years ago yeah so you know we that's when we started doing prayer walks and we started becoming aware well there's a vandercook school of music who knew there's like 100 students there like and we we would go and pray and we're like yeah we should pray for this camp never imagining that we would actually reach anyone from that campus you know like great faith we had right so um let's just pray yeah we just pray but we're not gonna actually do anything so then um so so that started and then increasingly we felt like um university of chicago like we we gave four good years to that campus we i think we figured out a strategy to try to reach people there but it was really slow private uh school ministry slow very busy yeah busy um uh you know very intellectual um so which are all good things but then slow so then but then we had all these staff so we're like okay well we need to increase the pie like we need to increase the amount of ministry that is available for our staff so that that's the that was the impetus for it so then we we had like a meeting back in february of this past year uh where we we presented a kind of um is it a post parade like experience like hey we we are a sunday service with a hundred students from five different campuses you know from these and then we just listed random campuses and and they're all worshiping together it's january 2025 yeah yeah and this is a scenario like how did this happen so then and a lot of the staff's reaction to that was like ha what are you talking about okay okay like i'll i'll i'll fill this out i mean let me do yeah so then um so but then but then when we talked about it people started getting excited okay like we should try it this is this is worthy of trying and then we we then in our following month we had a discipleship retreat to talk to our upperclassmen about it um and so then in that initial brainstorm they were like they were getting excited too and having them think about the implications of all this yeah and so then right the month after that in april we did a pilot uh so we realized because you know when we start in august we're not gonna have any students like because you chicago students are not here so we need to like get some reps in before we actually start so then we did two pilot services in downtown and during those weeks we just tried different outreach tactics um being out in the city uh we did uh walking prayer walks so people know where all the buildings are um but basically we realized we realized it's really really hard like because there's just so much going on in downtown so then that's when the the shark suits uh happened so we have these inflatable blue like baby shark looking shark suits um like giant like seven feet ones and then um robin for whatever had two of them she had one because of her roommate back in berkeley during covid was doing a different kind of ministry like kids ministry and they just happened to have this costume and robin said okay i'll get one with you um to help you know and then so we brought one to chicago when she moved and we had used it in chicago for uh our kids birthdays that's that's that's when we had used them last but then basically we we were like oh we just need to do something more visible so we started using that too but also our church name is voyage yes okay so it kind of works like oh there's that naval yeah okay okay yeah so yeah so we just tried a bunch of stuff so people are walking in downtown chicago they see someone in an inflatable blue shark costume voyage church and they see like 10 of us out there on a street corner not like two but like 10 and we're just hanging out we're giving flyers we're giving out donuts where they take a survey yeah yeah yeah yeah that is pretty eye-catching but it was we didn't get that much traction though so uh so originally our faith goal had been like oh let's get like 20 students to come to our pilot service and then we lowered it to five oh my gosh this is really hard but then actually eight people came yeah eight people came so then it was like not as much as we initially thought but hey okay there's something there but i think a lot of us still were like i'm not sure about this because it was really hard like it's way different from being on a college campus so and you can't tell who's a college student walking near yeah yeah in downtown yeah and then we knew that we had to be there to drive it you know because like so 22 coordinating 22 23 staff like making this happen so because actually we were supposed to go to slt but then we had to ask to not go to that so that we could drive this new strategy um because it was right at the same time so anyways in august we we just we just bet big on it we set dates for a bunch of welcome events oh i forgot actually the thing that actually encouraged us in that month not the sunday service was a boba social we had and that boba social had like 80 people show up yeah so yeah and so then that was like yeah we advertised it as a we're not really stranger social event with free boba okay there's the card card card game but we sort of yeah we we got that idea from one of the other churches yeah and so we just decided to run that and um and man just kind of like hey come boba meet people yeah yeah and we realized boba cells at least in downtown people will come so then we were like whoa so people are and what we heard from them is oh yeah no one's doing this kind of stuff like no one's gathering college students and these students that i talked to at the social they were like i'm really shy but and but i don't know how to make friends and there's no campus for them it's a building one building that they're all in and like you know some pseudo dorms so then they were like i was so shy and i was really scared but then i'm so glad you guys did this because i haven't talked to anyone in like three months oh my god you guys are meeting a real felt need yeah right and they wouldn't leave we had to kick them out we said we have to have like there was a line out the door with people that said like i want to come to this and so we shut the door and said you need to wait a little bit yeah we changed it on the fly like it was going to be like an hour social but we changed it to two 30 minute socials and we had to cycle people out and cycle people out yeah and we bought like more boba than we had originally at the time we just did the the closer method where we just stood at the door every person who leaves got a that was in august yeah so so when yeah so when fall started we basically like kind of reconvened all those ideas and um our strategy was essentially to just bring people to sunday service get people to sunday service and and so it was firing tabling that leads to a easier event to sell like a boba social right and at the boba social hopefully they have a good time and they have a good experience and then we would uh using the closer method we've you know we're calling it the closure method nowadays but you know every person who comes as they leave they're going to get a flyer yeah like hey like and that thing for us was uh sunday service yeah sunday service this sunday service hey we're doing korean barbecue right and so that that's what it was and so that's how we got the 130 people to come did you did you give some sort of spiritual talk at the social or was it just purely no no purely social but we made it very clear we said it multiple times that we're a church yeah we're a christian group and some of the questions were about god at the end yeah there was one question at the end usually about you could ask god anything what would it be yeah yeah so then they kind of get a little bit of taste of that so um so and then we just ran that strategy like in the loop we ran that strategy at iit we ran that strategy so we just kept running the same strategy over and over again at u chicago yeah yeah so since then how have your um how's your team like how's it affected your team what are the shifts and how do they feel about it now because they were a little skeptical in the beginning right now everyone's like oh i can't believe we haven't done this like why didn't we do this earlier this makes so much sense this makes so much sense yeah i mean yeah because people actually have like more people that they're having a chance to share the gospel with mentor um and just it's so and for me the diversity of the people in the group um not just ethnic diversity but um kind of socioeconomic diversity you know because u chicago tends to attract students from all over the nation a certain kind of background right and then we get like students from chicago who are more local students who are choosing to go to that school because financial reasons right so the gamut it runs the gamut so um i just i love that picture of all these people getting to know each other and worshiping together yeah something about that that's been really invigorating so um yeah i really appreciate that and then i feel like the students are um because there's more of them maybe but um they're quickly getting very excited and getting plugged in so a couple of them are actually coming to actually when a conference you know and even though they're like so new um they've they've been to multiple service projects with us already like that we've done so has it been mostly like christians that you're drawing um we're still mostly church yeah but church non-christians like people who are church and they know they're not christian yeah so we're getting a lot more of those and we've had yeah like several salvations yeah i think we've had a couple 13 salvations this past wow that's amazing yeah and i think half of over half of them are from the new campus wow yeah yeah and so any advice for someone thinking of starting up like the city church model i mean it doesn't work everywhere like we don't ruckers we don't we don't have a city he runs like philly i know they've been kind of flirting with the ideas so i don't know what are some tips you'd give for people thinking about this yeah maybe speak into like that sentiment of like why didn't you do this yeah you know it seems so obvious now but what would you say i think i think a big mentality shift has been just the need to i i think traditionally in in ministry we feel like we're doing a successful ministry if we're meeting with a certain group of people a certain group of students do very regularly um you see them every week maybe even multiple times a week and you feel like you're you're like pouring into those people and influencing them yeah so it's essentially like you have your small group that you're ministering to um i feel like we've had to really get rid of that one one completely arbitrary false limitation that we put on our staff for all planning was you are not allowed to do any weekly events nothing is allowed to be weekly unless it's explicitly time bound oh even dt i said it can't be every week yeah don't get it a little scandalous time bound meaning like this is only going to go for three weeks you say like this is only happening for yeah four weeks whatever like you decide that ahead of time and you have to end it right so so why that why like explain a little bit more about that limitation related to what we feel like it's yeah i think it's because that's i i felt like that was the only way we could get us to not keep investing into u chicago because university chicago obviously like we've invested so much into we love the campus we love our students there and we will there's a there's a part of us that like you know what even if it's not fruitful we will just give our lives to try to reach this campus someone needs to do it and we're willing to do that and so which is a very admirable sentiment but then someone maybe needs to go well maybe you should maybe that's an over investment because there's all these other yeah right exactly and so as we saw like all the other students that put that actually when you look at it there nobody's reaching there's very few churches or even parachurch organizations that are reaching like the downtown area whereas i would say university chicago is like really well served really well served there's like four solid evangelical churches in the area uh and like three or four parachurch kind of groups on campus so they're like really well served so um it just made sense that we should maybe divert our resources a little bit yeah and the only way for us to emotionally get out of our need to go back to u chicago was to put these like really false good like practical things sometimes you need that limitation yeah to make the shift that you know you need so we're gonna lift that limitation like in 2025 yeah because it was just temporary it's not like yeah it's not some like principled thing but it was just the way to force us to think differently yeah also i think what was key was um kind of being strategic about our staff hr because we did have a group dedicated to still ministering to u chicago and iit students that were already existing and i think if we didn't do that then we couldn't have really had the bandwidth to think about oh yeah so we worked in pods this year yeah yeah and so we have the loop pod pods are just smaller groupings of staff about like four to six but like with the voyage thing like pods of whales was that thinking there no well we didn't think about that that's clever yes sharks don't travel in pods oh yeah they're loners yeah um i forgot what i was gonna say that we had pods that we had some um yeah for you chicago that enabled you to kind of break your bandwidth i think it was key that we um because before we had tried to do some loop outreach but it was always like younger stuff kind of being sent out but i realized that whatever the harder thing to do is like we have we have to do it like the new thing is we have to be there so that was also a big shift so then we pulled our we pulled ourselves completely out of u chicago ministry but then we still saw them because actually our entire team we just even though we were in pods we did everything like we we said okay loop is doing an event everybody come and help international at u chicago's doing an event everybody come help and it was the we're better together thing really was necessary to kind of launch city so essentially our schedule was like each week had a focus and actually all of the staff would do that so like this week was u chicago college this week is u chicago international this week is iit international college this week is loop so those were essentially the four and then we just repeat that and then just do a different set of events at those same four campuses and everyone will come to that the staff and the u chicago pod are like letting the u chicago students know hey you guys come and do this with us yeah yeah yeah and then you know like and then child care and things like that get worked up by you know if you're not the main pod for that area then you know it's your turn to do child care yeah got it got it how big is your staff team now 22 team yeah how many pods like three three three yeah it's very easy very easy yeah so basically just like one couple can sit out you know yeah and we're fine wow well that's really exciting to hear and i think that that gives um like a whole network um a lot to think about um in terms of yeah like this how do you shift from like a campus specific ministry to like a city what are the things you need to do to make it work um why would you even make that step in the first place because campus is like such an amazing place to do ministry but why would you even make that shift in the first place and i think we're just really like 13 salvations that's amazing praise the lord so really happy to hear about that and um yeah that's wild any last things or yeah no thank you guys for for another podcast and yeah i think it's gonna bless a lot of people so thank you we have like a outro tagline oh yeah um thanks like and subscribe i guess i have to say that we're really bad at this um yeah like and subscribe and uh tune in in for the next episode all right see you guys next time