This is the dream of a small group of Asian American pastors and ministry directors. We are stepping out in this faith adventure to raise up more Asian American pastors for the universal church. Yes, that’s a big idea, a God-sized idea. We want to do our part, a small part, of contributing to the Body of Christ, for the multiethnic churches in multicultural America and all kinds of churches in the world. We are the Thirty.
What’s the Big Idea
We believe that Asian American pastors have something valuable and unique to contribute to the Church with the very essence of who they are and who God has created them to be at this time in this generation. The Thirty seeks to facilitate conversations, provide resources, and make connections that will actively strengthen the mainstream evangelical church.
Taking the First Steps
We are building this plane as it flies, as the saying goes something like that. We don’t have everything planned out for years in advance. We have started sharing the big idea of the Thirty with a handful of potential ministry partners with vital connections to the mainstream evangelical church. We are very encouraged to hear of the affirmation and positive responses to the idea and the growing opportunities to creating the future together.
Gatherings of the Thirty
We are looking for Asian American pastors and ministry directors (in their 30s, and some in the 20s too) who are talented, teachable, and making buzz-worthy impact in their local church and beyond their local church. We would invite 30 of these young pastors to a regional gathering for 30 hours in a trusted relational environment to share:
- conversations with wise sages in church leadership,
- discussions for peer-to-peer mentoring,
- connections to ministry opportunities and collaborations
- preparations for the next 30 years of fruitful ministry
Our first gathering will be a beta test; and we’ll refine as we go. We’re dreaming and praying for maybe 2 or 3 gatherings in the first year, which would be 2016. The first one scheduled for February 2016 in SoCal.
We are connecting with a few to serve the whole church and we plan to publicly share the learnings that come from these gatherings. And that’s what this team blog is for.
Who Are We
We are a small group of Asian American Christians with hearts fully-committed to the local church. We believe that churches and pastors working together is a good thing and we need to do more of this good thing.
- DJ Chuang, Author of MultiAsian.Church: A Future for Asian Americans in a Multiethnic World
- Kevin Nguyen, Lead Campus Pastor of Saddleback Church Irvine South
- Sam Yoon, Adult Pastor at Saddleback Church Newport Mesa
- Angela Yee, Director of Ministry and Missions at Saddleback Church Irvine South, and author of The Christian Conference Planner
- John Shin, Weekends Pastor at Saddleback Church Irvine South and Adjunct Professor at Talbot School of Theology
We are doing this as a labor of love for God and out of the overflow of the blessings we have received from the mainstream evangelical church. In other words, we’re starting out by running the operations of the Thirty to very lean, with minimal organizational overhead, to be agile, impacting, and reproducible.
What You Can Do
Pray. Subscribe to Thirty.Network Updates and we’ll share with you our deeply personal prayer alerts occasionally.
Recommend people. We know some people but not everyone.
Suggest topics that may be relevant.
Add a response to start a conversation with us. We’d love to connect (or, at least one of us would.)