What is the impact of the Internet and social media? In Analog Christian, Jay Y. Kim examines the digital age and helps us to cultivate true Christian discipleship in this new era.
SOLA Network had the privilege of interviewing Jay Y. Kim about his new book, Analog Christian. He spoke to Aaron Lee, SOLA Network’s social media manager.
Their conversation included:
- What led him to write Analog Christian
- How his life in Silicon Valley impacted his faith
- Cultivating patience in the digital age
- Seeking ordinary faithfulness, not fame
We hope you are blessed and challenged by their conversation.
Watch this interview on YouTube and listen on Podcasts.
You can read Aaron Lee’s review of Analog Christian here.
Read “Sticking with Community in a Gotta Go World” by Jay Y. Kim here.
You can also watch Jay Kim’s interview with SOLA Network about his previous book, Analog Church here.
Aaron Lee: Hi, everyone. This is Aaron. I am here for SOLA Network. And we are speaking with Pastor Jay Y. Kim today. He’s the author of two books that I’ve read recently. One is Analog Church, a really good book. And the second one is Analog Christian – his most recent book. This is all about being a disciple in the digital age. I reviewed it for SOLA Network, and I’ll put the link in the show notes. You can always just search for Analog Christian SOLA Network review. But I want to talk to the author, Pastor Jay Y. Kim. Pastor Jay, thanks for being with us here today. Would you mind introducing yourself to our audience really quick?
Jay Y. Kim: Well, thanks so much for having me on. really honored to be on with you and love the work that you all are doing with the SOLA Network. Yeah, my name is Jay Kim. I grew up in Northern California in Silicon Valley, and have been here basically my whole life. I was actually born in South Korea, but moved to San Jose, Silicon Valley when I was pretty young and never left.
So I’ve been here almost 37 years or something like that. And yeah, I’ve been in local church ministry for almost 20 years now, serving in a variety of capacities. I began working with students youth, high school and middle school students. I started a college ministry, spent some time as a church planter, and was on a church planting team. And then several years as a teaching pastor, and now I have the joy of serving as a lead pastor at a church here in the Silicon Valley.
Aaron Lee: Your journey sovereign placement by God in Silicon Valley, I would say, is incredible. I think that it allows you to see so many different things from that perspective in relation to the church. And now with discipleship, I was wondering if you could speak to these themes that you bring out in your book, these themes of contentment, resilience, and wisdom. I was wondering if you could unpack those themes for our audience, and especially your view of them coming out of Silicon Valley?
Jay Y. Kim: Those are the themes in the book, primarily because this book, Analog Christian, was really born out of my own angst, like my own personal sort of wrestling with a variety of things. And especially when the pandemic hit, I found myself really just deeply mired in discontentment, and fragility and foolishness. And I started asking myself these questions.
I don’t think this is, this can’t possibly be the life that God has for me. This doesn’t seem to be the sort of life of fruitfulness that the scriptures seem to indicate God has for me. So I just started asking a lot of those questions on myself personally. So the book really is, is a reflection and a prayer.
It’s way more personal than the first book that I wrote. I found myself really lethargic and apathetic, constantly disappointed, but not knowing exactly why I was disappointed—just living in a constant buzzing state of disappointment. And that led to incredible discontentment.
I found myself in recent years, really thin skinned and feeling fragile and easily offended, quitting on things easily and sort of looking inward and asking, this is not me, this is not who I am. But, but it is why I am, it’s who I’m becoming and so the need for resilience really sort of bubbled to the surface. And then in the exhaustion of it all I found myself really tempted toward just foolish decisions, wasting time, spending mental energy on things that don’t really matter.
One of the things I’ve really thought a lot about was how prone I am to spending time on meaningless leisure, instead of meaningful work, or meaningful Sabbath rest, and there is a difference between those things. And it was just this utter lack of wisdom in my life.
So really, those themes came about because of my own lack of those things. And ultimately, I think, that God by His Spirit, when he begins to cultivate the life of the Spirit inside of us, it leads to contentment, resilience, and wisdom. In many ways they are the markers of a life, that have found their foundation in Christ as the source of our contentment, as the source of, of all confidence making us resilient no matter what comes our way, and as the source of wisdom helping us to see and navigate the world in our lives in a way that’s godly and God honoring and holy, really, at least in pursuit of holiness.
Aaron Lee: To be fair, I think we were all feeling those things! (laughing) But I think that you were able to articulate it in a way that’s, that’s very relatable and understandable and also presenting a picture of hope for us to look towards one thing that was extra relatable to me, as an Asian American, maybe not like specifically the situation you went through.
But understanding what you’re talking about, is this story that you had between you and your mom. I was actually wondering if you could maybe do a quick retelling of that. Because people who don’t read your book, they’re not going to hear it, but maybe it would get them interested. And also would speak to our audience here at SOLA Network where we try to reach the Asian American generation.
Jay Y. Kim: Yeah, I grew up an only child with a single mom, my parents separated again, when I was really young, my dad stayed in Korea, and then my mom and I moved here to the Silicon Valley. And so I was like most kids, I was sort of a rebellious preteen and early teenager.
So when I was a young, young boy, sort of elementary school, middle school age, I got into a huge fight with my mom—a yelling, screaming match. And I cursed at her. And then I was so scared, and so angry. I hopped on my bike, and I rode my bike to a friend’s house that was like, several miles away to ride down this long expressway. And I didn’t tell her where I was going.
This is well before the day and age of smartphones and cell phones and pagers. I didn’t have any of that. There was no find my friend. My mom didn’t know where I was. And I went to my friend’s house, and I’m like, hey can I just hang out with you for a while? So we’re hanging out. I’m just basically trying to stay away from my mom.
Long story short, my friend’s mom comes home calls my mom My mom comes to pick me up. And I’m like, fearing for my life at this point. You know, your fiery Korean mom, I cursed at her I like ran away from home, all this stuff. So we drive home and just utter silence she doesn’t speak on like, My nerves are in my anxiety is just running at max and we get home and I just go straight to my room, close the door.
And I’m like, Okay, I’m just gonna ride this out. Hopefully, he gets tired, goes to bed and forgets about it tomorrow. But eventually I can smell food cooking in the kitchen. And it’s like the comfort food of my youth, like, just awesome. Korean food, you know. And then my mom knocks on my door, and she says, Hey, come to the kitchen.
So I’m still really afraid at this point. And I go to the kitchen, and my mother has laid out just the full spread of incredible food, right? It’s a stew and I think there was like some fried fish. And so and I’m hungry at this point, I’m like, Oh, my goodness, I’m still nervous. So I sit down.
And before we eat, my mom begins crying, she has tears in her eyes. And she looks at me and she says, In Korean, she says, ( and these are the first words out of her mouth since everything went down) Jay, you are my son. And no matter what you do, no matter what you will always have a seat at at my table.
And I just remember breaking down even in my young age, I remember breaking down and weeping. And I went and gave her a hug. You know, even though I was hugging her, it felt like her love was sort of enveloping me.
That was decades ago, I still remember it as clear as day. Because it was just this beautiful, tactile, physical embodied picture of just a sliver of what God’s love for us is like. This is not to say that God lets sin slide or that you know, you do you live your life however you want. God’s always just gonna love you and it’s all warm and fuzzy. That’s not it at all there, there needed to be confession and repentance, and all of those things, but the overriding you know, resonance of that experience, the thing that still lingers with me is the love the overwhelming love and, and it did lead me to repentance.
I apologized and asked my mom to forgive me and restored our relationship in that way. But yeah, I’ll I know, I’ll never forget that story. One because it just reminds me of how, what an incredible woman my mother is, but to more importantly, because it’s such a physical sort of real life tangible for me, experience of what the God of the love of God is like, at least in small part, you know?
Aaron Lee: It’s a powerful story. It’s a simple story, I guess, from your youth. But it obviously made a huge impact on you. And I think when I was reading it, it made a huge impact on me. I could really feel the emotion and sense what was going on there. So I want to say thank you for being open and honest enough to share that experience with us as readers.
Your book talks about the fruit of the Spirit. That’s really what your book is centered around. That one was about love in particular, I think, right? There is another kind of connection that you made in your book. And this one was on patience. And you made the connection between patience and abiding in Jesus, and how that should affect our relationships. And I thought it was really insightful. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit.
Jay Y. Kim: There’s a lot to say about patience, especially today, in the digital age, when everything is so fast, when I can push a couple of buttons and 30 minutes later, food is magically at my door, or whatever and yeah, and there’s a lot of benefits to that.
But one of the one of the subtle sort of dangers of how fast and how easy and accessible everything is becoming, is that we are growing increasingly impatient we’re losing our aptitude and our ability to wait or to linger. You know, we are so fast today to move from one thing to the next to the next, because we have so many options, and everything is so accessible.
And again, that’s not all bad life has become far more convenient, things have become far more accessible and easy in some ways. And, and that’s helpful in some ways, but I think a lot about Jesus’s words in John chapter 15, when he says Remain in me, and I and you will bear much fruit. So in other words, it’s sort of a simplistic way to put it, but it’ll get the point across, if you want to live a fruitful life, like an actual fruitful, meaningful life, a life of, of experiencing the Spirit of God, cultivating the stuff of God inside of you moving you toward more and more Christ’s likeness, if that’s the sort of a life you and I want to live, then Jesus makes it really clear we have to remain in Him.
And that word remain often gets translated abide. And in most translations, it’s remained because the word abide is kind of an older English word. But in the original language of the text, the word translates into the English word remain or abide is actually the verb form of the noun for house or dwelling place.
Yeah, so this is not like, go to the grocery store and remain in line until you can get your stuff and then go home. And this is not go to the Starbucks and wait in line until the barista makes your coffee and then get out of there. This is like remain as in the way you remain or abide at home. You know, like the word abide is connected to the word abode, which means home or house, like the place you dwell.
And so essentially, what Jesus is saying is, if you want to live a fruitful life, if you want to experience the life that God really truly has for you, and experience fruit in your life, then you have to make Jesus your home. You have to remain in Him in the way that you go home and remain at home.
And in connection to patience, it’s really interesting, because for anybody who’s moved to a new house, or a new city or a new school are gone to a new job, they’ll be able to relate to this. Between first grade and my senior year of high school those 12 years, I moved 14 times. And I went to four elementary schools, one middle school, and two high schools. So I went to seven different schools in 12 years, and I moved a lot.
And I distinctly remember, every time I went to a new I moved to a new house, a new apartment or a new school. It took a while for it to feel like home. So if we allow impatience, to sort of run amok in our lives, it is going to be almost impossible to truly remain in Jesus. Because it takes a while for places to feel like home. Like it requires patience, whether it’s a new job or a new house or a new city. It takes a while for it to really feel like home for it to really feel like your dwelling place.
And I think often we think about discipleship to Jesus as a series of to do’s you know, like a to do list. I read my Bible for two minutes this morning. I prayed before ate all my meals. And you know, there you go. I’m done right there. Those things are not bad. They’re really great, but they’re incomplete. And it’s sort of an impatient way to go about discipleship to Jesus.
Real discipleship to Jesus—meaningful, life-changing transformative discipleship to Jesus—is seeing Jesus as our home. Understanding and embracing and reckoning with the reality, that it will take a while for that to take hold. For the presence of Jesus in every sphere of life. For that to feel like home, like your dwelling it you got to be patient ya gotta stay with it. So I just think it’s extraordinarily important that we embody patients in our discipleship to Jesus, particularly in our day and age.
Aaron Lee: I think the reason why that one stood out to me is because I work at the intersection of healthcare and technology. I’m always in this fast-paced, “hurry up, let’s get this done” type of world, “we need to get this done as soon as possible.” And I think when you put it in the terms that you did, it made me really assess how does that thinking affect my spiritual life. And of course, it should all be connected. But I do see the disconnect between the two worlds, and I want to kind of assimilate them all together to be spiritually formed together.
There’s another sense where you talk about ordinary faithfulness, not fame. And that one hit me as well, because I dwell in the online social media world. And we all do. You talk about this a little bit in your book.
But I want to press a little bit further, and ask you, how does this apply to you as a pastor, this this concept of ordinary faithfulness? Not looking for fame, necessarily, right? And let’s just be real here. You wrote a book, and you’re a published author. You’re getting your name out there. People know you. How does this apply to you specifically? And maybe it can relate to our pastors, as they’re listening as well.
Jay Y. Kim: Yeah, that’s a great question, Aaron. You know, the first thing I’ll say is, I think recognizing that ego and pride is a reality in my life is first and foremost. And naming it is really helpful. Like saying it out loud, is really helpful. So the ability to admit that yes, my intentions can easily be skewed. And often I am tempted by motivations that are ungodly to name it, I think helps at least loosen its grip on the heart.
You know, one of the things I’ve come to learn, and I’m not famous by any means, but certainly some of my more recent work has been public, it’s public in nature, right? So one of the really interesting things that happened, this happens to you too as you run some of the social media stuff, or sola and your all of your different reviews that you do and start a heavy sort of social media, presence, presence, right? Exactly. When, when our interactions are mediated by content.
What I mean by that is when you when you create work that is public, and then people with whom you do not actually naturally and originally have a personal connection to, but rather, the relationship is now mediated by content you have created. I think that it’s really important to name and accentuate the reality that our exchange is based on a work I’ve created that you have found helpful.
Okay, so and I think that’s important on on a personal level. So what I mean by that very practically, is, I try very consistently, and I don’t do it well, all the time. But I do try internally in my head and in my heart. Every time I do an interview like this, or someone asks me to whatever, speak at an event, or whatever. I try really hard.
I actually learned this from a friend, a mentor and a friend who also has worked that’s that’s very public, and he’s like, way more famous than me. He’s, he’s told me multiple times, Jay, anytime you offer a work to the world, whether it’s a sermon, or a story, or a book, or an article, or an interview, or whatever…
Aaron Lee: Or a photo, or just a post or anything.
Jay Y. Kim: Yeah, ask yourself the question, “How can I help? Like, how can I help? How does this help anybody?” And that’s been really helpful for me, because it is a faithfulness question. It’s a question that reorients and re-centers me on the original calling of God on my life, when I said yes to entering pastoral ministry, which was essentially to say, “Can you help people draw closer to me? Can you help people be formed more and more into the likeness and the image of my son?” And asking that question always has been really helpful.
So right before I got on this podcast with you, I just said a quick prayer in my mind, like Lord helped me just help this conversation to be helpful to some people. That’s it. And it’s not about my brand, or my book, or people knowing my name, or being asked to speak at events. It’s not about any of those things. It’s just this 30-40 minute conversation Aaron and Jay are having, and it’d be helpful to some people in Jesus name.
And if we can, if we can do that, then at the end of the day, I can stand before the Lord and say, God, I tried to be helpful, which means I tried to be faithful, because I think that was your calling on my life.
And I think that applies whether you’ve written a book or your work is all that public or not. If you’re a pastor, then you’re a public figure, Sunday after Sunday, you get up. And there are people who sit there and give you their undivided attention for 30, 40, 50 minutes. And I think we have to recognize that’s not normal. And as a broken vessel, there’s nothing in me personally, that deserves the undivided attention of that many people for 30-40 minutes a Sunday. Nobody should listen to me talk for that long. And they’ll just sit there.
But it’s because what I am hopefully offering them is not me—it’s the gospel, and the goodness of Jesus. And it’s a gift I’ve received to steward and to extend to others. And so can I be helpful in extending that gift? And if I can, then that means I’m being faithful.
And I think at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. So reminding ourselves when we stand before the Lord, someday, he will not ask us, How many books did you sell? Or how many followers did you have on social media? Or how famous did you get? He will simply wonder and ask, like, how faithful were we? Were we faithful with what he gave us? Yes. So there you go. Those are some thoughts.
Aaron Lee: Well, I think your prayers were answered because I’m sitting here and I asked you a question about pastors. But you saw right through me, and you applied that right to me! (laughing) So that’s good, because I wanted you to do that. Even though I didn’t ask you to do it, I wanted you to tell me to help me out here. So I appreciate it. I always try to make these podcasts help me, personally.
Well, Jay, I want to respect your time here. And this will be our last question. I do want to make it a little bit more personal for you. What’s your final push to our listeners here, as we see ourselves living in an increasingly digital world, and I know that you have young kids, and they’re living this right now. We’re trying to navigate it, but they’re living it, growing up in this. What’s your final push to your kids and to people who are listening to this?
Jay Y. Kim: Yeah. Yeah, I have. I have really young kids. I have a seven year old and a four year old so we try our best to minimize digital interaction in our home so and that’s it’s easier now because they’re young you know, we’ll see how we do when they’re teenagers.
But yeah, they don’t have any digital devices obviously. They watch very minimal TV they have very little screen time so we’ll have like movie night on Fridays where they can pick a movie and watch a movie but that’s pretty much it you know sometimes if I have the Warriors game on because I’m an avid more in Northern California sometimes gonna watch a little bit but they’re not super interested. So we we limit their screen time they’re not on computers or phones at all iPads, maybe a little bit for travel, but I do think about it a lot as they age and become teenagers.
And one of the things I think about most based on some of the research and the data that’s coming out about social media is what we will do with social media. without I just I think the dangers of social media are becoming increasingly apparent. So as a way of sort of like a final push for those who are listening to the podcast, can connect it to social media, I think I would just encourage and I think most people know this. But hopefully, it’s an encouraging reminder.
Just remember, you are not defined by your digital life. You know, your digital life is not who you are, it’s not even close to who you are. And other people’s digital lives are not even close to who they are either. Human beings are complex Nexus webs have emotions, and motivations and feelings and thoughts and ideas and histories and stories and our digital lives are just glossy, curated snapshots of the things we want people to think about us.
And it actually, typically, most of the time, I think works against the sort of authenticity and transparency and vulnerability and messiness that’s necessary for true communal connections to happen. So that would be my charge. You are a human being made in the image of God that God has created for deep, meaningful relationship with him and with others, and so lean into those realities. And, and make sure that you don’t get so caught up in your digital life that you begin to believe the lie that your digital life defines who you are, or defines others in terms of who they are. Because it doesn’t it doesn’t. So there you go.
Aaron Lee: And that’s a good word. Jay, thank you so much for your time. And thanks for letting me know a little bit more about you, too. And getting to know you personally, as well.
Jay Y. Kim: Yeah. Thank you so much, Aaron. It was so fun chatting.