SOLA Network had the privilege of speaking to Pastor Cory Ishida, the senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church of San Gabriel Valley (Evergreen SGV) for over 40 years before retiring in 2018. Cory Ishida spoke about his longevity in ministry and how pastors can have long, fruitful ministries.
Their conversation included:
- adapting to changes in technology
- the blessings of ministering to multiple generations
- how to incorporate the old and the new
- The importance of Sabbaticals
- exhortations to pastors
We hope you are blessed and challenged by their conversation.
Watch the interview on YouTube, listen to the audio on Podcasts, or read the transcript below. Please note the transcript has only been lightly edited and may contain spelling or grammatical errors.
SOLA Network: How long have you been in ministry? And did you expect to be here this long?
Cory Ishida: I served as Senior Pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church, first of Los Angeles, and then San Gabriel Valley, for a total of 42 years. I knew I was going to be in it for the long haul, but you know how long the long haul was going to be? When I first started, I made a commitment to the Lord that unless he called me away, I would be there for life. And I really think that’s the attitude that a senior pastor or shepherd should have when they enter into a particular church ministry, you’re there for life. It’s not a stepping stone. It’s not something that’s temporary, you’re never always looking. But rather, this is a place that you’re supposed to call home and home supposed to be your home for the rest of your life. Now God can call you away, that I understood. And I had several opportunities, or at least possibilities of going other places, but I never really considered it seriously at all. Because I felt like this was my home until God distinctively called me away from Evergreen. Prior to that, I was five years a youth minister at two different churches. And so my total time in ministry was about 47 years and then I’ve been retired for two and a half and been doing ministry. So about a half century.
SOLA Network: In that time period, what would you say were some of the big demarcating events? Like man, ministry really changed because of this?
Cory Ishida: The ministry I had at Evergreen had different things happen every 10 years. And it was kind of a fascinating thing. It’s nothing that I looked forward to or even anticipated, but it’s just what happened. So I started in 1977. In ‘87, we moved from East Los Angeles in a small facility, and we built a facility in the city of Rosemead. Then in 1997, we hived the church. In other words, the church outgrew the site. And so the solution that the Lord led us to was to plant a church from the mother church, and I became the away pastor and planted a church with about 300 people to begin with. And so that happened in ‘97. And then, in 2007, the planted Church, which was called Evergreen SGV, or San Gabriel Valley, we moved from our temporary abode, which was at Rio Hondo Community College and bought land in La Puente. So we moved there in 2007. And then from then I stayed as the pastor until I just recently retired.
SOLA Network: And I’m sure in all of those changes, a lot of things about your work and your ministry did change. But what would you say are some of the things that you kind of keep coming back to that, like, this is what it means to me to be a pastor throughout all that time?
Cory Ishida: While at the very beginning, God gave me 10 scriptures, to inculcate into the church family. So one of them being generosity, that God wanted Evergreen to be a church that is generous. And so my life was really dedicated to seeing those 10 principles of Scripture, being a part of our church family. And so God was faithful and having all those things transpire over the 42 years. But there were just so many highlights and things that changed.
One of the things we’re committed to was raising up pastors. So we developed a fairly strong internship program at our church from which we probably trained over 80 people to do full time work. We planted six churches, because I believe the Lord called us to, to do evangelism through church planting, which is one of the ways in which the gospel is spread. And so it’s kind of fun. Kind of nice. One of the keynote speakers for the conference is Kim Kira, who was one of our interns and he planted a church called Lighthouse in Torrance. And it’s doing, it’s doing marvelously well, that is such a blessing to me that basically, a daughter church, and I think he’s doing so many things so much better than I ever did. And it’s always nice to see that, you know, and then they planted a church, so that in some respects, Evergreen has a granddaughter, in Texas.
So those are the kinds of things that are blessing to my life, and I think has really blessed the church family at large. One of the things one of the little anecdotes that blesses me that I share with people occasionally is the church wanted to do back then, tape ministry. In other words, record the messages on cassette tapes, all right, not eight tracks, but cassette tapes. And I thought who would want to listen to the sermons that I preached it out with, so we sold them for like, at cost. I thought maybe we would have to give them away. And so I thought, man, is this really a fruitful ministry? No. I mean, we were selling quite a few tapes at all. And we make packages of tapes of series. And I but I was wondering, is it really bearing fruit and one day after service, a young lady from Hong Kong, came up to me. And she said, my name is and she gave me her name. And she said, I’ve always wanted to meet you. And she said, the reason I wanted to meet you is somebody had given me a cassette of one of your sermons. And on that day, I gave my life to Jesus. And I, and she said that she, whenever she came into this area, she was going to visit the church. And she wanted to meet me, because I delivered the gospel, and that particular cassette, that helper, to know when to meet Jesus as Savior and Lord. And that incident really stuck in my mind as something that was a tremendous blessing.
And then, now that I’m the age that I’m at, I go to conferences. I used to go to speak at this conference called the JEMS Mount Hermann conference, Japanese evangelical Missionary Society. Been going there since their 25th anniversary back this has been a lot of years. And I spoke there a lot to junior highers, senior highers, collegian, young adults and in the main camp. So now I go to main camp, and somebody who’s in their 50s will come up to me and say, “Hey, Pastor, Cory, you know, I always wanted to thank you and I was in junior high, you spoke, and I accepted Jesus as Savior and Lord.” I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened over the past 10 years, as adults now who have children in junior high school, have come up to me and said, you know, the Lord used you to lead me to Jesus.
And you know, sometimes in pastoral ministry, you don’t get to see the fruits of your labor. And in the last 10 years, the Lord has allowed me to begin to see some of the fruit that was born out of seeds planted decades ago. So I was trying to encourage those who are in ministry as they go when they share the gospel as they teach from the Bible, that you know, there are lives being changed. And you may not see it. But if the Lord blesses you as He has blessed me every once in a while, He’ll give you a glimpse as to what transpired in the kingdom and in God’s mind and His sovereign plan, and the lives of people that you really didn’t know, but we’re sitting there receiving the Word of God as as God led you to preach it.
And I think that’s one of the big encouragement about having longevity at one church, right, is that you’re gonna get to see that because you’re still there.
Another blessing that I got to experience because of my length of service at Evergreen was, I’ve done a lot of weddings over the years. And a few years back, oh, maybe more than a few years now. I actually did a wedding ceremony for a child of someone whose parents, I did their ceremony. So in other words, I did the parent ceremony, and then I got to do their child’s wedding ceremony. So I’m in both pictures. The parents, I’m in their picture, much younger, of course. And then I’m in their child’s wedding picture, and I don’t actually know I’ve done several of those. And I’ve done the same with baptisms. I would baptize someone and now I’ve had the privilege of baptizing their child or their children. And so that’s one of the benefits of longevity in a particular church, that you get to see the spectrum of the life changes and passages in a particular family or families.
SOLA Network: And I think that’s, that’s so key because, like especially right, you know, my generation of millennials, right? There’s so much short, easy church hopping. Right? And, you know, I would ask for those people, not just like the leaders in the pastors, but the people who are like, I don’t like this about this church. I don’t like this about this church. How much value does that longevity experience? Like, when you look back on it? Wow, it was so great. How much does that play into your kind of commitment to your local church body?
Cory Ishida: In retrospect, as people have come up to me in the last 10 years or so even today, after I’ve retired, I think they’re more prone to give me stories or telling me anecdotes about what transpired. And you realize the kind of impact you can have over time, in a particular family, that not only are you influencing, perhaps the parents, but also the grandparents and the children and then the children’s children. And so that consistency of relationship, and that consistency of being taught the Word of God and being taught certain principles by which to live and to grow by, really manifests itself over the years, over the decades, actually. And I think that’s been a real blessing for me. And it’s been a blessing for the church family.
And when I retired, we had seasons where we spoke words of affirmation to one another, it was kind of uncomfortable for me. I would go around to the small groups, or I’d go around to a fellowship group. And we’d have a time of affirmation where they got to speak to me, and I got to speak to them, did that with staff, with the board. And as uncomfortable as that was, it really was a good time. It’s a way of saying goodbye. It’s a way of saying thank you. And the Bible does say we’re supposed to honor one another. So it was a way of honoring me. And I had a chance to honor some of the key people in the church and in the ministry over the years. But the thing that struck me that stuck out to me, and that struck me as being something I didn’t expect was that the stories they told are about the little things in life. In other words, they didn’t, they didn’t share all thank you or I affirm you about moving the church about doing this great project where we have this great evangelistic meeting, they spoke with little things, like things I don’t ever remember doing. Like going to the hospital and praying for their parent. Maybe just saying hello to their child, when the child was kind of bashful from the pasture. Things that you don’t even think twice about became very important events in some people’s lives. And so I tried to share with those that we trained up, you know, it’s the little things that add up to the big things. And big things are made up of a lot of little things. Jesus teaches about the importance of little things, you’re faithful little things, you’re faithful with much. And so I learned that during my season of retirement or as I was preparing to retire, that a lot of ministry is about doing and being faithful to the little things in people’s lives. And it’s not necessarily even preparing sermons Sunday after Sunday, even though that’s extremely important.
SOLA Network: I’ve heard you speak multiple times. One of the things that I think I’ve always been really encouraged by is your attitude and your optimism towards the newer generations. You know, I think I’ve seen that at Evergreen every time you know, I’ve visited and I talk to people there. You’re wearing an Apple Watch right now.
Cory Ishida: This is the fitbit.
SOLA Network: Oh, right. Like, you know, I think but for me, like one thing I’ve noticed with pastors in my generation, millennials, there’s this increasing kind of fear of the future, right? Like the world is changing. And we need to keep everything the way it is. How would you kind of encourage pastors who are, you know, maybe did start a while ago and the world had been literally like the last three years, the whole shift? How do you keep that hopeful, excited attitude about like the new generations?
Cory Ishida: Yeah, things have changed immensely, and just the past 10 years. But I always looked at Jesus as an agent of change. He came down from heaven not not just to save us from our sins, which is, of course, the epitome of his ministry here and he went to the cross to die. He rose from the grave for which we should be eternally grateful. But he also was a person who changed culture. He was a person who made really incredible changes within the religious system that existed. He was an agent of change. And I always believe that as we do church, as we serve the Lord, there are going to be constant changes that will cause us to adjust not the message of the gospel, but then perhaps in the ways delivered, the ways maybe packaged.
And for instance, in the last 15 to 20, actually 15 years, I learned how to do, how to use the screen. Because kids today are so used to seeing things on a screen, it’s really interesting. You’re here, you’re sharing the Word of God to a younger group, and they’re looking at the screen because you’re on the screen, as opposed to looking at you live. And that took some getting used to the moment we went to that particular way of doing a Sunday morning, where you’re also on the screen. And but I thought these are the kind of adjustments that need to be made in order for the message of Jesus, which is, which is always relevant, to be relevant to a particular generation of people. And so I knew that there was always going to be change.
In fact, when I started at Evergreen, one of the reasons why I think evergreen grew as opposed to a lot of other Asian churches, especially those that had first generation mixed with second generation. The thing that really caused Evergreen to grow was the willingness of the Nisei, which is second generation Japanese American, to embrace change. They were one of the few churches whose leadership said Hey, okay, we can, we can have guitar music and Sunday mornings, you realize a pressure other Asian ministries have for keeping the organ, the piano only for worship service. I know churches that split over that, because the young people wanted to bring guitars and drums. So we did.
We researched the Psalms, yeah there are stringed instruments, there are percussion instruments, there are brass instruments, why can’t we use them today? I mean, it’s biblical. All right, you’re supposed to praise God with everything you’ve got. And so when we decided, you know, maybe it’s time to introduce stringed instruments like a guitar, and percussion, like the drums. Our older people were open to that change. And so they were such a blessing to the progress of the gospel and the ministry at Evergreen, merely because they were a generation that was open to change.
If I guess one of the first things I challenged them with, are you willing to change? And what does that look like? It means that you won’t be the only leaders in this church anymore. It means that you aren’t going to know all the people sitting in the pews. Are you ready to embrace that? And you know, they were ready to embrace that from the beginning. You know, a lot of churches give lip service to growing. Yeah, we want to grow, but they’re not necessarily sure they want to embrace the things that result from growth.
And I think, I think the thing that’s most difficult, about change for people and growth in the church is, is the losses that occur, you know, like the, for instance, when you grow, you’re not going to know everybody in the church. And that’s a loss. And people have a hard time not so much with change, but the loss that’s associated with the change. And I think the people that evergreen handled the losses very well, in fact, we were a church that was always changing. And I think part of the reason is because our people had faith that, that in every change, there’s loss, but God’s going to make up for the loss, he will always replace that which we have lost with something that’s even better in in you not to not to denigrate or discount what used to be, but God may have something else in store for us.
SOLA Network: That’s such a blessed mindset. Know talking about like, kind of church leaders and things are going through, you know, as a second generation. I think one of our temptations is to assume that our older generation doesn’t know anything. Right? Like it’s the hubris, right, like of youth. But as we get older, you know, I think part of getting older is learning about where we come from, and what happened for you like looking back at those early years, right, the late 70s and the early 80s. What’s something that we as younger leaders misunderstand about what it was like in that time?
Cory Ishida: One of the things I tried to teach our church family was that we should always honor what God has done in the past. Because God was just as present in the past and what he was doing then and the things that were significant back then, as he is today, and the significant things that are happening today. So one of the ways I tried to illustrate it, and to grasp it in our church is that I asked our worship leaders to always include a hymn. Now they could give me a more contemporary version of the hymn without losing what the hymn was all about. And I would periodically teach the church family that you know, we need to learn some of the great hymns of the church. It’s rich with theology, and it’s rich with Christian history, and that we should embrace it. And that’s one of the ways of honoring the past. It’s like, for your parents, and maybe your grandparents, these hymns, these songs meant something significant to their spiritual journey. And we need to honor that, because they were here before us. And they’re the ones who actually helped bring us to where we are today. And that someday, the song you sing, that’s significant, is going to be very passé to the next generation. They’ll say why I was thinking this psalm is so old. And yet it was so significant in your life journey in Christ, that it’d be really nice if the younger generation honored it. And so I always ask for a hymn to be sung.
So the worship sets that were five total, at least one was a hymn, and that we teach certain hymns to the younger generation so they can appreciate what’s in the hymn the richness is found there in, but also the historical significance of the hymn to a generation that is slowly passing from the face of this earth. And we need to honor them. The Bible does not marginalize the elderly. In fact, it’s a crown, gray hair is a crown. And we must be we have to be very careful never to marginalize the generation that went before us. And to honor not only them, but the things spiritually that were significant to them. And so if one Sunday on Easter, you want to put on a coat and tie. I mean, that’s the way people used to dress, it may not be the way you need to dress today, but maybe they – so we used to dress up Christmas Eve, Christmas and Easter. Look, if you’re not required to Hey, but you may want to put on a tie. If you’re one of the guys, you know, you want to wear a nice or nice, dressy dress. Because that’s the way a lot of people remember Easter and Christmas. Now you should never go to church to be seen in what you’re wearing. But I wear a robe that cuts both ways. People like being seen wearing shorts because it means something, it’s a statement. That’s not really why you should be dressing a particular way to go to church.
SOLA Network: Being a part of this conference, and I think seeing the Asian American church, getting together, right in a way that I assume is a progression of what has happened in the last 40 years. How do you see this present moment in the bigger story of what God is doing in the Asian American church?
Cory Ishida: I’m gonna be sharing tonight a little bit, I think about this, at least in the intro. When I was in my 50s, which is like a quarter of a century ago. Now, I used to worry about the Asian American church. I used to worry because I didn’t see workers being called up and called out. I didn’t see it partly because maybe I was a little bit more parochial in my way of doing things. But I really didn’t see the rise of preachers. I think churches need a strong pulpit. Whether it be a teacher, a preacher, or somebody who exhorts, in the pulpit that’s alive and possibly on fire for the Lord. And I wasn’t seeing that happening, that God was calling up and raising up those who are going to serve in that capacity. I think one of the hardest positions to fill is the senior pastor, or whatever it is, it’s going to be filling the pulpit Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Almost anyone can do a conference. Most people have at least one message. That’s pretty good. But the proof of the pudding for a pastor preacher is Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Delivering God’s word with vitality, and power and conviction. And I just wasn’t seeing that.
And now what’s encouraging fast forwarding is that there are a lot of wonderful preachers now. And a lot of the younger generation, they’re really doing a wonderful job from the pulpit. And I think guys, men like Piper and Keller have a lot to do with it, The Gospel Coalition. So there’s some incredible preachers that you can hear online now. And I think it’s been a real blessing for me to see the rise of preachers and teachers and workers that are affirmed for the Lord and have the giftedness to move the kingdom forward. I think a lot of parents want if you have a real gifted child, you don’t want them to become a pastor. I mean, in many of the cultures, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be whatever, but a pastor, and I don’t see that as much anymore. No, I think I know I think it’s a blessing if a child is, if the oldest son, the eldest son goes into ministry and serves the Lord Jesus raised as a pastor as a shepherd of flock.
SOLA Network: That’s true. One final question, I think is just for the pastor that is tired and discouraged. And you know, what would you, how would you exhort them? What would you tell them to pray upon or think upon in that moment where it, longevity, seems like it might be over?
Cory Ishida: Yeah, the message yesterday was really good and even today about things that would be helpful this morning is particular right. One of the things I always when I go talk to staffs and elders and church leaders, about pastoral ministry, a couple of things that I tried to always encourage them to do is one, develop a pastoral relations team, we call the ministerial relations team at our church, where you have a few trusted people who are members of the church, who can keep a confidence to be your advocate and your listening ear, a place where you can share with laypeople, things that that are on your heart, and, and on your mind, and even if you have needs to be able to share it there. So they serve as the pastor’s advocate, but they also serve the pastor as a church’s advocate bringing up issues and things that maybe the churches are concerned about, what that particular servant of the Lord. So that’s one thing, it’s a place to try to meet monthly, three to five people on it. I think that helps. Especially if there’s a job action down the road.
Second thing is I think, I really believe in sabbaticals. I think the best rhythm is once every five years. So in the fifth year, you get a three month sabbatical, where you submit a plan about how you feel like the Lord is going to grow you going to help you to rest, help to restore you, if there needs to be restoration, it’s not a work three month, time, but it’s a it’s a time to be refreshed, renewed, and to relax and, and to seek the Lord. And then you also get the one month vacation because it’s also not a vacation. It’s not family time, therefore, if you have children it is probably better not to take your sabbatical in the summer when they’re off, probably when they’re in school, and you maintain a rhythm of being away from your family while you’re on sabbatical. And I think those two things are very helpful.
Other church planners, I would encourage them, take the sabbatical on schedule, as opposed to when you need it. Because the time you feel like you need it, it may be a little bit too late. And I think that helps. Now, having said that, and if you have done those two things, and you seem to be in the throws of a of a potential meltdown of ministry, or a time of departure, I think it’s good just to take, just take some time and reflect and not reflect so much on your problem, your situations that are occurring right now. But reflect on the goodness of God over the course of your life. And if you look at Job, you know, he handled all the losses, I mean, and then he had friends that came and told him the reasons why the losses occurred. And that was a pretty depressing period of that particular book. But it’s the bulk of the book. And so Job by all rights Job should have been down in the dumps, he should have maybe done as his wife said, Curse God and die, but he doesn’t. And toward the end of the book, and Job, what happens is he begins to not to know not to try to understand what he doesn’t know about God. But He dwells upon the things he does know about God, and about God’s goodness and His life in the midst of all of these disasters that have occurred.
And I think sometimes we need to take time to reflect upon that. All the goodness of God in our lives, all the positive things, all the victories. And when we’re in the moments of being down in the dumps, we reflect upon the negative things maybe the things that are transpiring right now and this point of history of our lives. And I think we need to refocus and be more like Job and say this, this is the God of the universe. This is what he created. This is what he’s done over the years is the reason why I think God tells us in the Psalms, we’re supposed to speak of the mighty deeds of God for generations to come. Because that’s what encourages people. And so I think we need to spend a time of encouragement. It’s sort of like what was being taught this morning. You need to preach to yourself, the right things, not preach the things that are depressing and discouraging, but preach about the things we know about God. The wonderful, fantastic, miraculous, that have transpired in our lives. And I think that’ll help us take the first step in a journey back to where we need to be in order to minister.
SOLA Network: Wonderful. Thank you so much.