SOLA Network had the privilege of speaking to Thomas Hwang, lead pastor at Grace Hill Church and co-host of the podcast Off the Pulpit. He is also a SOLA Network editorial board member.
Thomas Hwang talked to Aaron Lee, social media manager at SOLA Network about the trends and blindspots of the Asian American church. We hope you are challenged by this important interview in which they discuss:
- Trends in the Asian American churches
- Reaching unchurched people
- Blindspots of older Asian American leaders?
- Blindspots of younger Asian American leaders?
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.
Aaron Lee: Alright, Thomas, it’s nice to meet you. So we’re doing this for SOLA Network. And I know you wrote a lot of articles for SOLA, I know you have your podcast, and things like that. You write for TGC as well, right?
Thomas Hwang: No, not yet. Did not get invited. Add that in there. (laughing)
Aaron Lee: (laughing) Okay, well, what I want to say is that you’re excellent at observing culture, at least from what I’ve read from your articles. What do you see are some of the trends in the Asian American churches?
Thomas Hwang: In the Asian American church in particular, I think one big trend to watch out for is the emerging younger generation. I think, before we’re used to a lot of the Boomers and Gen Xers leading in the way that’s very, Boomer and Gen Xer.. And that’s just kind of presumed as the way. But one thing I’m noticing a lot is, as I see millennials and Gen Z, not just the congregation members, but they’re actually becoming like the pastors and on staff and leadership positions, they see church radically differently, because their context is radically different. It’s a lot less Christianized. They don’t really… they’re more distant from that immigrant church experience that’s there. And so I feel like those generational gaps are going to be a lot more pronounced, especially as you’re taking positions of leadership. And you’re going to see it emerge in ways that just looks different than the way we were used to church.
Aaron Lee: Where do you see yourself falling in that?
Thomas Hwang: So I’m technically a millennial. Although I’m kind of like at that cusp of where I understand Gen X really well, but I identify with the millennials a lot more. So that’s kind of where I’m right in between where I can empathize with both camps I think.
Aaron Lee: When you went into ministry, did you ever think that you would observe culture in this type of way? Like was that… is that part of your theological training?
Thomas Hwang: It wasn’t part of my theological training, but I think it’s part of my background, because I didn’t become a Christian until the end of college. And so I didn’t grow up in that Christian world that I feel like a lot of us might take for granted. Now, obviously, I went to church, my parents took me to church, and I am familiar with like the Asian American church context. But I never really identified myself in that context. I always felt like kind of on the outskirts of it. So I was able to observe this interesting, like, pseudo Christian culture that just kind of gets developed that’s not really Christianity. It’s oftentimes more just a Christian culture, a subculture that’s there and mixed in with like, Asian American values. And I feel like we just kind of blend it. And we think that’s Christianity. From the outside, it’s like, that’s just kind of strange to me. And when I became a Christian, and I kind of look at it from like, Wait, well, what is this really Christianity? Or what is this? And I realized, oh, I have like this outside perspective, I feel. And now I’m on the inside. And so in that sense, I think it wasn’t my theological training. It was like, my life kind of trained me to be in a position where I could see things, I guess a little bit differently.
Aaron Lee: That makes sense. Now I have the story. You didn’t grow up in the church which allows you to be able to see it as an outsider and have that perspective. Do you wish that you grew up in the church?
Thomas Hwang: You know, sometimes, I always joke, I understand grace, I think a little bit better than those who are more churched. Because, you know, I, I’ve been experienced grace, I feel fully until I came into the presence of Christ and amongst his people. And my wife, though, is the opposite. I think she grew up in the church. So I’m not sure she’ll like this… she presumes upon grace a bit more. But she’s definitely… she doesn’t struggle with as much sin as I do. (laughing) Because you know, habits kind of develop, when you don’t really have that context or compass in your life. So in some ways, I wish I grew up in the church because I could have better habits. In other ways I’m thankful that I had the lens that I do being outside the church.
Aaron Lee: When you’re speaking to people who grew up in the church versus who didn’t – let’s say that they’re students, or maybe young adults. Do you treat them differently?
Thomas Hwang: Yes, I do.
Aaron Lee: How should pastors do that? Tell me your perspective and your way to do it. And also what would you say to pastors who are dealing with people who did and did not.
Thomas Hwang: Yeah, for sure. I think… and the reason why I feel like you should meet them differently is because this is what I experienced. I’m not at like a 5 in church-iness when people talk to me, I was like at a 2, but they’re talking to me as if I was a 5. So they’re presuming like a moral compass upon me, and a type of belief of God upon me that I just did not agree with yet. So a lot of presuppositions there, we weren’t on the same page. But when they met me at where they were at, or where they wanted me to be, and I was here, there’s too much of a gap for us to even talk to each other or be on the same page. Versus you know, it’s very incarnational ministry is when Jesus comes to where you’re at, like, where are you at in your journey in life, and he meets you there. And we see that not just with Jesus, but even of his followers. Like the apostle Paul, when he talks in the book of Acts in Acts 17 when he goes to the Jews, he talks to them a certain way based upon their understanding of revelation God versus when he talks to the Greeks, when he talks to those who don’t know God, he talks to him in a different way. And so you kind of meet them where they’re at, not where you’re at. And I feel like that’s incarnational ministry. So we should talk to them wherever they are at and try to meet them there.
Aaron Lee: Can you tell me about your story? How did you… when did you become Christian?
Thomas Hwang: Yeah, I got exposed to Christianity my whole life. I was actually a more of a nominal Catholic, most of my life. And so that was kind of my background. Surprisingly enough, my first encounter with like, Protestants, it was in college, and they’re like, Oh, you’re, you know, you’re not, are you a Christian? And I’m like, Yeah, I’m Catholic. Like, that’s not a real Christian. I’m like, what if that were the same thing. And they tried to do the evangelism thing to me and the four spiritual laws and so forth. And I actually think I became a Christian in spite of a lot of those types of encounters that were there. Probably my first experience with Christianity where I was really curious about who Jesus was, was with readings of CS Lewis. And the way he kind of approached Jesus was just really different than kind of like, the packaged evangelical presentations of the gospel. And then to be honest, in the midst of like researching and reading, I just found a loving community. Like there are people on campus who, that are… again their evangelism was not good. But their love was great. Like, they invited me into their life, they heard my problems, and they cared about me. And so I think, actually, through the process of being in that community, the truth of the gospel kind of slowly hit my heart. And so that happened from freshman year, all the way to the end of college. And at the end of college, I became a Christian.
Aaron Lee: Wow, that’s amazing. You said that it was through a college ministry or a campus ministry. Is that correct?
Thomas Hwang: I would say it’s more through different… they were in campus ministries, but it was more just like my friends, people who I rubbed shoulders with.
Aaron Lee: And it was, like, relational aspects?
Thomas Hwang: Very relational.
Aaron Lee: Does that have implications for the church?
Thomas Hwang: 100%. Yes, 100%. I think, in our brains, we have an order of how salvation should work with people where you entice them with like pizza, or like, you know, these free nights of food, and they come. And then somehow in the midst of that, you share the gospel, and they get penetrated in their hearts. And then they become… they repent, and they get baptized, and then they join a church as a member, and they grow in their Bible theology, and they become a, you know, a Christian. Again, that’s like, kind of the ideal scenario. And sometimes that’s the way it goes. But God works not in a box. I think God works in interesting ways. And I find that oftentimes, people, they are drawn not to God, nor are they drawn naturally to doctrine, but they’re drawn to people. And it doesn’t stay there. But that’s why Jesus talks about how my disciples, they’ll know you for your love. And I think it’s that type of community that actually first makes people attracted at times. And that was the case for me. And in the midst of that you’re kind of journeying with them, like why are they together? Why do they love in this way? Why do you love me in this way? And so my situation was completely opposite. That standard like gospel moment, it became… I got included in the community, they loved me. And something about that in the process, I came to know Jesus. And again, I think my main takeaway for that is God works in different ways for every single person. Don’t put it in a box. Every story is different.
Aaron Lee: I’m getting a really big context now for your story but also for what you write about. So here at the SOLA conference, you did a panel on sexual abuse in the church. And I know for the website, you wrote a couple articles as well: Why Does Spiritual Abuse Take Place in a Church? Spiritual Abuse: Why the Church Needs to Talk About this Problem. So, we’ve been talking about the relational aspect of church, we’ve been talking about how you didn’t grow up in church, but you met the Protestants or whatever, right? Why these subjects to write about?
Thomas Hwang: Totally, not just those, but in general, everything?
Aaron Lee: Yeah, like this type of calling out the church, I want to say, in certain ways. Is that accurate?
Thomas Hwang: Calling out the church, that’s a good one. (laughing) That could be what I’m doing.
Aaron Lee: Maybe making them see the reality of what’s going on. Because I’m seeing a picture of somebody that didn’t grow up in church, but you’re able to observe the culture and church culture specifically. And you’re able to see, hey, there’s stuff that’s not right here. So that’s why I say you’re calling it out. You can feel free to say what you think you’re doing.
Thomas Hwang: Sure. Well I’m an Enneagram 5. And so that’s kind of the weird one who investigates and so forth. And we just like to observe life. And I always joke, like, I like to notice things. And I especially notice problems, I don’t have any solutions. But I definitely can point out a lot of problems. And I think in the church context, the feeling that we have is we have all the answers. And the answer is clearly here, it’s in the verse, and so forth. And on the one hand, like, of course, I believe in objective truth, God is truth. And scripture is truth. But God is also mysterious. There’s also a lot of wonder and awe. And when you read the wisdom books, a lot of wisdom books you can’t figure out God, you can’t put him in a box, you can’t put him in a theological category. There’s a lot he’s revealed, and yet there is a lot to explore. And I kind of felt like, I feel like a lot of modern evangelical thought when it comes to cultural issues, we kind of feel like we figure it out. And we know exactly what God has to say. And I’m just like, I don’t know if that’s true. And I don’t know if we thought about this enough. And that’s what the topics that are most interesting to me are the topics that are not talked about a lot. Because those are things that I feel the culture is talking about it, but the church has so much more to say. And just to presume that we already know what the answer is, I think that’s not really growing. And I also think, topics that we thought we understood, I feel like those intrigue me. Because I want to really explore it, because maybe the answers we thought were there are actually a little superficial, or they’re not reaching the context that the current culture is in right now. And so those are the things that catch my eye.
Aaron Lee: Yeah, I appreciate what you said about how the culture is talking about something, but maybe the church needs to address it. One of your most popular articles, or the most popular article on our website is What’s Wrong With Having Sex Before Marriage? What was your mindset with that? I mean, yeah, I’m gonna write this article, you know, like, what was your driving factor behind that and putting it out there?
Thomas Hwang: That was like an example of one of those topics that we think we know what Christians have to say about it. It’s just don’t have sex, like, it’s bad. And that’s not what Christianity says at all. It’s so much more nuanced, and rich and beautiful about what it says about sex. And in contrast, you know, we kind of see the culture talking about sex in a way that feels liberating and free, versus the way I see it is actually very enslaving and very broken, versus what God has to say about sex. It tends to be something that offers freedom and beauty in a way that I feel like people can’t really sometimes understand, because it’s reaching this like deepness of what sex really means. And so that was kind of my driving motivation, it’s talking about something that’s beautiful, but I feel like maybe Christians, we haven’t really nuanced it well enough for people to catch on. And so I enjoy talking about that, showing the nuances and the beauty of those topics.
Aaron Lee: Thank you for writing it. If you don’t do it, I don’t know who’s going to do it. (laughing). For the church, when should these types of things be addressed? Should they be addressed? Is it appropriate for the pulpit? What would you say?
Thomas Hwang: Well, people are gonna talk about it no matter what. They already are talking about it. And so one thing that I firmly believe is God, he speaks in all things. The Bible, and the creator of the universe has something to say about all aspects of life. And so in my opinion, like the public square, you need more Christian voices there. Your question is like, should we talk about it as a church, and I think on the one hand, you don’t want to be like a TED talk on Sundays, because we’re not driven by the culture’s agenda. On the other hand, if you’re not paying attention to what the culture is saying about things, then you’re not really helping your people to be equipped into the world. And I feel like that’s a big thing that we need to pay attention to, or don’t just equip them to do churchy stuff. But the whole purpose of the gathering of the saints is so that you can equip them to go out into the world and be salt and light there. And so we have to address the things that are actually happening in the world, but also look at it in a way that God looks at it, not being formed in the way that the world is forming us. So that’s kind of how I approach that.
Aaron Lee: Talk to me about your podcast. Is that a way that you can do that?
Thomas Hwang: Well, one thing we said on the podcast with myself, Eugene, and Jason, we’re all friends. And we never wanted to be like, we want to start a podcast for the sake of starting it and trying to gain influence. Like we talked this way without a mic. And that was one thing that we said is like, we don’t want to come off like we’re putting on a show. We’re literal friends. It’s even more fun when we’re off air. Like that was that conversation. But the literal tagline is we want to talk about church and culture and how that all mixes together with faith. And we try to tackle those things that are “off the pulpit” where we, you know, we try to think about, well, how as a Christian, are we thinking about these things that are going on in the culture? Like friendship or #metoo movements, and things like power, and so forth. And so to me, that’s kind of a fun thing that I hope more Christians could do. Not a podcast, but just those conversations about how faith and life intersect with each other.
Aaron Lee: What are some of the biggest blind spots you see among older Asian American leaders? What about among younger Asian American leaders?
Thomas Hwang: The bigger blind spots of the older generation, Asian American leaders… I feel a lot of us who grew up in the church given that’s the majority, understanding where people are at, like we talked about earlier. For example, we talked about on the panel, it’s not just being against spiritual abuse, it’s are you enabling it? Are you fighting against it? Do you know what that even looks like? Are you trauma sensitive? These are things that I have a lot of empathy for. Because it’s like new terms, and a new way of engaging with people that I feel like when you’re older, and you’re just kind of stuck in your Bible and your congregation, you’re not really aware to. But I feel like engaging in conversations with different fields outside of just biblical theology, which again, you need that, but you need to engage in other fields as well. I feel like we… maybe the older generation, they’re not used to that. I think you come with the sense they’re on a different page of how to do ministry. And maybe the most like “secular” they’ll go is leadership stuff. But there’s so much more like, you know, when it comes to, for example, mental health. Yeah, of course, you want to point them to the gospel. But the pathway to that, you have to actually meet them where they’re at. And so I think having that sensitivity, and that kind of awareness might be one big gap that’s there from the older generation. The younger generation, what’s the biggest gap that’s there? I always feel with Asians, maybe two things. One, is we feel like we could do things better. (laughing) You know, we will change it, and we make the same mistakes. And we have different blind spots, but the fact that we even have blind spots, I think we need to be aware of that. And I think that when you get older, you know, as a younger guy who’s getting older, I could sense like, oh, like I definitely have blind spots, and you get humbled by that. So that’s definitely one thing that’s there. And I think one other thing, too, is we don’t benefit from the generational wisdom that maybe other folks do. I think, especially in Asian culture, you oftentimes, like will try to disconnect yourself from the first gen. And so when you do that, that’s great. But the generational wisdom that’s passed down gets kind of lost, and I think we have lost sight of how much that helps a church and a pastor when you have generational wisdom.
Aaron Lee: There’s so much perspective there. We’re running out of time so let’s do one more. Culture is going to be coming at us. It keeps coming. I don’t think that you advocate us hiding or anything like that. It seems to me like you’re engaging culture head on. How would you encourage other Christians to do that with wisdom? Let’s just take Turning Red for example. Like how do you… how do I analyze this movie that’s coming at me? That’s just an example. For anything down the line that’s going to come at us.
Thomas Hwang: I think there’s, you know, one way to do it is again, you disengage, you create your own Christian subculture, you don’t even know what’s going on, you just kind of care about your potlucks and your brother sister appreciation nights and so forth, and your Sunday worship and serving. And that’s when you’re disengaging from culture. The other one is you’re just kind of going head on and really like, well, this is just the world and you conform to culture. And that’s kind of sometimes what takes place as well. There’s also another sub-way like that, where you bash the culture. Like you wage war against it, and you confront it, and all your posts are kind of condemning what’s happening in the world. But I feel, one, it’s not that complicated. When Jesus talks about you are the salt of the earth, you know, salt is like the most common product in your pantry that you’ll find, and it’s meant to just be everywhere. It’s nothing spectacular. He didn’t say you’re gonna be the steak of the year. Or their wagyu. Like, it’s nothing crazy. It’s literally just something that’s going to enhance things and preserve things. And I think that’s very telling as Christians, we are the salt of the earth. We are meant to not do anything extraordinary. But we’re meant to be a preservative in the culture. And that just means doing ordinary things, engaging ordinary things. And that’s what Jesus I think is calling us to do. So I don’t think it’s anything crazy. I don’t think it’s anything spectacular. I think it is intentional. But also think it’is very ordinary stuff that Christians do with the world.