A guiding question for the journey

"But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith."
1 Timothy 1:5

2026 is a big year of transition for me. In January, I stepped down to part-time status at my engineering job and became employed at my local church as a ministry intern. More changes are coming down the road as my internship ends and I re-evaluate my work situation, plus other decisions in my personal life that I anticipate having to make. I have no idea what my daily life will look like in just a few months with so many things up in the air.

That is not to say that I do not have any goals I am moving toward, but maybe this transition year is reframing my perspective on how I am going to get there. The church interns recently read a book together titled Starting Well: Building a Strong Foundation For a Lifetime of Ministry. The book’s premise is that few Christian leaders actually finish well, and emerging leaders ought to prioritize starting well to essentially increase their chances. The question marks in my life right now are like caverns of space for me to think about what it means to start and finish well – but perhaps one question rises above the rest.

Knowing myself better

My experience being on church staff in these initial months has actually been quite similar to what I had expected. I give credit to my missions internship in Guatemala for tempering my romanticized hopes with the realities of ministry in an “already, not yet” world.

The things that I thought I would enjoy about serving on staff are indeed bringing me a lot of joy. I am grateful to have a work schedule that is intentionally structured around going to our church’s prayer room. Sitting in on the conversations that drive church vision and discipleship culture fuels me with excitement. And while Sundays have turned into long work days, being present throughout all three services gives me the opportunity to really notice the people who have also made this church their home. Obviously no one chooses to go into vocational ministry for the money, but I think it is pretty amazing that we can get paid for this!

On the flip side, the things that I thought would be challenging have indeed been stretching me. There is never a shortage of tasks to take care of, many of which I would not naturally volunteer to do of my own accord. The gray areas of professionalism have forced me to let go of the idea of fairness that is easier to maintain in the corporate world. The biggest challenge for me by far, though, has been the humbling task of making friends.

Objectively, I am not the most natural pick to seamlessly integrate myself into the pre-existing staff culture. I cannot relate to the Korean cultural undertones and overtones that permeate every other interaction. I do not have it in me to chime in to the rapid banter that pokes fun at each other with my softer personality and humor. And with trying to fit 29 people around one gigantic table, there will naturally be people who are closer to some folks than others.

If I were making this transition a few years prior, I would have put my security in my fear of man and tried to create a persona of who I thought the rest of staff would want me to be. But at this point in my life, the more I get put in these situations that test me to stay true to myself, I have grown to kind of like just being who I am. The point of acknowledging all this is not to indulge my Enneagram Four self, but because of the truth that we are one body with many members. We must know ourselves to know our calling and our giftedness for the sake of the larger body.

But, it is also more than that. “While we learn to celebrate our sense of uniqueness in personality, in experiences and in life history, we need to recognize that God is in the process of transforming us” (Starting Well, page 66).

Who am I, and who am I becoming?

The importance of character formation

I have been told that transformation in the early stages of ministry – “early stages” meaning the first ten (!) years – looks like prioritizing my character formation as the foundation for the rest of my life.

At the core of character formation is our integrity. Integrity, the state of being whole and undivided, requires a consistency between what we claim to believe and what we actually do, who we actually are. Integrity, only formed in my relationship with God, leads to growing in obedience and the ability to hear from Him.  Integrity sharpens conviction and confidence to lead as the Holy Spirit leads me.  Integrity brings about the upward, downward, and sideways relationships needed for ministry effectiveness and meaningful Kingdom influence.

It embarrassed me to realize that I had never so intently thought about what it means to have integrity in the context of being a follower of Christ. When I had thought of growth, things like achieving ministry output goals or earning higher titles or becoming more “spiritual” came to mind.  This season is refreshing my language to understand genuine leadership development for ministry.  The word “integrity” just sounds so weighty with the notion of morality attached to it. But even Paul himself confessed, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18-19).

Character formation is indeed a weighty thing that requires me to be fully honest with myself and with God. It is not behavior modification. It is the gospel faithfully at work. It is the cross growing bigger in my life to fill the gap between God’s holiness and my brokenness. It is me becoming more of who God made me to be.

Who am I becoming?

Love for the Church and the people of God

I will be the first to admit that I can get so caught up in my judgments against the local church. “We care too much about ____ and not enough about ____.” “It would be so much better if we did this thing differently.” “There is no discipleship happening here.”

I had a bit of an existential crisis last summer during a church-wide Q&A on our generational growth. Being a single young adult member and having not grown up in the church, I do recognize that I have limited experience with family ministry. But my cynicism sent me spiraling at the third mention of concerns over trash in front of our downtown building on Sunday mornings, among the many other efforts being made for the sake of suburban families feeling comfortable at our city church. I felt genuinely confused. Was this what I had to look forward to if I were to go deeper in serving here? Or was I wasting my time being active in a local church that I judged to be settling for the American Dream?

But then I remembered something that I heard from a Perspectives teacher who had grappled with this same dilemma: who am I to judge Jesus’ bride?

Fast forward six months later, and God ended up opening a door for me to intern on the church staff. God has a funny way of bringing things full circle in his business of humbling hearts.

Another full circle moment I recently experienced was in serving communion. The first time I had ever served communion was during my missions internship in Guatemala. It felt strange initially because I had always thought of serving communion to be reserved for a certain type of person leagues above me. I then swung to the other end of the spectrum and saw serving communion as just another one of my intern duties. When I got more comfortable in my Spanish, I actually started paying attention to the people coming up to receive the elements. Most people would come up expressionless, but once there was a sister who let out a deep, “Thank you, Jesus,” as I gave her a ripped piece of tortilla. Witnessing that moment broke something in me. Like, oh yeah, this is what it’s all about.

I got to serve communion at my local church for the first time a couple months ago. Serving communion looked a little different here in this context. Besides the culturally appropriate bread mediums, I felt like I knew at least one personal fact about almost every person in our small congregation in Guatemala, whereas most of the people I served communion to at my church here were complete strangers to me. I guess that is to be expected when there are over 1000 attendees on any given Sunday.

Thankfully, I found the most important part to be the same. When I get to serve communion, I get to acknowledge the beloved one who comes to the table, to look at the unique face of the imago dei, and to speak the good news of Jesus over that person’s life. It is impossible to hold on to any judgment in that shared sacred space, regardless of who is standing across from me. For a brief moment on this side of eternity, Jesus’ command to love one another as He loved us feels less like dying to myself and more like discovering the hidden treasure in the field.

It is unclear to me how exactly serving on my local church staff in this season leads me closer to going on missions. In terms of an earthly timeline, this actually could be considered a delay. But what is becoming clearer as Christ is forming me, is that one day missions will end, but the Church is forever.

Who am I becoming? May I become more and more a person of love.