In today’s episode, we’re going behind the scenes with Jin Cho in the early stages of a church plant. Even though he has decades of experience planting and pastoring churches, we’re listening to Jin “in process”—without having everything figured out. Jin is planting with a co-pastor in Southern California, in what he calls a “vanilla” culture, right where the attractional megachurch movement was launched. Let’s dive into all the preliminary work with Jin as he wrestles through what it means to cultivate a deeply integrated space.
Place and Space:
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Irvine, CA
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Church plant, early stages
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Tradition: Anglicanism
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In the (literal) shadow of prominent mega churches
Theological Themes:
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Holy dissatisfaction
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Re-thinking church planting metrics
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The myth of “sustainability”
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Theological engagement with culture
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Dialogical preaching
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Pastoring as both a cultural insider and outsider (double-consciousness)
Tension and Disorientation:
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How do we shape a particular identity in Christ in a place architected to be a cookie-cutter, vanilla American city?
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As public meetings begin and people begin to come, how do we avoid the pull toward numbers and prioritizing the institution?
Hope and New Life:
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The potential for holding space for rich theological engagement with culture and courageous conversations around hard topics.
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Experiencing Spirit-inspired creativity and joy while navigating all the questions of contextualizing the Gospel
Note from Host Seth Richardson:
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