This is my story of how Revive Church found a new home at the Trinity Church of Sunnyvale campus.

 

The story starts in the spring of 2011. It was my third year as the English Ministry Pastor at San Jose New Hope Church, and I had travelled to Chicago for the 2011 Gospel Coalition Conference. Pastor Yung was still pastoring in Southern California, and we had agreed to meet in Chicago for this conference. Frank Kim was still early in his ministry training, and he too also flew to Chicago. The theme of the conference was “Preaching the Gospel and Christ from the Old Testament.” It was heady stuff but exciting. Through the Gospel Coalition, Tim Keller, John Piper, and Don Carson were spearheading the vision of Gospel-centered preaching and ministry, and it was starting to gain some traction around the country. Four thousand people had gathered in Chicago, and the spiritual energy throughout the conference was palpable.

 

It was so easy to get to know people and start conversations. Almost everywhere you went in the conference you were surrounded by Christians who cared about Gospel-centered ministry. I was standing in line waiting to get lunch, and it was crowded. I was being friendly asking people near me where they were from, and in response when they would ask me, I shared that I was from San Jose. An excited voice piped up from behind me saying, “Who is from San Jose?!” A young man moved his way forward in the line to meet me, and he told me that he too was from San Jose. As we got to know one another, we “clicked.” It was instantly clear that we had a connection. Tim Reilly was brimming with passion for the Gospel and an ambition to reach others for Christ. He was quite happy to meet another brother who also had a passion for the Gospel and for Silicon Valley. Tim has an infectious, joyful energy and also has a talent for meeting people and making connections. So, after meeting one another, he found me on Facebook, connected with me, and we were in touch on and off in the following years.

 

Fast forward to 2018. Early in the year the elders at San Jose New Hope Church made a momentous decision to have the English Ministry become its own church yet stay in a partnership with New Hope for the sake of the next generations. Our congregation would become a new church, but we did not think we would be moving out and having to solve issues like finding a new space, but as the year progressed the Korean Ministry became horribly divided and dysfunctional and broke apart, which also forced the English Ministry congregation out and wholly on our own before we had anticipated. By the fall our leaders decided to form a Site Search Team, and our new fledgling church, which gained the name Revive, began praying that the Lord would provide us a new place to worship and do ministry.

 

The Site Search Team looked at all kinds of options, though our preferred choice would have been finding a church to rent on Sunday mornings, but that also would be hardest to find since the vast majority of churches favor a Sunday morning worship time. We looked into schools, community centers, and asked numerous churches if they would be open to hosting us. I personally went to quite a number of sites and spoke with a good number of pastors. For one reason or another something did not quite work out. There was one church with a great location, great worship room, good fellowship hall, and their pastor seemed excited about the possibility of inviting a church that had a predominantly Asian-American members to share their space, but they had no space for children’s ministry. I spoke with a principal of a Christian private school, and they were willing to offer affordable rent and were generous with their space usage, but the room for worship was not very good. A small seminary in town that I had never heard of offered us space. That was actually pretty exciting at first, but we took them off our list because their worship area was simply too small.

 

In November after prayer and deliberations our Steering (leadership) Team decided that it would be worthwhile to consider having a late afternoon service in a church. We decided to try out a late afternoon service for a couple weeks while we were still at New Hope. After the vast majority of the congregation responded positively to a potential afternoon service time, that opened up more possible avenues to ask. Most churches do not use their building for worship on a late Sunday afternoon. However, I knew of at least 3 other churches that were conducting their main worship times successfully this way.

 

Earlier in the year Pastor Yung and I had visited a church in Sunnyvale for a pastors’ gathering. Yung especially liked this facility because they had a ball pit for toddlers, a great room for youth, and a gym dedicated to the surrounding community! He urged me to ask that pastor. Here is where the story gets interesting. In previous gatherings of pastors in Silicon Valley I had met this pastor, Joel King, and it turns out that he was especially close to... Tim Reilly. After the Gospel Coalition Tim had started gathering a group of young people, evangelizing to reach people for Christ, and this group essentially became a church plant being incubated as they met and were in a partnership at… you guessed it… Trinity Church of Sunnyvale. Not too long ago Tim and his group left Trinity and merged with an older, prominent church in San Jose called Church of the Valley (COV). Since then Tim has become lead pastor at COV, and his church plant, reestablished as the new COV, has been thriving reaching many for Jesus. Both Joel and Tim have strong Gospel convictions and long to reach the unreached for the Lord. In fact, Joel was at that very same Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago when I met Tim, but I just had not met him then. But since I had met him later through Tim, he immediately gained an impression that I was a pastor whose Gospel convictions were aligned with his and Tim’s.

 

In late 2018, I sent Joel a brief, simple email explaining that we were a new church plant looking to find a new home. It was among numerous such emails that I had sent pastors and churches. It was December, which can be a busy time of the year for pastors as churches approach Christmas. At first, I did not hear back from him, so I started to think that perhaps that door was not going to open for us. But a little after Christmas Joel wrote back. The answer was… maybe. He said that he and their elders would need to go through a process to see “if God was in this.” He said that we could start by the two of us meeting to see if he and I and our two churches were theologically and missionally compatible.

 

I had mixed feelings about this reply of “maybe.” On the one hand, I was quite impressed. Here was a leader and a church who was NOT looking to have a business relationship. I had spoken with numerous pastors and churches, and, yes, some had some spiritual desire to help another church, but many (most?) basically came down to what was more or less a cut-dried landlord-renter relationship. They would provide X, and we were to pay Y. Instead this pastor and his elders were not even looking for a renter; however, they were looking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and were open to the possibility that God was leading us to them to be friends and partners for the greater advance of the Kingdom. That was remarkable and a very refreshingly different spirit from many others that I had encountered. On the other hand, that left me wondering if this process would take too long, and it might not work out for us because we sensed that the New Hope leaders wanted us out of the building sooner rather than later and thus felt a pressure to make it happen quickly.

 

It took a few weeks, but Joel and I met for brunch at one of his favored eateries in Campbell. We got to know each other, shared about our backgrounds, theology, visions, and dreams. We hit it off pretty quickly. I could see why he and Tim were close, and it was not too hard to see that Joel had an inkling that I might be a brother like Tim with whom he could “click” in ministry. That morning we spent a lengthy period of time together, and it was great. We both came away sensing that the Holy Spirit may very well be in this. He suggested that I “bring some guys” and take a look at their facilities, and if we liked it, then we could move forward with me meeting with their elders. The following Tuesday we arranged for us, the Revive/former New Hope pastors to visit Trinity after our usual lunch that we share after our prayer and staff meetings. Joel showed us around, and our reaction, “Oh yes! Please, Lord, let us come here.” After seeing a number of places in which the rooms for the children’s ministry were not so great, I was smitten with how this was a church that clearly had a vision and love for next generation Gospel mission, just like we did. After the tour it was not a hard decision. Yung and I told Joel, “Yeah, we’re interested. Let’s move forward.” Joel then said something which I will never forget: “Guys, this building does not belong to us. It belongs to Jesus. It’s not a question for us whether someone else should use this building to worship and reach people for Christ. The question is whether you guys are the right church to come alongside us to reach people in the city.”

 

Joel then got back to me with a meeting time with his elders for a Sunday lunch after our service times in the morning. I asked him if there was some specific way, he wanted me to prepare for that meeting. He said something like, “Nah, just be yourself. I think they’re going to like you and what you guys are about.”

 

We met at Panera Bread in Sunnyvale. After getting our lunches, each of us sat down, and we started with introductions. There were about eight men plus Joel and me. All of them were elders, except for one who was in training. What stood out to me about them was that most of them had been with the church for years, some for 20+ years, and they were all experienced elders. I had forwarded to Joel our vision paper, and some of them had printed it out and brought it with them. Then Joel had me introduce myself and our church. Some memorable moments from this time with them:

 

a) When I said that we were a “Gospel-centered church,” Joel interrupted me and said, “SooSang, would you please tell us ‘What is the Gospel?’” I was caught off-guard because I had never had another pastor do that before, but I was also immediately impressed. So many churches think of the Gospel as another way of saying generic Christianity, but here was a church whose leadership cared about the Gospel and knew that it was important that a church had a clear idea of what it was. I gathered myself and then gave them a succinct yet precise summation of the Gospel, and then I saw heads nod around the table.

 

b) One of the elders said, “Could you give us an example of how Revive and Trinity might do something together that could help advance the Kingdom?” He started by saying that he didn’t mean to “put me on the spot,” but that’s exactly what he was doing. I loved his direct, no-nonsense question. I gave an example of how both of our church members might serve an intentionally crosscultural evangelistic ministry that our church has a connection within Sunnyvale. Again, heads nodded.

 

c) At one point I gave a brief description of our Life on Life Missional Discipleship movement, and one of the elders stopped me. He looked deeply moved to find that in a busy city such as ours that a church would pour this much into a few at a time. He said something like: “The investment you are making in these individuals this way is one of the most important things that will happen in their life.”

 

d) After they had finished asking me questions, there were comments like this: “They sure do align quite well with us.” “I love how they’re both like us but also different than us.” “I love that they sure seem younger than us.” “This is pretty exciting.”

 

Joel then led us all in a time of prayer. I thought maybe just one or two might pray, and then he would close, and then we would leave soon. It was a time of “popcorn” prayer, so they could chime in as they felt led. Every single man around the table prayed. And those prayers were not short. They were deep, heart-felt powerful prayers, and the prayers continued on and on. Nobody seemed to in a hurry to be finished, and those Godly men poured out Kingdom dreams on behalf of Revive. We sat there in the middle of that Panera Cafe unashamedly praying for a quite a long time, and when we had finished and lifted our heads, it was clear that the Holy Spirit had done an important work. Joel then told me that they would take some more time to deliberate on their own and wanted to take a month or so to pray over the decision whether to invite Revive onto their campus and “partner” with them.

 

A little more than a month later the answer was Yes. They let us have our own storage shed on the parking lot. They provided us a dedicated office. We get to use basically the church more or less like our own. All for below-market rent. Oh, and we get them as friends and partners. It’s all been more than we were even looking for when we first started searching for a new home. May the Lord’s name be praised.