In January, 2026 the Renewal team had an opportunity to deliver a Gospel-Centered Life (GCL) Weekend for All Nations Church (Onnurii) in Southern California to nearly 400 attendees. Here are a few reflections from speaking at my first-ever GCL and Serge’s first ever state-side bilingual GCL event.

1. From everywhere to everywhere, and even right here

I had the honor of being one of two speakers, along with my Sonship mentor and Serge’s Associate Area Director for Renewal, Marc Davis, primarily because there was a request for one of the two speakers to deliver the talks in Korean. Unfortunately, our company has very few fluent Korean speakers, and between the two of us, my Korean was a little better than Marc’s. The entire day sort of felt like a wedding—like bringing one beloved friend in to meet my entire extended family. I really don’t have enough words to describe the joy of being with a church full of “my people” while representing my company with “my people.” 

We often think of missions happening across the globe, but mission work also happens in our own hometowns. The immigrant Korean community in Los Angeles may still be deeply immersed in and stifled by our honor/shame culture. Some Korean Christians would resist the level of raw honesty and argue that GCL is only meant for white culture. I told the congregation that the beauty of the gospel is that it frees us from relying on either Korean culture or American culture, but to lean into creating a Christian culture.

2. For such a time as this

In hindsight, I see how God prepared and orchestrated this event from many years ago. All Nation’s lead pastor, Tae Kim, was introduced to our Mentored Sonship program by an elder at another church . Neither of them knew that. It was truly a World Harvest Mission moment. 

At the event, I had a chance to meet Will Hawk for the first time. Apparently, he had been a Sonship mentor for the weekend’s emcee, David Kim, as well as for Marc Davis and Pastor Tae Kim. Marc was my Sonship mentor. Tae led leaders who then led more leaders. While I was speaking with Will, I asked him to look around at the nearly 400 Korean American church leaders attending the weekend. Over the course of 10 years, all of these church leaders had gone through Gospel-Centered Life in Korean. Will is a spiritual grandfather and great-grandfather.

3. In the gospel, there is no shame

After Marc facilitated the “Adopted or Abandoned” exercise with the congregation, Pastor Tae went up and openly shared his own list with the congregation of times when he acted like he was abandoned. I have never, never, never seen a senior pastor of a large Korean church share that openly and not have a single person walk out. Clearly the members were accustomed to hearing their pastor share about his own weakness. This is shifting a paradigm. 

The Adopted or Abandoned chart from our GCL and Sonship programs challenges us to move our mindset and heart from feeling like we’re Abandoned to knowing the impact of being adopted as a child of God.

Then it was my time to lead session two in my broken Korean, and in that moment, I suddenly felt so free. I was reminded that in the gospel, there is no shame. I felt a deep solidarity with all our field workers around the world who’ve ever felt anxious or embarrassed about having to teach, preach, counsel, or converse in their non-dominant language.

A final thought

A Korean missionary once told me something I will never forget: “You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can never count the number of apples in a seed.” That weekend, by God’s kindness, we witnessed a whole lot of apples from one seed. Who would have imagined in that moment that there would be so much visible fruit? This was truly a World Harvest Mission moment (our old company name finally made sense to me).

While Serge did not discover this church, we can marvel at God’s handiwork that this Korean-speaking church has been using GCL material for nearly a decade, and that we had the privilege to experience this culminating moment. I continue to bask in God’s goodness and cannot wait for another GCL Weekend!