There is power in the words we speak, and The Witness of Withness guides Hosanna Wong’s work. No one knows this better than Hosanna Wong, a renowned and sought-after spoken word artist, evangelist and preacher. A YouTube video of her performing her poem “I Have a New Name” has over 400,000 views, and she has performed that poem and others in churches, prisons, recovery meetings and conferences all over the country for the past 15 years. She is the author of How (Not) to Save the World and, most recently, You Are More Than You’ve Been Told (both Thomas Nelson). Her performances range from formal stages to grassroots ministry settings, and she often partners with church-service outreach initiatives.
Her journey began on the streets of San Francisco, where she grew up. There her father, a second-generation Chinese immigrant, recovered heroin addict and former gang member, held church services several times a week for other recovering addicts, gang members and unhoused people—an early lesson in being with the poor. It was also there where she learned to craft words on the underground slam poetry circuit.
Outreach co-editor Jonathan Sprowl sat down with Wong to discuss how street ministry and traveling the U.S. shaped her, how trying to reach her little brother with the gospel taught her all the ways not to share her faith, why getting honest about who we are and what we’ve overcome is the road to freedom and fruitfulness, and why she still believes in the local church. Their conversation touches on approaches to systematic evangelism and how congregations can grow church witness.
I’ve read and heard about you reaching out to your younger brother through Marvel. So, with that comic book background, can you tell us a little bit about your origin story—your faith story—and how you became the superhero that you are today?
So, I was raised on the streets of San Francisco. My dad battled a heroin addiction for 15 years, and he fought in a gang. He had bullet holes along his calves from the last time he ran from the police [after] he robbed some place. A woman introduced him to Jesus, and Jesus changed his whole life. He ended up starting an outreach to our friends living without homes and battling with addiction, and that’s how I grew up.
We had outdoor church services two to three days a week every week, and people would bring their alcohol bottles and their drugs. That is how I learned church. I learned later in life when other people said they were also raised in church that we were not talking about exactly the same thing. But that’s where I learned that Jesus could save anyone’s soul, and redeem anyone’s story, and would use anyone who would say yes.
That’s also where I learned the art of spoken word poetry. It was the thing me and my friends had in common, something we loved to do together, a way that we all communicated. There were lots of different forms of oral storytelling, whether through rap, hip-hop, spoken word poetry or singing.
When I started having my own relationship with Jesus, it was just the natural way to talk to my friends about Jesus through the thing we had in common. Then I started competing in the underground slam poetry world with all my friends. Everyone was telling the truth about their stories, and Jesus was the truth of my story. Now I just get to share about Jesus with more friends. But it was always about trying to share about my one friend [Jesus] to my other friends in a way they understood.
And man, I could talk about [my brother] Elijah all day long, but it was the same kind of principles with him too. My brother grew up in the same environment I did, but didn’t have his own relationship with Jesus. [When] our dad died when I was 18 years old and my little brother was 12, my brother felt abandoned by God, and abandoned by our community, and had a hard heart toward God.
At first, I ministered to him so poorly. I was very bad at it. I would tell him he can’t be sad, he can’t be mad, he needs to have more faith. God’s gonna use this for his testimony one day. [But] my brother was 12 years old, and he missed his dad. At [various times], I was sending him all of these books and sermon videos—some of my own videos. Elijah, watch this. Minute 17, it’s for you. I was aggressive. I was rude. I was unkind. I wasn’t a good listener.
At one point I realized that he needed not another preacher but a big sister. Instead of trying to force my brother to step into my world, I learned that I needed to step into his. Whenever I would call him and want to talk about Jesus or church or his prayer life or his faith, all my brother wanted to talk about was superheroes. I realized that the best way to have a relationship with him at all, to communicate with him at all, was to also start getting into superheroes. I started loving what he loved, I stopped fighting to be right, and I started fighting for the relationship. Over time, I realized that my greatest witness would be my withness. How could I come alongside my brother and be with him where he really was?
It took 11 years of a constant relationship with my brother. Eleven years of apologizing when I was unkind. Eleven years of being with him where he really was, of listening to him, of admitting when I didn’t know something when he asked me for answers that I truly didn’t have. A lot of bringing him into what God was doing in my life, even when I wasn’t crushing it, even when I was doubting, even when I was struggling, even when I wasn’t living a life that I was proud of. Bringing him into that, admitting those things, and letting him see the journey of a very imperfect person still finding grace from God. Through 11 years of withness with Elijah, eventually he told me he wanted the peace I had, the joy I had, and he knew it was Jesus because I had told him a million times. But because he saw someone in real proximity who it was real for, it was real for him. And then he gave his life to Jesus.
I think a lot of Christ followers can relate. There is something in our lives that makes us fall in love with Jesus, and even have good theology about sharing about the love of Jesus, but then it becomes so personal and it’s in your home, and now it’s my little brother. It just became so much more than my theology. It became so much more than what I could preach about. It was something that I was learning how to live out with tears, and with begging, and with imperfections.