Ryan Kwon: Nothing to Prove
Ryan Kwon’s church-planting journey nearly ended before it even got started. When he first learned about church planting, he was already an established pastor and had the impression that it was just something disillusioned younger people did to split from their current churches. He had almost put it out of his mind when God spoke to him through a song and changed the trajectory of his ministry.
Today, Kwon is the founding and lead pastor of Resonate Church, a multiethnic multisite church in Fremont, California, that launched in 2010 with a mission to multiply churches in the most unchurched region in America: the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been on the boards of Acts 29 and Exponential, and serves as a council member for The Gospel Coalition, while being a frequent conference speaker.
In the following conversation, he discusses his journey to becoming a church planter, how the American church has misunderstood discipleship, and what happens when you truly understand what it means to be a child of God.
Ryan Kwon: The Interview
Share a little bit about your faith journey and call to ministry.
I grew up in a nonbelieving family. [My parents] were Olympic athletes. They ended up coming to the States with the hopes of having a family here. They really had a very hardworking mindset: Hard work equals a better life, and a better life equals the way you’re going to save yourself from damnation, or save yourself from hardship, or save yourself from not living the life that you want to.
Part of my story, too, is that I was [born] premature. I was slipping out of my mother’s uterus at six months, and I was supposed to be stillborn, but for some reason God gave me breath and life. Early on I was just a little fighter, I suppose, and I survived.
When I was in the sixth grade, my dad looked at me and said, “You know what? You’re going to be a doctor.” That’s all he said. And I said, “Yes, Daddy.” That’s all I thought I was going to be, so I pursued medicine at UCLA. In my last year of college, a classmate for the very first time shared this radical gospel of Jesus, and I was just blown away. I thought, If this is true then it actually revolutionizes everything in my life—and so it did.
I went to church for the first time … that was an experience. All my life as an Asian living in an Anglo world, I always felt like I had to work for things. I’ve always had to be good at things, or I had to be charming or generous or whatever it took. I just worked for it. At church, before I could even engage and try to work my way in, they just received me. And there I met an incredible, brilliant doctor who gave up everything to become a medical missionary in Indonesia. That sparked my interest to become the same. I’m like, Maybe God is calling me to be a medical missionary. His advice to me was, if you are, then go to seminary and learn the Bible first, because wherever you go, you’re going to be inquired of and have opportunities to share your faith.
So, that’s how my seminary journey started. I didn’t know what seminary was, because I was kind of a new Christian. I thought it was Christian trade school, like mechanic school. I went there, and it just blew my mind. I took a New Testament survey, Old Testament survey, and a hermeneutics course over the summer, and I just couldn’t believe that this was the Bible. I fell in love with studying and reading it. I was a science and math guy all my life, like a STEM guy, and for the first time I became a history guy and a philosophy guy instantly, because it just piqued my interest in Jesus and history. And I never looked back.
Of course, that put a wedge in my parents’ dream of me becoming a doctor, and that was kind of rough for maybe five to 10 years. But eventually my mom became a believer, and that was a supernatural story there too. She witnessed to my dad, and he later on became a believer. I know God saved me for his pleasure, but if it was somehow to reach my parents, man, I’m so grateful for it.
So, what was the miraculous story of your mom?
When I was about 26 or 27, my mom got sick with liver cancer, so I ended up moving back home and decided to live with her to try to help her and help my dad take care of her. It was Valentine’s Day—I’ll never forget—I bought some Patti LaBelle concert tickets in LA for her and her friend to enjoy that night. And then I had gone out. I remember coming in really late—like one or two in the morning—and as I was passing by her room, I saw the lights on. So I knocked and went into her room and asked, “Hey, Mom, are you OK?”
She had been weeping all night it seemed like. Her face was a mess. And in her hand was one of those tracts. Apparently all the times that I tried to share the gospel [fell on deaf ears], but for some reason a stranger had handed her a tract and she’d been reading the prayer of salvation in the back, praying and repeating that.
She said, “Ryan, how many times do I have to pray this before I get saved? Do I have to pray it 500 times, 1,000 times?” And she was willing to do it.
I said, “Mom, you’re not going to believe it, but all you have to say it is once. You only have to mean it once and pray it once, and he will pay for your sins and he will give you this new life.”
I remember her looking at me and saying, “That’s impossible. Nothing is that good.”
And I got to tell her that Jesus is that good.
She received the Lord that night, and became a grace agent immediately. She lived for another 10 years and got to experience church for the first time, and that’s what led my dad to faith. My dad would have to give her rides because she was no longer able to drive, and he would stay in the parking lot. He just got tired of doing that after a while and went in. Eventually, [it was] the gospel being preached over and over again, and my mom being so steadfast and faithful and praying for her husband [that] turned [him]. I just never thought that my dad … he’s one of those guys, like you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. The gospel can, though. The gospel could transform the oldest of dogs, and he was revolutionized too. I’m so grateful.
What made you decide to become a pastor after seminary, and start Resonate?
I come from an honor culture, and in the first church that I served at, somebody tapped my shoulder and said, “Hey, I think you’ll be a great pastor.” I just thought that’s how you give your life to the Lord: You just go all the way. So I went all the way.
