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I grew up in Southeastern China and was raised in a Christian family. My parents and grandparents attended an underground church with me every Sunday in my hometown. My grandma would read a Bible story to me every night and we would talk about it, sometimes until midnight. And I remember my family teaching me to memorize Scripture. In my childhood, my parents would prepare a small whiteboard with a verse on it every week, and then I would read that very short verse every day until I memorized it. Then they would change it to a new verse. I think more than half of the Scriptures in my mind now were those I memorized when I was a child.
My mother’s parents also emphasized family worship. They had begun that during the 1970s. If you know Chinese history, you know China had a cultural revolution from 1960 until the 1980s. Chinese Christians were facing great persecution during those years. Families of my mom’s generation would secretly find brothers who knew the Bible well and invite them to teach every Friday evening and then teach their children. Now, 50 years later, they still keep that family worship tradition.
I was in fifth grade, about 10 to 11 years old, when I became a Christian—I raised my hand at an evangelistic meeting. During my teenage years, I began to be interested in helping others discern biblical truth after a close friend fell into a cult and I began to research Christian doctrine. I also began to play piano and minister in other ways in our church as I grew older. I very clearly remember when I was 17 years old, when I was in 11th grade, a Sunday school teacher asked us, “Hey, what’s your dream? What do you want to do in the future?” I answered that I wanted to be a pastor. It was a serious answer, though now I realize I did not know clearly what it meant to be a pastor.
“The example of other, older pastors and other churches has taught me the importance of shepherding God’s people with patience, love, grace, and mercy.”
During my college years, I studied microbiology and later anthropology, but I always knew I wanted to be a pastor, so I studied theology alongside these majors. My college years were also a time of maturing in my faith. Our church was influenced by Tim Keller and his City to City ministry. We tried to teach our congregation to have a gospel-centered view of our faith and the Bible. Through this, I was challenged at the point of pride and self-righteousness. It helped me go back and think about what grace is, what salvation is, and it helped me start to know the gospel is good news for me. It’s not just for other people—it’s my good news.
There were seminaries in Taiwan and Singapore available to me, but I felt led to search among U.S. seminaries. At that time, I was not a Baptist because my home church was underground and we didn’t have any denomination background, but I found Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. I saw a lot of “gospel-centered” phrases on the website like, “We provide gospel-centered theological education. We want to build gospel-centered churches,” and so forth. I graduated in 2020 and was married to my wife, Dan Song, at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville.
Northwest Chinese Baptist Church in Houston is my first pastorate, and I have been here since January 2022. As a young pastor, I am still learning. The example of other, older pastors and other churches has taught me the importance of shepherding God’s people with patience, love, grace, and mercy. My ministry is a heritage of so many who have taught me through the years—family, pastors, my seminary professors and president, and men like Tim Keller and Mark Dever.
My grandparents have all passed away now, but my mother and my uncle still keep this family worship as a family tradition every Friday. Following that heritage, my uncle, my cousin, and now me—we three are the only male members remaining in my mother’s extended family, and we are all full-time pastors now.
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