When I shared with friends, neighbors, and fellow church members that I was moving to China after college graduation to teach English and serve with a Christian sending organization, their response was overwhelmingly warm and supportive.
Several years later, when I told people I was relocating to Oakland, California for a job at a secular nonprofit, the reactions were mixed with skepticism and even resignation.
From some perspectives, China was a worthwhile mission field to win others to faith, while California was where Christians often lost their faith.
Returning from China and settling into what felt like a more ordinary life in the US initially seemed like stepping away from ministry—especially missions. But over the past 12 years living in northern California, God has shown me that opportunities to serve, love, and walk alongside Chinese neighbors and coworkers aren’t confined to the borders of China.
This is especially true of the San Francisco Bay Area, which encompasses not only historic, still bustling Chinatowns, but also myriad other predominately Chinese communities in every corner of the region. The Bay Area has nearly eight million residents, over 28% are Asian or Pacific Islander—the region’s largest ethnic group1.
Of course, Asian Bay Area residents aren’t a monolith. My aunts-in-law are immigrants who have lived here for 40 years speaking mostly Mandarin, while some of my Chinese American friends trace their Bay Area roots back to the 19th century. These are just slices of the region’s Asian diversity, which also includes Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Afghan communities.
It’s impossible to live in such a vibrant metro area without being continually reminded of how God has brought the nations to the Bay Area’s doorstep.
The New Gold Rush
Even after living in China as a highly sensitive, slow-talking former Kansan, the hyper-driven pace of the Bay Area brought its own version of culture shock. I’ve never worked directly in the tech sector, but it’s impossible to ignore how deeply the region is shaped by an industry that prizes innovation and constant “hustling” above seemingly all else.
The home of Silicon Valley continues to draw people from across the nation and around the world. Here, earning the best education possible or securing a lucrative job at a tech firm is often viewed as a golden ticket to the American dream.
A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle2 noted that many middle-class Chinese families, facing intense competition for limited university spots in China, have immigrated to the Bay Area. Their hope is to give their children access to some of the most prestigious public schools in the country and the accompanying opportunities for upward mobility in a place where the possibilities can feel limitless.
In many ways, the pressures of life in the Bay Area make it feel like an extension of ministry in China, albeit in a more informal capacity. Beneath the surface of the region’s innovation and wealth lie stark income inequalities, an ongoing struggle for affordable housing, and a constant threat of layoffs. Competition for limited resources, ranging from parking spaces to preschool slots can wear down even the most driven person.
When someone’s worth becomes tied to productivity or a company’s bottom line, exhaustion is almost inevitable. Over the years, I’ve met or worked with people across the economic spectrum, and many seem to wrestle with a variation of the same question: What is my identity rooted in?
When Striving Meets Stillness
Similar to my experience in China, living in a place where the culture is not largely Christian seems to make people more likely to take your faith seriously when you say you follow Christ. That, in combination with a willingness to engage in deeper, authentic conversations, opens many doors, especially with neighbors or coworkers who may have never interacted with a Christian longer than a few minutes before.
As a result, spiritual conversations are surprisingly abundant.
While I’m no longer emailing back home with incredible reports of people in China coming to Christ or growing in their faith by leaps and bounds, there are still rich stories of the Holy Spirit on the move in the Bay Area:
- Multiple Asian immigrant neighbors at various stages of belief showing interest in regularly attending a Moms’ prayer group.
- A highly accomplished, driven coworker who asks thoughtful questions about the Christian faith and why I don’t “hit her over the head with a Bible.”
- Hosting immigrant neighbors who have never been invited to an American home for a meal.
- A Buddhist family member by marriage who radiates peace after asking for prayer following her mother’s death.
- An executive at work who commented that “the atmosphere of the room automatically becomes calmer when you walk in.”
- Driving a disabled, elderly man to the bank after spotting him struggling in a crosswalk, and now he’s inspired to get back to church.
This is only a snapshot of my own experiences. I’m not engaged in anything spectacular. More often than not, I find myself shaped by the people and culture around me, rather than the other way around.
Yet these experiences illustrate that ministry doesn’t have to be complicated or formally documented. Stepping into the needs of those around us often simply involves showing up alongside others with a quiet presence. Even within my local church, I can see how these small, ordinary moments ripple outward and are still significant in the scope of eternity.
Faith Through the Lens of the Asian American Church
My ministry here has been deeply shaped and supported by the fellowship of our family’s small church, nestled in the redwoods of the Oakland Hills.
Christian Layman Church was founded in 1922 by Japanese American families. Over the years, the congregation has moved cities, worshiped without a building, and nearly disappeared when all the members were incarcerated in the Utah desert during World War II. The church endured and was later revitalized in the 1980s by a wave of primarily Chinese American university students.
Today, although our membership has fewer than 150 members (like many Bay Area congregations), it stands as one of many predominantly Asian churches that have remained steadfast in living out the gospel in the face of internment, redlining, and discrimination.
It is because of this fellowship that I have grown in ministering more effectively in a region both as diverse and high-pressure as the Bay Area. The members of our church consistently embody the key principles of intentional, culturally sensitive ministry, often expressed through:
- Practicing hospitality: Inviting friends, neighbors, and coworkers into their homes or out for meals, bringing food to those who are sick or in crisis, and generously sharing lunches in the fellowship hall after Sunday service.
- Bridging cultures: Acknowledging the holidays that matter to others, helping recent immigrants and older adults navigate local systems, and offering guidance on schools, housing, jobs, and essential resources.
- Walking through life transitions: Listening carefully to coworkers processing trauma or uncertainty, reviewing documents when support is needed, and caring for new parents whose relatives may be 3,000 miles away.
- Investing in the community: Becoming active participants in their neighborhoods, serving on councils, volunteering with local nonprofits, supporting small businesses, and hosting intergenerational gatherings.
- Responding with humility: Approaching difficult work dynamics with patience, extending grace when someone has hurt or wronged them, and offering grace even when gentleness is misunderstood or looked down upon.
Look Up and Be Alert
One Bible passage, in particular—Colossians 3:1-2—has provided an anchor for life, work, and ministry in both China and California.
The NIV translation reads,
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message version seems to resonate with me even more. It says,
So, if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
In the Bay Area, it’s easy to get swept up in materialism, career pressure, or the everyday grittiness around you. Yet almost every day, I find myself waking up with a sense of anticipation, wondering what unexpected “God sightings” might unfold. In a place this beautiful, filled with people deeply loved by God (even if they don’t yet know it), there is always a reason to lift my eyes toward things above.
