All Resources
How to: Identify & Ask New Co-Leaders
Why Hope Community Church utilizes the structure of Co-leaders What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in...
Small Group Open Chair Model
Whenever possible and healthy for the group, we encourage groups to maintain an “open chair.” This means that the group fosters an attitude of openness to newcomers and maintains an environment that would make a newcomer feel welcome. The group does not need to be...
Michael Atella
Transcript Growing up overseas as a missionary kid who was adopted actually that answer is complicated. My, my culture, I would say, never really aligned with any, and it's just kind of amalgamation and meshing of different cultures that I've experienced along the...
Swagata Bergquist
Transcript One practice that I was exposed to growing up was, regardless of what was happening in people's life, they would drop whatever they were doing to be fully present with someone else. Like our neighbors attending to our needs when my dad spent months out of...
Jairus Justus
Transcript I'd say one significant piece of my cultural background is probably how I grew up. In an Indian family, we always treat everyone as family. So whether that was one of my parents friends, one of their friend's children, whether that was actual relations. To...
Samantha Isomura
Transcript Growing up, my parents really emphasized the importance of language in our home. They signed my sisters and I up for Chinese school on Saturdays, and always tried to nurture the growth of the language in our home. We certainly resisted this as we were going...
Why Should Leaders Make Things Fun?
In this episode, the team discusses FUN! Our culture values humor, yet the church can tend to shy away from utilizing the gift of joy and laughter. Join the team for a...
One Man’s Minority Perspective on Being a Racial Minority
I was born in Seoul, South Korea, adopted at the age of 4 months old by a white family, and grew up in China. My mother is of Scottish descent, and my father has Italian ancestry. To put it another way, I look nothing like my family. Now it can be the case that...
Seeing God in Chinese School
The Chinese language primarily relies on pictographs to communicate. Supposedly, there are over 100,000 Chinese characters, although most experts agree that you need to know about 3,000 to 4,000 to be considered “literate”. The cool thing about pictographs is they...
Both & Neither
As a mixed race person, my experience with understanding my own racial identity has forced me to uncomfortably exist between two sides. When interacting with either side of my heritage, it’s hard to not feel like an illegitimate misfit. Even now as I write this...
What is Your Name and How Do You Pronounce It?
Being Asian American in the United States, I often get asked these questions: “Where are you from?”, “Are you Chinese?”, and “What is your name and how do you pronounce it?” My usual reply is that I am ethnically Hmong while being born and raised in Milwaukee,...
Cultural Clashes, Air Fryers, and How to Celebrate the Beauty of God’s People
In the trailer of Crazy Rich Asians, the two leading co-stars, Rachel and Nick, have been dating and are about to travel to Singapore to meet Nick’s family. When they get to the airport, Rachel is surprised by the first-class treatment and is shocked to find out that...