If you want to know, I, James Choung, was born to Korean immigrants in the heart of Lincoln Park in downtown Chicago. But my dad made me trade frigid winters and muggy summers for Seattle’s incessant drizzle when I was five, and while I was growing up, I took many naps under that blanket of gray.
After high school, I headed east to stare at blackboards full of illegible calculus formulas explained by TA’s with incomprehensibly thick foreign accents. I should thank God every day that I’m not an engineer, and I left college in 1995 with a piece of paper attempting to validate the gobs of financial aid I spent, which said that I had graduated from MIT with a Management Science degree. After that, I left Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity in 1999 — which is a degree that’s poorly named: shouldn’t we be mastered by divinity instead? — trading confusion about formulas for confusion about God, though I didn’t know I was confused back then. But when I realized how truly confused I was (confusing, ain’t it?), I wandered to the wise gurus at Fuller Theological Seminary, and in 2008, they pushed me back out into the world with a Doctor of Ministry in Postmodern Leadership Development.
Along the way, ministry educated me in ways the classroom couldn’t. As reckless twenty-somethings, we planted an urban, multi-ethnic church with a value for social justice called Cambridge Community Fellowship Church — and even more reckless, they made me a pastor. Then, with even less prudence, someone appointed me an intern pastor over international youth, college and expats in the English-speaking ministries of Onnuri Community Church in Seoul, Korea. Poor kids. But they might’ve thought me cool when I sang and played acoustic & Spanish guitar for Urbana 2003 and cut a CD. At least my wife thought so — and that’s good enough for me.
What fills my time these days is being divisional director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA in Greater San Diego. Over 16 campuses and over 220,000 students to try and connect with should keep a guy busy. But I’ve managed to squeeze out a book and a booklet as well: True Story and Based on a True Story, published by InterVarsity Press. And the invitations come enough to speak on campuses, churches and conferences throughout the country.
When the planets align and I get some spare time, I like to have fun with my buddies, travel to exotic locations, maybe swing a racket in hopes of playing something like tennis, read an insightful book, write angsty thoughts in my journal, hit some jazzy chords on the keys, and enjoy San Diego’s endless summer. I’m also a grateful worshipper at Coast Vineyard Christian Fellowship, and I live in La Jolla, California (the campus side, not the ritzy side) with my newborn son, Isaiah, and my wonderful wife, Jinhee, whose smile reminds me every day that I’m the lucky one.
