Bryan & Sarah Song
Bryan
Growing up in the heyday of the Oakland A’s Bay Area championship runs, I had dreams of becoming a professional baseball player, one day playing under the Coliseum’s bright stadium lights. God had bigger dreams in mind.
During the last sermon of a middle school retreat, I was convicted of my sins and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ and since then my life has taken on a different trajectory. Throughout high school, I had many spiritual mentors who loved me and opened up their lives to me, providing a community just like the one found in Acts 2. During my college years, my desire to serve God and help plant Acts 2 churches wherever and whenever started to crystallize.
After finishing my undergraduate studies, I started bi-vocational ministry on the UC Berkeley campus, serving as a campus minister for a number of years while also working as a technical project manager for various technology companies. In 2008, my wife Sarah and I moved to Texas to help start a church in Austin where our two daughters were born, and then we did it again in 2014 in Los Angeles. We’ve come full circle and are now back at in Berkeley, serving in youth ministry.
Enneagram: Type 8
Myers-Briggs: INTJ
Favorite Food: All types of Korean food, with Zachary’s Deep Dish pizza being a close second.
Sarah
I wanted to achieve the “American Dream” -- become a doctor, live in a house with a 3-car garage, and have a nice family and a golden retriever. But in college I quickly realized A) I wasn’t smart enough to do Organic Chemistry, and B) pursuing comfort and wealth was tiring and didn’t satisfy my longings for meaning and purpose. Even though I had been to church all my life, Christianity was just a label I put on. Moreover, hypocrisy in my past church experiences left me jaded and cynical towards religion.
However, I received an invitation at the dining hall my freshman year at UC Berkeley. God pulled me into a community of people who genuinely loved one another and seriously tried to live out the Scriptures in their daily lives. I felt intrigued by their authenticity and commitment to obey God’s word in the 21st Century. I saw people give up lucrative jobs and promotions in order to stick around and continue loving college students, opening up their homes and families and fridges as if I was part of their family. Because of their lives, I wanted to stay and know personally this God who I had only known about in stories and Sunday School.
God pursued me through different points in my life whether it was on a mission trip to Uzbekistan, planting churches in Austin, TX and Los Angeles, or returning back to the Bay Area. I experienced God: He turned a jaded, clueless, freshman into someone who wanted to live for the gospel so that other people, like me, can experience what I did.
Enneagram: Type 9
Fun facts: I’m a Korean who prefers Chinese food and Sushi over Korean food, and I enjoy doodling in my spare time.