Peter Choi is the newest member of our pastoral staff at City Church. He and his family come to us most recently from Michigan, where Peter taught and worked at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids. We hope you’ll get to know him as he continues to settle into life in San Francisco and at City Church, but in the meantime, we sat down to talk with him and learn a little bit of his story.

So, Peter, first things first--you are going to be doing some preaching at City Church as well as some teaching for our Newbigin House program. What drew you here?

A lot of different things really came together at City Church for me--in terms of ministry, in terms of scholarship, wanting to be really rooted in a local congregation, and doing ministry in an urban context. What does it mean to do theological education in a way that’s tied to the church? That has been happening here for quite a while, which drew me in. The opportunity to join up with that and learn from what has already happened, to be part of some exciting new ventures and initiatives, was really compelling to me.

When I went back to grad school after seven years of full-time ministry, I was often asked if this meant I wasn’t going to be a pastor anymore. My response always was that I would love to be both a pastor and an academic. That’s possible here. There is already an integration of ministry and theology.

Where does your passion for integrating ministry and theology come from?

It began with a sense of intellectual curiosity--how does the past affect what we do today?—but quickly moved to what practical application looks like in a ministry setting. I knew if I was going to go back and do more studies, I wanted to be in it for the long haul. Being in ministry was very gratifying, and I could have seen myself doing that my whole life. But after going through various seasons of ministry and my own walk with God, I began to realize there are bigger-picture questions that were being raised in my mind, questions that could addressed more fully in an academic setting.

For example, one big question for me––both academically and in terms of ministry was––What happens after revival? What does it look like to be a faithful follower of Jesus after the excitement or zeal of conversion fades away? The kinds of questions I was encountering in ministry had to do with sustaining discipleship throughout life. I study history, and what has happened in the past and what is happening now are related questions. Going back to school was a way of continuing to pursue God without switching directions in a dramatic way.

Awesome. Onto the good stuff: What is your favorite kind of food?

Oh, that’s a hard one. I grew up in southern California, so definitely Mexican food. When we moved to the Midwest, I missed good Asian food - it’s hard to find there.

Favorite thing about San Francisco so far?

Weather is an obvious one--it will be nice not being locked inside 3 or 4 months of the year. We love living in the Richmond, too. The whole world seems to converge here in SF. You walk out the door and don’t know what you’re going to encounter. What’s really cool is being able to experience and process that with our kids. The city is filled with conversation starters, and there’s always lots to talk about with our boys.

What are some of the books that have influenced you the most?

I read Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind right after college, and it really challenged me. That book made explicit a lot of the implicit questions I had. I wasn’t sure how to articulate many of those things, but it helped me to identify both problems and answers.

Abraham Kuyper has been a formative voice, even as a way of working out the implications of Noll’s book. How do you have a broader worldview that embraces a much larger intellectual framework? Kuyper talks about that in a way that really influenced me.

I love history, of course, and George Marsden’s biography of John Edwards was really inspiring for me. It takes a well-known figure in history and tells the story of his life from all kinds of new and fascinating angles--economic, cultural, social, political. The breadth of his study is amazing to me.

I was an English major in college and appreciate a lot of the postmodern fiction writers. Don DeLillo is a favorite. Also, I love anything by Marilynne Robinson--her fiction and nonfiction, like The Death of Adam.

What will/do you miss about the Midwest?

The relationships, the people; friends and family that we have back there. Honestly, not much else :)

How did you and your wife meet each other?

We met at church, but where we really connected was doing an urban plunge together. She came along as a chaperone for the girls in our youth group. Three weeks of urban discipleship training with teenagers from Michigan in Southern California really brought us together.

You and Minsun have three sons - Josiah is 3, Zachary is 6, and Elijah is 8. What are your kids like?

They’re very playful and very adventurous. The cool thing about being here is that they make games out of everything, and there’s so much to make games out of in San Francisco. They have more fun playing, actually, when the toys are packed away––which they have been during the course of our move. There are so many imaginative ways that they engage in play in the city.

I love how very affectionate they are, and love to express their emotions in a great, childlike way that is open about how they happen to be feeling at the moment.
They ask really good questions, too--questions I don’t think to ask anymore. Last night, Zachary asked “In heaven, will there be night?” It’s great.

And of course, they are some of the greatest forces for deeper character building in my life, if you know what I mean.