Centering: The Asian American Christian Podcast

Centered: Resources for the Asian American Church
  • 4.4 (47)
  • Religion & Spirituality
  • Updated Monthly

Centering is the Asian American Christian Podcast: conversations on Christ, the Christian life, and Asian American perspectives. Through our podcast seasons, as well as specially presented content, we dive into the reality and beauty of living out Asian American Christian faith. Centering is a production of the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary.

  1. 7h ago

    Mental Health, Women Leaders, and a 40-Year Legacy: A Conversation with Eleanor Huang

    In this bonus episode of Centering: the Asian American Christian Podcast, Daniel Lee continues the micro-series on the AAC’s 10th anniversary with guest co-host Jessica ChenFeng (director of the Asian American Well-being Collaboratory, and Associate Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary). They sit down with Eleanor Huang, retired licensed clinical social worker and co-founder of the Asian American Christian Counseling Service (AACCS), and recipient of our Community Catalyst Award at our 10th anniversary gala for her work in mental health. For over four decades, AACCS worked to destigmatize mental health counseling and psychotherapy in the Asian American Christian community. Eleanor guided it from a 1979 gathering in her Silver Lake living room through its incorporation in 1986, its 2016 acquisition by New Dawn Christian Family Services, and its closure in 2020. Jessica, who served on the AACCS board as a doctoral student, invited Eleanor to share the story behind the work, and the woman behind it. In this conversation, Eleanor discusses: How a small group of Christian mental health practitioners at Evergreen Baptist Church discovered one another and became the Paramythians, a name rooted in the biblical Greek word for comfort Why Asian American Christian mental health did not begin with millennials, and what it looked like for clinicians in the 1970s to be told to leave faith out of the therapy room Her path from UCLA in the late 1960s and '70s, through the Asian American Studies Center and affirmative action in social work education, to her own MSW The personal wound of being asked to leave a campus fellowship, and how it shaped her conviction that wounded Christians needed a place of care How AACC's four-part mission unfolded: direct counseling at accessible fees, church education, pastoral consultation, and building the pipeline of future Asian American clinicians The reality behind the organization: part-time therapists, volunteer leadership, and a community that kept asking whether God wanted it to continue What it meant to grow from working quietly in the background to leading visibly as a woman, including late-night grant writing in the era of typewriters and thermal fax machines Eleanor's story is a reminder for any young therapist or pastor who feels alone in this work: others have walked this road before, and their legacy is here for us to learn from. Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac. Learn more about the AAC's 10-year history: https://aac.fuller.edu/10-year-anniversary/

    Mental Health, Women Leaders, and a 40-Year Legacy: A Conversation with Eleanor Huang

  2. Aug 28

    Frodo, Grace, and the Founding of a Center: A Conversation with Daniel Lee

    To close out our 10th anniversary micro-series, we flip the format: Yulee interviews Daniel about his own journey to founding the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary. It’s a more personal episode than usual, tracing the family history, faith formation, and institutional battles that shaped both Daniel and the Center itself. Daniel’s upbringing in a Korean American church in Northern Virginia, and how growing up alongside non-Korean Asian American friends—while navigating an abusive father—shaped his early pull toward a broader Asian American identity His campus ministry years as “Grace Man,” and the pushback he got for it Going to Princeton to study Karl Barth and, for a time, trying to leave Asian American ministry behind entirely in pursuit of becoming “a legitimate theologian” The unraveling of that plan: unresolved family patterns, disillusionment with Tim Keller’s Redeemer model, and a friend’s blunt observation—”all you do is talk about Asian American stuff”—that brought him back Arriving at Fuller, starting the Asian American Theological Fellowship as a lone ThM student, and the years of institutional confusion that followed (mistaken-identity emails, “what language will you teach it in?”) The financial and political cost of building the Center—years on food stamps, a breakdown in an empty office, HR complaints, and resistance from unexpected places, including fellow Asian Americans The founding commitment to a truly pan-Asian American Center—not a “wink-wink” Korean or East Asian program—built around Asian heritage, migration experience, American culture, and racialization Where the Center is headed next: the Filipino American Ministry Initiative, the Korean American Ministry Initiative, South Asian American work, and the shift from research toward resourcing This one’s a little different—less history lecture, more origin story. Thanks for listening, and thanks for walking this whole micro-series with us. We’ll see you at the 10th anniversary celebration this October. Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac. For information about our 10th anniversary gala, visit tinyurl.com/10yearsaac

    Frodo, Grace, and the Founding of a Center: A Conversation with Daniel Lee

  3. Aug 18

    Faith Imagination and the Fight to Belong: A Conversation with Ken Fong

    This episode continues our 10th anniversary micro-series with a conversation featuring Dr. Ken Fong—longtime pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, former national Asian American ministry leader, and Daniel's predecessor as Executive Director of Fuller's Asian American Initiative. Ken and Daniel trace the decades-long, often invisible labor behind the Asian American Center's history, from Fuller's earliest Asian American ministries class to the founding of the Center itself. Ken's path to Fuller in 1978, and the wave of Japanese American and Chinese American students who shaped the seminary's Asian American presence in that era Why Japanese American churches—shaped by the incarceration camps and shifting generational leadership—became, in Ken's words, a reluctant "vanguard" of pan-Asian ministry Evergreen Baptist's decision to hire its first Chinese American associate pastor, and Ken's framing of the church as evolving from a "Japanese restaurant" to a fusion menu still cooked by Asian American chefs Ken's early clashes over "new wineskins" for American-born Chinese ministry, and the "30 years too soon" conversation that followed The founding and dissolution of Fuller's earlier Asian American Initiative—including the racism Ken and Daniel encountered while trying to institutionalize the program, and why Ken ultimately stepped down so the Center could be funded Ken and Daniel's reflections on the emotional toll of that transition, and what it meant to rebuild afterward Why Asian American women students were consistently among the strongest in Ken's classes—and how few went on into full-time ministry Ken's shift over time from megachurch ambitions to a more communal, formation-centered vision of Asian American church This one runs long on institutional history, but it's essential context for understanding what the Center stands on. Thanks for listening! Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: https://aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac. For information about our 10th anniversary gala, visit tinyurl.com/10yearsaac

    Faith Imagination and the Fight to Belong: A Conversation with Ken Fong

  4. Aug 11

    Asian, Asian American, and the Making of a Center: A Conversation with Jane Hong

    Asian, Asian American, and the Making of a Center: A Conversation with Jane Hong In this episode, Daniel and Yulee welcome Dr. Jane Hong, professor of history at Occidental College and author of the award-winning Opening the Gates to Asia, for a conversation that's part of a micro-series marking the Asian American Center's 10th anniversary—tracing the histories that came before us. Jane walks through the surprising, often-overlooked story of Asian American evangelicalism, and Fuller Seminary's complicated role in it. The conversation covers: How Jane's research originated—partly from a 2017 gathering of Asian American Christians processing the 2016 election, and partly from trying to understand her own family members who voted for Trump across three elections Why anti-communism, generational trauma, and disinformation help explain (without excusing) political conservatism in many Asian immigrant communities—and how to hold disagreement with grace Fuller's "vaunted" place in white evangelical history, and the untold story of its growth since the 1980s through Asian, Asian American, and international student enrollment The institutional tension between "Asian" and "Asian American" identity at Fuller—including the assumption that Korean international programs could simply stand in for Asian American ministry Key figures and flashpoints: the 1965 Immigration Act, the 1992 LA Uprising (Saigu), the "Silent Exodus" article, InterVarsity pioneers like Jeanette Yep, and the funding disparities between Black, Hispanic, and Asian pastoral programs at Fuller Jane's hope for the next generation: that Asian American history becomes a normal part of the curriculum, not a side note—and that understanding racial structures helps Christians navigate the world with wisdom, not blindness A rich, detail-filled conversation for anyone wanting to understand how Asian American evangelicalism took shape—and why Fuller has been more central to that story than most people realize. "Opening the Gates to Asia" by Jane Hong: https://uncpress.org/9781469653365/opening-the-gates-to-asia/ Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: https://aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac. For information about our 10th anniversary gala, visit tinyurl.com/10yearsaac

    Asian, Asian American, and the Making of a Center: A Conversation with Jane Hong

  5. Aug 4

    Forgotten Leaders and Why History Matters: A Conversation with Tim Tseng

    To kick off our 10th anniversary micro-series celebrating the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, we sit down with Dr. Tim Tseng, Asian American church historian and director of the Asian American Christian History Institute (AACHI). Tim takes us back to 1972 and the founding of PACTS (the Pacific and Asian American Center for Theology and Strategies), tracing a lineage of Asian American Christian leadership that runs decades deeper than any single institution's anniversary can capture. The origins of PACTS: a 1972 gathering of Bay Area pastors trained in mainline Protestant seminaries who began questioning assimilation and erasure within their denominations The newly republished PACTS Reader, edited by Roy Sano and now available through Claremont Press—the story behind bringing this out-of-print, historically significant text back into circulation AACHI's mission and the "pearl divers" metaphor for surfacing hard-to-find Asian American Christian stories The Third World Liberation Front strikes at San Francisco State (1968) and the birth of ethnic studies as a backdrop to the Asian American Christian movement How the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power shaped Asian American Christian consciousness, and PACTS' relationship to (and distinction from) liberation theology The story of Mabel Lee, a pioneering unordained church leader and suffrage advocate in New York's Chinatown at the turn of the century The danger of "Columbusing"—claiming to discover ideas and movements that our elders were already engaging with over fifty years ago Tim's reflection on being forced out of theological academia in 2005, and what nearly 20 years in local church ministry taught him about listening to God's people at the grassroots We hope you enjoy this series! Tim Tseng https://aac.fuller.edu/post/person/timothy-tseng-phd/ The PACTS Reader (Claremont Press) https://claremontpress.com/uploads/3/4/8/4/34846481/theologies_of_asian_americans_and_pacific_peoples_final_.pdf https://claremontpress.com/theologies-of-asian-americans-and-pacific-peoples.html PACTS Archive https://cdm15837.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15837coll16 AACHI www.pearldive.net Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: https://aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac.

    Forgotten Leaders and Why History Matters: A Conversation with Tim Tseng

  6. Jul 28

    Bone Symphony—Poetry as Spiritual Practice: A Conversation with Michelle Phương Hồ

    Bone Symphony—Poetry as Spiritual Practice: A Conversation with Michelle Phương Hồ Daniel and Yulee welcome Michelle Phương Hồ—a Vietnamese American poet based in New Haven and one of Daniel's former students at Fuller — for a conversation about her debut poetry collection, Bone Symphony (releasing October 13th, endorsed by Ocean Vuong). The conversation explores: How the book's title emerged from a single cacophonous poem weaving together her grandfather's experience in postwar Vietnamese reeducation camps, asylum testimony, and questions of public memory—and its resonance with Ezekiel's Valley of Dry Bones Why revision, for Michelle, is a spiritual practice—including the story of a poem addressed to "the enemy" that only became true once she recognized her own desire to win, rather than to love Her unconventional path into poetry: from a college Asian American writing collective, to narrative breaking down into fragments, to a formative writing class with poet Solmaz Sharif Why she believes she's writing to preserve a kind of remembering—drawing on a story about Vietnamese language surviving Chinese colonization through "a critical mass of rememberers" The necessity of leaving gaps in language—and why trying to fully explain grief or wonder can betray the experience itself Her unexpected, dramatic conversion story at a college church service in New Haven, after a season of spiritual searching that included a Buddhist meditation practice Navigating faith within a predominantly white Vineyard community—finding theological resonance in the integration of word and spirit, while wrestling with not fully belonging The poem "After Salvation" and the disorientation of being "rescued"—both as a refugee and as a Christian—without a clear roadmap for what comes next Writing prompts to borrow for your own journaling: Alexander Chee's "What don't you want to know?" and Bhanu Kapil's "Who is responsible for the suffering of your mother?" A reflective, generous conversation about poetry as a spiritual practice—and an invitation to anyone (poet or not) to bring more curiosity and surrender to their own writing and prayer life. Pre-order her book: https://boaeditions.org/book/bone-symphony/ Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: https://aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac.

    Bone Symphony—Poetry as Spiritual Practice: A Conversation with Michelle Phương Hồ

  7. Jul 21

    Justice Work for the Long Haul: A Conversation with Steven Park

    Justice Work for the Long Haul: A Conversation with Steven Park Daniel and Yulee sit down with Steve Park, founder of Little Lights—a ministry that has spent almost 30 years serving children, youth, and families in underserved communities in Southeast D.C.—for a wide-ranging conversation about race, faith, and sustainable ministry. Topics covered: Steve's surprising road to faith: a devout atheist in college, a frightening drug experience, a season of vulnerability with a therapist, a breakthrough moment of compassion with his sister, and finally—fittingly—becoming a Christian through reading a comparative world religions book The origin of Little Lights: meeting an eighth grader who couldn't read a Dr. Seuss book, and the heartbreak that became the spark for a ministry Why Little Lights teaches anti-racism and "race literacy" classes rooted in scripture—and how interest in that teaching has shifted with the political climate, from post-Trayvon Martin to the George Floyd surge to today's pushback Unpacking the model minority myth: how U.S. immigration policy handpicked certain Asian immigrants for "honorary white" status, bypassing the redlining, segregation, and policing that shaped Black communities—and how that history gets erased into a story about "family values" alone The challenge and necessity of being a Korean American leader serving primarily in a Black community for decades—gaining trust, navigating being seen as an outsider, and inviting more Korean American Christians into the work A theology of anger: why Steve believes you can't fully love without it, and how to direct anger toward justice rather than letting it curdle into bitterness or depression Hard-earned lessons on healthy ministry growth—including advice from Bruce Main of Urban Promise about not getting desperate for help—and Steve's conviction that community health, not budget size or social media followers, should be ministry's true metric A glimpse into partnering in ministry with his wife, Mary, and raising a family while doing intense, emotionally demanding work A grounded, hard-won conversation from someone who has done the long, unglamorous work of cross-racial ministry for decades—and has the wisdom (and humility) to show for it. Little Lights: https://littlelights.org/ Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: https://aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac.

    Justice Work for the Long Haul: A Conversation with Steven Park

  8. Jul 14

    Beautiful, Disappointing, and Hopeful: A Conversation with Drew Hyun

    Beautiful, Disappointing, and Hopeful: A Conversation with Drew Hyun Daniel and Yulee sit down with Drew Hyun—founding and lead pastor of Hope Church New York, executive director of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, and author of Beautiful, Disappointing, and Hopeful—for an honest conversation about the long, often painful road of emotional and spiritual transformation. Drew traces his journey back to a summer internship in Queens that changed everything: arriving expecting to learn urban ministry, and instead being introduced to Pete Scazzero's emerging framework of emotionally healthy discipleship. From there, the conversation moves into deeply personal territory: Drew's early skepticism and "Pharisee" posture toward inner work, and the slow unraveling of his neat theological categories through grief, 9/11, and family loss His complicated, healing relationship with his father—including the moment his father, after reading Drew's manuscript, wrote back: "I wish I could've been a better daddy" A painful, years-long falling out with mentor Pete Scazzero, and what it took to reconcile Why grief is often the hardest spiritual practice to access—illustrated by a story of Drew "losing it" while caring for his kids during his wife's medical emergency, and what that taught him about over-functioning as a trauma response How leaning into his own Korean American story—rather than erasing it—has shaped his leadership of a multiethnic church, and why "the most particular is the most universal" Practicing slow, embodied spirituality (Sabbath, silence, monastic rhythms) in the relentless pace of New York City What grounds his hope for the local church despite real reasons for disillusionment A vulnerable, unhurried conversation that's part theology, part memoir, and a good reminder that there's no shortcut to becoming whole. Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/ Hope Church NYC https://www.hopechurchnyc.org/ Beautiful, Disappointing Hopeful: How Gratitude, Grief, and Grace Reflect the Christian Story by Drew Hyun https://faithgateway.com/products/beautiful-disappointing-hopeful-how-gratitude-grief-and-grace-reflect-the-christian-story?variant=42800680173704 Sign up to receive more updates from the AAC: aac.fuller.edu/newsletter/ If you appreciate the work we do at the Asian American Center at Fuller Seminary, please consider supporting us! Your monetary support sustains our vital work and expands Asian American research, leadership development, and pastoral formation for the Church in the year ahead. Donate here: fuller.edu/giveaac.

    Beautiful, Disappointing, and Hopeful: A Conversation with Drew Hyun
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Centering is the Asian American Christian Podcast: conversations on Christ, the Christian life, and Asian American perspectives. Through our podcast seasons, as well as specially presented content, we dive into the reality and beauty of living out Asian American Christian faith. Centering is a production of the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary.

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