On May 26, 2020, Pastor Victor conducted an interview with Pastor Rocky via Zoom about his first year as Senior Pastor of Evergreen SGV. This is Part 1 of a 3-part blog series based on that interview.

What have been some of the highlights of this past year?

Some of the highlights have been basically growing in relationship with so many people - the staff, the Pastoral team, and other lay people in the church. It’s been wonderful and God's allowed me to be in really privileged positions.

I was able to be there at some very precious times —people's aging dads who come to faith and being able to baptize them in their hospital beds. I mean that is an incredible thing that no one gets. Pastors are the few people that get to do things like that and that is precious and tender. 

So many things have happened, so I almost didn't get a chance to reflect on the first year of serving as senior pastor. But what I stumbled upon [was] Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones. This guy was a brilliant man. His career was just blossoming, exploding, but something got a hold of him and he left medicine to become a preacher. [Dr. Jones] knew deep within his heart that he needed to preach a certain message right. 

So God put a fire, burning desire in this man's bones to preach about this message. And then Dr. Jones would go on to say what that message was and he goes, “I need to preach Christ. I need to preach about Jesus. I need to preach about the gospel.” 

Dr. Jones basically describes what's in my heart. I mean, that perfectly describes it. In my mind, I have thought about maybe, I'll be the first Japanese-American head football coach in the NFL or major college football. I had those thoughts. My dad wanted those things. I was thinking, “Yeah, this would be kind of cool. I wouldn't mind being that spokesperson.” But just like Dr. Jones … when I was coaching the Seahawks, I couldn't help but think about preaching about Christ and I knew that message needed to be preached —Christ and the sufficiency of Christ through his Word. 

And so I think that's one of the highlights is I get to preach generally most of the week or most weeks and I'm grateful for that and just like when I was coaching, I'm aggressively pursuing that. And I have friends ... who have really helped me [with clarity in preaching]. So I'm trying to get better and that part's been exciting to me too. Not that I have arrived by any means, but I’m trying to get better at it.

Those are two massive highlights - relationships and then just being able to preach Christ on a week-to-week basis. 

Check in next week for Part 2 of the series —What have been some of the challenges of the past year?