The Team I Long For… by John|Jonathan

Built into the fabric of my name are the traces of a disjointed front. My mom wanted to name me John so that her sons could be disciples John and James from the New Testament. On the other hand, my dad wanted to name me after his friend Jonathan from what I know. Because my parents couldn’t fully agree, the compromise was that my legal name would be Jonathan but that I would go by John with an ‘H.’

My mom and dad were married 14 years after they met in their fun party days at the University of Georgia. However, throughout their marriage I rarely sensed they were on the same team. In fact, what I remember most is Dad camping out in the basement while Mom’s domain was everything living room floor and up. This culture of division, apathy, and hostility built up for years between them, eventually escalating into frequent bedroom fights, violent outbursts at the kitchen stairs, and the eventual divorce where I remember my dad leaving the house with 2 small suitcases on my first day of middle school.

Then the new reality of my adolescence was that our family household now split into two teams. It was mom’s house in the northwest Atlanta suburbs versus dad’s house in northeast Atlanta in his new bachelor pad. With continued battles of custody, finances, and altercations between our parents & future stepparents, my brother and I found ourselves in the middle of an active battlefield. My dad would spend car rides spewing hurtful things about my mom to try and recruit my brother to his side while I he knew I would always stay the loyal mama’s boy. Tensions climaxed one night when my brother and mom were arguing and my brother threatened to move to dad’s house for good. It was one of the most terrifying nights of my life to imagine my only sibling leaving and that our family would truly be split once and for all.

Outside our immediate family, the patterns of divorce, separation, and relational brokenness were having its course throughout our extended family. Our grandpa abandoned our grandma and my mom’s 3 sisters each separated from their husbands in consecutive divorces. And after each of the moms found new partners (our stepdads), there was this growing tension of stepdads and sons competing for the household and for their mom’s attention.

These painful experiences through divorce have made me very hyper sensitive to even the smallest traces of hostility, distrust, or division in any environment I step into. It naturally pushed me to seek places where I sensed strong camaraderie, unity, and relational connection. For me, these memorable spaces were play-based and mostly discovered through team sports. Whether it was through competitive rowing, little league baseball, or playing street hockey with neighborhood kids, being part of makeshift teams felt like a breath of fresh air or perhaps more like a drowning survivor gasping for air above the surface. On sports teams, there was a singular mission or purpose that everyone could surrender themselves to and bond over in unity. And there were shared values that everyone committed to while also standing up for each other against all kinds of opposition. On top of that, there was a coach who kept everyone accountable to the team’s vision and values while also protecting each person from hurting their teammate, an opponent, or themselves. This culture of camaraderie, unity, commitment, trust, and accountability was something I desperately wanted to experience for myself in deep ways. Something I did not get to experience through my parents’ marriages and in our family. Throughout my career as a recreational athlete, I would always find myself passionately taking leadership roles as captain to help build team cultures that could bring hearts together in camaraderie and also to win. Outside of sports, it was a culture I was naturally influencing around me in classrooms, dorm rooms, churches, and workplaces. Seeing and being part of strong teams were helping heal my inner wounds and something I will always long for.

For better or for worse, my hypersensitivity to division and deep desire for strong teams motivate me to put the Coach John hat on no matter where I go, especially in workplaces. I usually see it making positive impact but can be exhausting, unseen, and unnecessary work for me especially when I am not in the role responsible for such a task. Whether it has been during my time in corporate Boston, public media, non-profit work, higher education, outdoor ministry, my family business, and now Citizens Church in LA, I can confidently say that I have helped build a sense of camaraderie into the culture especially among staff. The challenge is that I always found some kind of reason or need to leave once I sensed that I no longer was needed as much in this way.

I’m not sure if it is because I am impatient, or because my Enneagram 2 starts to feels scared of not being as relevant, the cultural exhaustion of being a Korean American minority, or simply because Emily and I are navigating a journey that has taken us through many moves, careers, and transitions. Or perhaps I am naturally drawn to the next place or organization that is craving that sense of ‘team’ culture that they may not even be aware of.

Whatever it may be, perhaps multi-faceted, I am at a place where constantly jumping from one organization to the other has taken a toll. Whether the toll is on my wife who has suffered many out-of-state moves, my resume that has 20 different jobs, or the overall fatigue of building new relationships in new cities, I am at whits end of trying to make sense of this pattern. In this season joining full time at Citizens, have I really found a team that I can call my own for a longer period of time? If so, I sense I need more counsel, support, prayer, humility, and trust in myself that I can be someone that commits through various highs and lows of the church.

On the other end, I think I need trust that the organization can care for me in the ways that I am sensitive to when I don’t feel like I’m operating on a team with less accountability, protective boundaries, or healthy structures. I thrive best alongside other teammates when there is a strong active and consistent coach presence. As a teammate, I tend to put a lot on myself, usually too much than I can handle, so it’s helpful to have a coach who can help me manage the pace for when it is time to slow down or when it is time to put the body on the line. On the other hand, I feel freed when I can trust the coach will also challenge other teammates to carry their weight so that there is a fair distribution load and shared commitment to goals without myself having to always advocate for myself when I find an overwhelming load on myself.

Or is it time for me to trust I can build my own team that partners with other organizations in building their teams? Like a consulting model where there is a scope of work and once organizations feel like there is progress, there is a ‘natural’ breakup that is supposed to happen and both are freed of each other?

Please pray for my healing. The more pain I feel from my childhood that is un reconciled or unhealed create too high of demand on others. And in my sin or unhealed ways, my push for strong teams can come at the cost of grace for individual people or organizations in the process. Yet at the same time, I believe cultivating strong teams is one of the God-given gifts that reflects Christs’ heart for unity through my engagement with the world. And in a time when it seems like our country and the world is divided, I trust in spaces where people can come together in teams, especially through play.

Now going back to my parents, I believe there were good reasons for my mom and dad to split in their divorce. Even for my mom’s physical protection I am grateful for the separation. And theres so much to their journey and marriage struggles that I will always have to learn through empathy and grace. But my heart is always longing for the team I wanted to see for my family that was anchored on the love, mercy, humility, and commitment that Christ embodied for all humanity. It’s the team that I did experience in our family in rare instances while playing ping pong table on the Disney cruise, tennis at the neighborhood courts, or when cheering for Team Korea at the 2002 World Cup. And it’s the team I see most beautifully whenever people come together for something greater than themselves in the posture of love, in Christs’ Church. Oh how I always long for a team of unified hearts when there is so much divorce, division, and separation in this world.

I wonder what my name would have been if mom and dad were on the same team.

-John ✝️ Jonathan