Q&A with David Chow
This summer, David Chow (D.Min. 2018), his wife Channing and their son will move to the Philippines, where David will oversee operations and teach at The Master’s Academy International Training Center in Manila. David will also work to develop more schools for pastors throughout that part of the world.
Over the past six years, David has served as the director of communications at TMAI’s headquarters on the campus of Grace Community Church. During that time, TMAI has grown exponentially and David has had a front row seat to the work God is doing through the many TMAI training centers around the world. As David and his family prepare for their ministry overseas, he answered a few questions for the John MacArthur Trust, which has had an instrumental role in expanding the ministry and effectiveness of TMAI in recent years.
You have a unique spiritual heritage. Tell us about your upbringing and how you ended up at The Master’s Seminary.
I grew up in Sacramento, California, part of a Christian home. My spiritual heritage goes back to my grandparents. When immigrating to the United States from China, they met missionaries who ministered to the immigrants coming into the States. By God’s grace, my grandparents responded to the gospel and embraced Christ. They passed the faith to my parents, who passed it to me. So I am a third-generation Christian, which is rare among Chinese Americans. After high school, I followed several friends at my church to UCLA. (including Tranwei Yui, a fellow TMS alumni who currently shepherds the church in Sacramento where I grew up). There, I became involved in Grace on Campus at UCLA (a ministry of Grace Community Church). That accelerated my spiritual growth in profound ways. My love for the church kept me in Southern California. For eight years, I worked as a project manager for the Air Force while continuing to serve at Grace on Campus UCLA.
The Lord used a class at the Air Force that I took for leaders to nudge me toward full-time ministry. The instructor said if you're not passionate about the work that you do, if you're not excited, then the people who work for you are going to see it and they're not going to be excited either. The class prompted me to ask the question, what am I passionate about? What really drives me? The Lord used that to focus my heart and eyes on God's work. That’s what I'm passionate about. I’d never felt called to be a missionary, never felt called to be a pastor, but I started to see God open doors. And I didn’t need to move across the country to go to seminary and train for ministry. So in 2016, I left my job at the Air Force and enrolled at The Master’s Seminary.
Even before you came to work at The Master’s Academy International, you had a desire to serve overseas. What fueled that desire and did you and your wife, Channing, have a specific region in mind?
Growing up, I had gone on three mission trips to Mexico with my home church back in Sacramento. So throughout middle school and high school, I was exposed to missions. When I got to Grace Church, there were a lot of missionaries and mission opportunities. I went to Japan with Grace, then Singapore, and also Ecuador. I loved seeing how the gospel affected people. I’ll never forget the end of the trip to Ecuador. We had been ministering on a small island, maybe a thousand people on the island. It’s third world. Very rural. As we crossed the river to get on the bus, the believers were waving goodbye to us, knowing that they were going to stay there on the island most of their life and we're going back to comfortable America. They had the biggest smiles and the greatest joy because of the week we had just spent together. They had a greater view and understanding of the gospel than I did, and a greater joy than I ever would. They had so few material blessings, but they had greater joy in Christ. That and many other experiences like it gave me a desire to be involved with missions and God's global work. Not long after those trips, Jim Ayers, a graduate of TMS who discipled me through Grace on Campus UCLA, moved to Malawi in 2013 to help start Central African Preaching Academy, a training center through TMAI. In 2014, I was part of a mission trip to Malawi (my wife was part of the team, though we were not married or even dating at the time). I was touched with the need there is in Africa for theological training. I realized there was nothing greater I could give my life to than being part of the global effort to train pastors and ministry leaders. When Channing and I married, we were ready to serve wherever, and in whatever capacity, the Lord wanted.
Through your work with TMAI over the past seven years, you’ve gained an appreciation for the strategy behind The Master’s Academy International. Talk about what makes TMAI unique, and why it’s having such a profound impact on the global church.
The strategy has always been to train the locals in their own culture, in their own context. What I’ve come to appreciate is how TMAI has the long view in mind. Each training center is working to prepare a generation of local leaders so that Americans don’t have to be involved. That way, the ministry can continue even if there are geopolitical restrictions on Americans. We’ve already seen that happen in a few countries. Training centers established by TMAI are continuing, and thriving, after American missionaries have been forced to leave. That’s only possible because of TMAI’s commitment to training future leaders from within the local population. And recently, we’ve seen the publishing arm of TMAI grow so that leaders can have sound biblical resources in their own language.
Over the seven years I’ve been part of TMAI, I’ve seen an extraordinary hunger for the kind of training TMAI provides. Believers around the world hear John MacArthur’s teaching—they are exposed to biblical, theological, verse-by-verse ministry—and they want to learn how to teach faithfully. TMAI allows us to bring the world-class training of TMS to the nations. The growth has been extraordinary because the needs are extraordinary, and the hunger is great. We are so grateful for the investment of so many, including the John MacArthur Charitable Trust, who are helping us reach those desperate for training in dozens of countries.
What about your ministry and life in the Philippines are you looking forward to as your family moves to Manila this summer?
A pastor once told me that when missionaries go overseas, they assume that 80 percent of their time will be devoted to preaching, teaching, and discipling, when in fact, 80 percent of it is spent on administration, and only about 20 percent goes to the teaching, preaching, and discipling they are called to. I heard that and I thought, “Okay, why not go and support those who are gifted in teaching and discipling? I can use my gifts for administration to help the teachers and support the training center.” That’s the goal in Manila. I am going to help support the training center there, and also coordinate with other regions in Southeast Asia that are hoping to start a training center. There are extraordinary opportunities for the gospel, both in the Philippines and throughout the region. I’m excited to be part of the team there to not only facilitate that ministry, but also help lay the groundwork for expansion, even into areas where access to the gospel and biblical literature is restricted. And much of that expansion is possible because of the investment of donors who give to TMAI and the John MacArthur Charitable Trust. We know how much we depend on friends of the ministry, who truly will be partnering with me and my family as we move to the Philippines and minister there for the glory of God and the good of the church.
