Chi-Ming and Juliette Chien are members of Redeemer Community Church in San Francisco, where they live with their daughters Joelle, Evangeline and Micayah. They are both ordained elders in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and serve in various aspects of the life of their small and vibrant congregation. Chi-Ming serves in worship leadership, Juliette helps oversee the children’s church  school ministry, and they serve together in an outreach to 4th and 5th graders. Redeemer participated in the second cohort of the Congregational Formation Initiative.

After 7 years of staying at home, Juliette has just returned to teaching middle school, co-teaching a class of 6th graders with another member of Redeemer. Chi-Ming’s day job is Principal of Dayspring Technologies, a Web development firm in San Francisco which began (and continues) as a 13-year-old experiment in seeking “to embody and bear witness to God’s redeeming of the workplace, marketplace and community.”

Chi-Ming and Juliette first became familiar with the EP through hearing about it from folks at Grace Fellowship and from borrowing books off their pastor’s bookshelf. Chi-Ming attended his first Gathering in 2007 “fresh” off of an overnight flight from San Francisco–and promptly vowed never to take a red-eye again. The ensuing travel fog notwithstanding, meeting people at the Gathering who were interested not only in talking about the church as family and polity, but also putting it into practice, helped to impress on him the value of this particular group of friends for the peculiar journey that is Christian discipleship. Chi-Ming served on the planning committee for the 2009 and 2010 Gatherings and just began a term serving on the EP Board.