Resonate Global Mission, the domestic and international mission agency of the Christian Reformed Church, announced a farewell to program and strategy director Moses Chung on Oct. 11, describing a discernment process that ended with a decision to eliminate Chung’s role. The minister of the Word and former director of Christian Reformed Home Missions, which merged with World Missions to form Resonate in 2017, had worked for the agency for 13 years. His departure was effective Oct. 3.
Contacted for comment, Chung declined to do an interview at this time. The announcement from CRC Communications quotes from a farewell message he wrote to Resonate staff: “My greatest blessing has been in seeing God at work and working alongside many passionate and mission-minded people who have been my coworkers and friends. I will continue to remember you in my prayers as you navigate some of the toughest challenges ahead in joining God’s mission at this critical moment in history.”
Chung and his wife, Eunae, live in Anaheim, Calif., where TtoKamsa Mission Church holds his ministerial credentials. He was ordained in the CRC in 1999. Chung recently contributed to a three-part feature series for The Banner on “Reimagining Church” with Chris Meehan. The two also co-authored Joining Jesus: Ordinary People at the Edges of the Church.
Resonate’s leadership team now consists of eight people—director of operations, director of marketing and communications, and director of mission advancement, as well as intercultural gospel witness leader, congregational gospel witness leader, church planting leader, learning programs leader, and agency director Kevin DeRaaf.
DeRaaf said he will be working more directly and closely with the program leads than he was previously and he will convene the table of those leaders “for collaboration and the synergy of the programs. … I always sat at that table anyway, but now I will be the convener of that table.”
In the announcement from CRC Communications, giving an explanation for the decision, DeRaaf said, “As a relatively new organization, it is necessary to regularly test and shift our organizational structures toward greater functionality and efficiency.”
Resonate was formed in 2017 when that year’s synod approved the merger of World Missions and Home Missions. In 2019 Resonate eliminated a separate national director for Canada. In 2023, after Zachary King left Resonate’s directorship to become general secretary for the CRCNA, synod appointed DeRaaf as director, replacing interim director Joel Huyser.
That year the CRC also consolidated three learning programs—Timothy Leadership Training, Global Coffee Break, and Educational Care—into Resonate, expecting that as Resonate and these ministries have the mobilization of ministry leaders as a primary focus, the consolidation would help them operate better together. DeRaaf said they are in the final stages of working with a consultant toward both “the full integration of those learning programs into the overall Resonate programming structure” and “the best support to help each of those programs flourish.” He said, “We see them as really critical for Resonate moving forward. They’re a big part of our strategy.”
Resonate is looking to spend more than $4 million less than the $21.8 million it spent in 2023-24—reducing its 2025-26 budget to $17 million to be in line with projected revenues. This is a change from carrying deficits over the past few years, designed to spend down the ministry’s reserves. “The shift to a balanced budget where revenues are equal to or greater than expenses is Resonate’s top priority when it comes to financial sustainability,” the Resonate Global Mission Committee of the Council of Delegates recorded in its Oct. 1 meeting minutes. “These are obviously very significant reductions to Resonate’s budget and will undoubtedly mean difficult decisions and reductions to key ministry programs.”
DeRaaf said those budgetary concerns did not influence the discernment process that led to the elimination of Chung’s role with Resonate. He pointed to the announcement about Chung’s departure, which he said “really speaks to our genuine reasoning behind it (the decision).”
Measures Resonate is taking to decrease expenditures, DeRaaf said, include “a strong discernment process in place for any new hires that we’re doing, evaluating and restricting things like travel, and asking our staff to really look hard at ways in which we can streamline and be efficient about our spending.”