David H. Kim remembers wrestling with whether he was cut out to be a minister. He had just taken a salary cut in order to lead a Christian fellowship at Princeton University. “I tried to counsel a student and realized I wasn’t helping, but making things worse,” says the 43-year-old entrepreneur. “It was this existential crisis of, ‘Why did I let go of a great job?’”
How do you deal with failure? Do you cover it over and try to hide in that, or embrace it, learn from it, and grow?
Kim realized pretty quickly that he wasn’t in the wrong profession. “Being in this profession helped me understand the power of my humanness and limitation and learn how it shapes me to be authentic to who I am,” he explains. In 2007, the author of books like 20 and Something and the Faith and Work Bible founded Gotham Fellowship, a New York City-based Christian leadership training program sponsored the Center for Faith & Work. The program, which teaches the next generation of leaders, is growing globally, popping up in places like Johannesburg, Hong Kong, and Sydney. “Some settle for it being a paycheck or a stepping stone, without realizing the real opportunity to think about work in ways to connect to a deeper sense of humanity,” says Kim, a WeWork Bryant Park member. “Work is the expression of our identity, not the source of it.”