Am I Ethiopian, American, or Something Else?
Cross-Cultural Voices
March 3, 2026
Yosef Zenebe: If you were to walk into one of our church services, the first thing that you'd feel is energy and hospitality. It just immediately hits you. People aren't just being polite. They genuinely want you there, and that shows up after the service. 'Cause honestly, we have to kick people out, because nobody wants to leave.
And so the community and the friendships are what our members are consistently saying they love the most about our service.
John Yoder: Hi everybody. John Yoder here. I'm one of the hosts of Cross-Cultural Voices, and I want to introduce you to the speaker for our next three podcasts. His name is Yosef Zenebe, a second generation Ethiopian American. He is currently co-pastor and will soon be lead pastor of Perazim Church, a second-generation African church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
His interview was so rich that we have divided it into three parts. And today Pastor Yosef is going to share with us he the struggles of growing up in an Ethiopian family and yet being surrounded in a primarily white school. And then the story of the launch of Perazim Church, which was launched to serve young adults like him. Let's jump right into that interview.
This morning our guest is Yosef Zenebe, and let me tell you just a little bit about his church. I met the founding pastor of Perazim Church, Ebenezer, in 2019, just before Perazim launched. And these two guys knew each other in college. I attended one of the early services at Perazim.
It's launched out of an Amharic Ethiopian church in St. Paul, and it has been since its founding an all-English language, initially primarily Ethiopian, but now pan-black if you would, church, and it's got a unique vibe unlike anything I've ever seen. It's not African, it's not African American, it's not white.
Perazim is unique. So Yosef, welcome. We're so glad to have you with us and, and we really appreciate your taking your time to meet with us.
Yosef Zenebe: Thank you for having me, John. It's a pleasure to be here. We grabbed coffee about a month, six weeks ago and it was great to hear the vision about this ministry and hear more about your heart and what you're doing all over the place.
And so, man, like this is exactly what we're doing. So I love any opportunity to be able to help the first and second generation really bridge that gap.
John Yoder: Amen. So Yosef, you grew up between cultures, so maybe tell us a little bit about your story of growing up, maybe even your mom and dad, how they came here and what that was like.
Yosef Zenebe: Yeah. Um, we came here when I was five years old, to Minnesota. We had an aunt that was living here at the time. My parents, there was like the lottery diversity visa, that’s how they came to America. And so we immediately came to Minnesota and moved to the suburbs. And so I grew up in a predominantly white suburb, often the only black kid in my classroom.
And so while at home, my parents were raising us very intentionally as Ethiopians, whether it's the food, the language, the values, the expectations. So from a young age, it was never intentional, but I was constantly codeswitching and asking myself, where do I actually belong?
At school I didn't always see myself reflected, and sometimes I felt the pressure to shrink parts of my identity to fit in. And at home, I was navigating what it meant to honor my parents' culture while also growing up as American. And so that tension, it wasn't always comfortable, but it taught me how to move between different worlds to read rooms, how to build bridges, and honestly, it's shaped how I connect with people who are very different from me. And I think it's part of the DNA of even the church as well.
John Yoder: So would you describe yourself as an Ethiopian? American? Both? Something else?
Yosef Zenebe: All of the above. I love the Ethiopian culture. I love the food. I love the values. I can't understand the language. But at the same time, I also recognize I'm an African immigrant, but also grew up in America.
One story that we had growing up, I always felt like the outsider in America, right? Like every room that I would walk in, I think it was very evident that I was an immigrant regardless of how I spoke the language or how I fit into the culture. And so I went to Ethiopia right after I graduated college. And I was like, oh man, I get to finally be in a culture where everybody looks like me.
And you know, you get to Ethiopia and they immediately know you are an American, you're a foreigner. And so I didn't belong there. And unfortunately we got robbed while we were there as well. And so as we're coming back, all of our luggage, everything, just fit in our backpack.
And I remember coming into the New York airport. And there was a military guy for like the citizens’ line, and he looked at me and said, “Welcome home, sir”. And I was like, wow, okay. I am home. There's a part of me that's also home here as well. So we always find the different values in every culture.
And I think these shape who we are. As a Christian, you're learning, okay, like there are all these cultural values, but what are biblical values do I want to integrate into my life and live in a Christ honoring way that reflects the authenticity of my culture, but not just predominantly one or the other, but living with within a biblical cultural framework as well?
John Yoder: So, the Parent Church of Perazim, Ethiopian Evangelical Church on the east side of St. Paul, pretty good sized church, been worshiping in Amharic since day one. But the pastor realized that the preaching, the worship, the rest was not reaching the next generation, his own children with the gospel.
Tell us the story. How did that pastor realize they weren't reaching their kids, and what did he do about it?
Yosef Zenebe: I think our church was actually quite intentional about the second generation from early on. It didn't take a crisis to wake them up. Even before there was a formal structure, there were always people who felt a genuine calling to invest in the kids and the youth, and they showed up voluntarily and consistently.
And so even in Sunday school, looking back, that faithfulness mattered enormously. It kept us connected to the church even as we were growing up in a very different world than our parents. And I think that space allowed for me and my best friends.
And you mentioned Ebenezer, my co-pastor. We actually, we've been best friends since we were five, six years old. Ever since I came to America, my parents came to the immigrant church and so it actually created a very unique space for us to navigate. The codeswitching and the cultural dynamics, weld together.
And so, you know, a lot of the trauma that we experienced, it ended up being funny and something that we could laugh over. Because we all had the same, it felt like we all had the same parents, like we were both in the same world. And so there was a connectedness within that second generation.
But I think by the time I was in eighth grade, the community recognized that we had been carried by passionate volunteers. We needed real structure. And so we got our first dedicated youth pastor and an English language service. And so it was a formalization of something that had always been valued, not a sudden correction.
But for me personally, that transition was significant because it meant having a space where I could engage with my faith in the language that I actually think and I feel in as well.
And so, I think that that's how the church really recognized these kids are growing up and, and I think it took a generation right above us to all walk away from the faith so they said whoa, like we're losing our children, we're losing our youth. And so I was lucky enough that they invested in the time that I was forming up. But the generation that was older than me, they had all walked away from the faith and there was no space for them, honestly, even for them to wrestle as well.
John Yoder: And, and that Yosef, that is such a sad story that I hear over and over again, that some churches lose a few of their young adults and then realize we need to change as EEC did. Others never change. They realize they're losing the young adults, and they just let it be.
Now, the stories I understand it that a 1.5 gen youth pastor came in, he launched an English youth group, and I believe Ebenezer led that. Which over time morphed into a young adults group, which over time morphed into a daughter church. Is that correct?
Yosef Zenebe: Yes. Yes. That that's how it came about.
John Yoder: Okay. And what was that like? How much of that were you part of?
Yosef Zenebe: So, I grew up at that church. I was attending that church all the way through, you know, high school, young adult, me and Ebeneezer. We were leading together, serving under our youth pastor. And so he was really intentional about pouring into us.
And are you asking like what led to the launch of Perazim?
John Yoder: Yes. What led to that launch?
Yosef Zenebe: So it came out of something that was working really well. Our English service had kept the second generation connected to the faith, and by the time people hit college age, they just sort of stayed. But I think that created a new challenge because we had middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students all in the same service.
And those are all like really different seasons of life. And so our youth pastor at the time, who was there since we were in high school, as we were entering into college, he had moved. And so it was primarily Ebenezer and I that were kind of leading this young adult ministry.
And so it created a challenge, because as we're having all these different ages. So like from middle school to high school to college age, it became hard to preach one message that genuinely engaged all of them. And, around that time we were navigating the young adult ministry, God called me to Las Vegas to help another Ethiopian church be the youth pastor for their second generation.
And so I moved out there for a short period of time, for about four years. It was around that time that we were connected to a man named Ben from Linc. And he was the one who really connected with me and Ebenezer. We were always talking together. And so he encouraged us both to consider church planting.
And honestly, we didn't even know what church planting was at that point. We kind of thought churches just existed. But as we sat with the idea of planting a church, that started to make sense, because we already had a young adult team that was serving faithfully in various capacities.
We realized that was actually our launch team. And so one of the very first decisions we made as a church was finding a different location. Because we were meeting in the basement of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church at the time, and as long as we were in the basement of the church, we were always going to be seen and rightly so as an Ethiopian church.
But our vision was bigger than that. We wanted to serve the broader Twin Cities, to build something where people of any background could genuinely call it home. And so, in August of 2019, Perazim launched. Our launch team chose the name Perazim. We have to say this at the beginning of every service because so many people are like, what does the name Perazim mean?
It means “God of the breakthrough” or “God of the victory”. It's the Hebrew word found in Second Samuel chapter five. David asked the Lord for victory, and he gave him the victory over the Philistines. But it wasn't just a military victory, it was both a political, cultural and spiritual victory as well.
So looking back, that's really what the whole story was like, a series of breakthroughs, breaking through the limitations of a single generation model, breaking through the walls of one ethnic community, breaking through into something none of us had ever really imagined when we were just a youth group meeting in a basement. But God has been doing something beautiful.
John Yoder: I love your worship. I've worshiped with Perazim several times, three times since you've moved to your new place in St. Paul. And the vibe, if I can call it that, Perazim is unlike anything else I've ever been in. Like I said, it's not African, it's not African American, it's not white. It's unique. How would you describe that vibe?
Yosef Zenebe: The vibe. I remember when you sent me this question, I was like, oh yeah, like, what is the vibe of Perazim? I think if you were to walk into a Perazim church service, the first thing that you'd feel is energy and hospitality. It just immediately hits you.
People aren't just being polite. They genuinely want you there, and that shows up after the services. 'Cause honestly, we have to kick people out because nobody wants to leave. And so the community and the friendships are what our members are consistently saying they love the most about our service.
But worship wise, I think we come from the evangelical church that we grew up in. We come from very charismatic Pentecostal roots. And so there's this real expressiveness and passion in that space. But when it comes to the teaching, it's very grounded. We do in depth expository verse by verse preaching with the real emphasis on making the Word come alive for young adults and connecting it to the actual lives that they're living.
And then after service, the playlist switches to Christian hip hop, right? The merging of all of these different values captures who we are.
We're a community that takes our faith seriously, but doesn't take ourselves too seriously. And so we're young, we're multicultural, we're rooted in scripture and the spirit, and we actually enjoy being together. And so I think that would be the vibe of Perazim Church.
John Yoder: One of the features of Perazim is none of the staff are paid, or at least the pastoral staff. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yosef Zenebe: So yeah, God called me into ministry while I was already in college. I mean, I had always served, I was one of the leaders in the church. But I prided myself in not going the ministry route like my friend Ebenezer. And so I graduated from college and I've been working in a microbiology department. All, all the years that I've been in ministry, I work overnights in the microbiology department at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.
And my co-pastor doesn't receive a salary, but he receives a housing allowance, but also he has a podcast and he does various speaking engagements. And so we're both finding ways to make it work outside of the church, and I wanna be honest and kind of like you mentioned, a lot of people in the second generation church, it's not easy between meetings, counseling and sermon prep. It's running about 25 to 30 hours a week on top of everything else.
That’s why our co-pastor model works really well. It's not all on one person. We share the burden equally between one other, whether it's the preaching, or even meetups with regular people. But it takes a toll. And I've recently had to, because the church has been growing, we're in our sixth year as a church launch, and when we hit our five year anniversary, we were probably averaging maybe 40, 50, 60 people on a good Sunday. But within the last year and a half, we've gotten to about 150 people and it's been taking a toll. I've had to recently cut down on my hospital hours just to protect my health and avoid burnout. And so that's a real sacrifice financially, but it was necessary.
The goal as we grow is to be able to compensate staff. That's really important to us. But what I find remarkable in the meantime is that everyone who serves at Perazim right now, our admin, our worship team, our band, our media team, all of them will volunteer, every single one.
And there's a real level of buy-in and ownership in that. I think it's very rare to find musicians, band people, every single person that serves, having that level of buy-in and ownership. And it's really hard to explain. People aren't just showing up because they're paid to. They're showing up because they genuinely believe in what we're building together and what God is doing within our community. And that's very difficult to try to manufacture.
John Yoder: You've got a couple transitions coming up. Ebenezer, founding lead pastor is getting married and moving to California in June. And about that time you have your first baby coming. So you'll be a dad and you'll move from being part of a preaching rotation to the solo preacher. How will you deal with all of that?
Yosef Zenebe: You know, one of the beautiful things that we've been able to have at Perazim is we have a lot of young adults that are also, as we've been discipling them over the last 3, 4, 5 years, we have people that have come up that are gifted in preaching and teaching that we see the call of ministry.
And so this past summer me and Ebenezer had a preaching cohort that we kind of took various people that we saw, like I think we see a gifting, there's a spark in there, there's a desire for more. And so we've trained about five or six people. And so it won't just be me on the preaching rotation we have. People that you know, they send me their manuscript, I go over it, I edit it, they practice the sermon with me. And so we're, we're raising up other people. And so it won't just only be on me moving forward.
John Yoder: I hope you really enjoyed that. And when we come back next time, Pastor Yosef is going to talk about TikTok and how Perazim Church really exploded in growth as they begin to share the church on TikTok. He's also going to share how African, African American and white Christians and churches collaborate together to launch second gen ministries. I'll talk to you then.
