# Che Ahn Ché Ahn (b. 1956) is the **Korean-American NAR apostle who runs [[the West]] Coast hub of the New Apostolic Reformation** — senior pastor of HRock Church in Pasadena, founder and president of Harvest International Ministry (HIM), founder of Harvest Apostolic Prayer Network (HAPN), and co-founder (with [[Lou Engle]] and [[Dutch Sheets]]) of The Call prayer-rally movement. Commissioned directly by [[C. Peter Wagner]], Ahn is one of the three or four senior-most operational apostles in the American NAR, alongside [[Chuck Pierce]], [[Cindy Jacobs]], and [[Dutch Sheets]]. Ahn is the figure who most clearly illustrates the **global-reach** dimension of the NAR. Where Wagner-lineage apostles like Pierce anchor the movement in the U.S. heartland and Hebrew-roots [[Christian Zionism]], Ahn's operation extends through HIM's ~5,000 affiliated churches across 70+ countries — making the NAR genuinely transnational in a way that older American evangelical movements never were. The Seven Mountain theology that Wallnau delivers as political commentary is the same theology Ahn delivers as a church-planting strategy across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. ## Background - Born 1956 in Seoul, Korea - Immigrated to the United States with his family as a child - BA from the University of Maryland; MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary; DMin from Fuller - Met and trained under [[C. Peter Wagner]] at Fuller's School of World Mission in the 1980s-90s - Was a student pastor and then founding senior pastor of Harvest Rock Church (now HRock Church) in Pasadena, California, founded 1994 - Married Sue Ahn, who is also an ordained minister and a prominent NAR figure in her own right; they have four children - Based in Pasadena, California ## HIM, HRock, and HAPN Ahn operates a layered apostolic network that illustrates NAR organizational architecture: ### HRock Church (Pasadena, 1994) The flagship congregation — one of the founding "Toronto Blessing" receptor churches (the 1990s revival movement that is part of the NAR's charismatic lineage) and the physical base for Ahn's broader ministry. Pasadena location is strategic: near Fuller Seminary (where Wagner taught), near Hollywood (a key "mountain"), and in the Los Angeles media market. ### Harvest International Ministry (HIM) The **global apostolic network** — a covenantal association of roughly 5,000 affiliated churches and ministries across more than 70 countries, united under Ahn's apostolic covering. HIM is the paradigm NAR network structure: not a denomination (no shared polity, no formal bureaucracy), but a relational network of churches that "come under" Ahn's apostolic authority for mutual alignment, resource-sharing, and strategic direction. ### Harvest Apostolic Prayer Network (HAPN) Ahn's intercessory-prayer coordination body, specializing in city-level and national-level strategic prayer campaigns. HAPN is the operational expression of Wagner's **strategic-level spiritual warfare** doctrine — teams of intercessors assigned to specific territories (cities, nations, mountains of culture) conducting coordinated prayer warfare. ### The Call (with Lou Engle and Dutch Sheets, 2000) The mass-rally wing. The Call has held large-scale fasting-and-prayer events at the National Mall (TheCall DC, 2000), the site of [[Roe v. Wade]] rulings, and internationally. The Call is more Engle's operation than Ahn's, but Ahn was a founding partner and continues to participate. ## The Wagner Commissioning Ahn is a **Wagner-commissioned apostle** — formally recognized by [[C. Peter Wagner]] as an apostolic office-holder in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This formal commissioning matters within NAR theology: apostolic authority is claimed to be transmitted through existing apostles, and Wagner functioned as a kind of credentialing bishop for a generation of NAR apostles. Ahn, Pierce, Jacobs, Sheets, and Wallnau are the most prominent Wagner-commissioned apostles of the first generation. This lineage is part of why HIM carries such institutional weight within the movement: Ahn's authority descends directly from Wagner, which means HIM-affiliated churches are tied into the Wagner-lineage trunk of the NAR tree. ## Seven Mountain Operator Ahn is an active proponent of the [[Seven Mountain Mandate]] as both missiology and political theology. HIM churches are trained to plant not just local congregations but **mountain-specific ministries** — people called to the mountain of media, the mountain of government, the mountain of education, and so on, all under Ahn's apostolic covering. His books *Modern-Day [[Apostles]]* (2019) and others articulate the framework. ## COVID-Era Prominence (2020-2021) Ahn became nationally visible in a new way during COVID. HRock Church sued California Governor [[Gavin Newsom]] over lockdown orders restricting church services (*Harvest Rock Church v. Newsom*, 2020), ultimately winning at the Supreme Court in a 2021 emergency-injunction ruling that became a significant religious-liberty precedent. The litigation positioned Ahn as a leading religious-liberty figure on the right and brought him into closer alliance with Trump-era Christian nationalism. During this period Ahn also participated in prayer rallies and events tied to the post-2020 election season, including events in the broader Jericho March and [[Stop the Steal]] orbit, though he was not a principal organizer of January 6 itself. ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem - **[[New Apostolic Reformation]]**: Ahn is one of the senior-most operational apostles of the post-Wagner movement. HIM's 5,000-church global network gives the NAR an institutional scale most American observers underestimate. - **[[C. Peter Wagner]]**: Wagner-commissioned; HIM is part of the Wagner-lineage trunk alongside [[Chuck Pierce]]'s [[Global Spheres]] network. - **The Call (with Lou Engle, Dutch Sheets)**: Co-founder of the mass-rally wing of the NAR, which became template infrastructure for later events like [[Sean Feucht]]'s Let Us Worship tour. - **Global reach**: Ahn's HIM is the primary vector through which NAR theology is being exported globally — particularly to Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where charismatic Christianity is growing rapidly. This is part of why the NAR's footprint is likely to be larger in 20 years than it is today, even if American religious observance continues to decline. - **Religious-liberty litigation**: The 2021 Supreme Court win in *Harvest Rock Church v. Newsom* is part of a broader legal-strategy arc in which the NAR and aligned religious-right legal organizations (ADF, Becket Fund, [[First Liberty]]) have steadily expanded the scope of religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. ## See Also - [[New Apostolic Reformation]] - [[Apostolic-Prophetic Movement]] - [[Seven Mountain Mandate]] - [[New Apostolic Reformation Ecosystem]] - [[C. Peter Wagner]] - [[Lou Engle]] - [[Dutch Sheets]] - [[Chuck Pierce]] - [[Cindy Jacobs]] - [[HRock Church]]