Hallowed Halloween: Trick-or-Treating for the Kingdom

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 21:58:29 +0000

Drew Larson

Hallowed Halloween: Trick-or-Treating for the Kingdom

Halloween in Columbia, Missouri, is much like Halloween anywhere else. Pop-up stores appear in non-descript strip malls, filled with the standard array of ghoulish kitsch: witch masks and Jack Skeletons, string cobwebs and tombstones. At dusk, trick-or-treaters swarm neighborhoods like costumed locusts. Candy is given out and eaten, as often by parents as by the children that collect it.

But Halloween is different here in one particularly interesting way. For the past three years, the ��ñ�� chapter at the University of Missouri has trick-or-treated, not for candy, but for household items that support survivors of human trafficking.

This tradition began in 2017 when Danny Poon, Campus Staff Minister of the Asian American ��ñ�� (AAIV) chapter at Missouri, was working at a local Korean restaurant in addition to his staff work. A customer saw Danny’s jade cross necklace and recognized it as a symbol of Asian Christianity. The two struck up a conversation. It turned out that Nanette, an energetic Japanese American woman, oversaw the Central Missouri Stop Human Trafficking Coalition.

“It was a slow day, so I got to chat with her. We bonded over the ways that God called her into working with [human trafficking victims] and how I’m in ministry as well,” Danny said. “We met up again a couple weeks later, and I thought, ‘This is something my students need to hear.’”

God had been preparing them to hear it. In Danny’s AAIV chapter, conversations around justice and community outreach had begun to percolate after an earlier outreach event in Chicago. Challenged by the experience, students began to ask missional questions like, “How can what is happening in our chapter expand to serve the whole city of Columbia?” A partnership with Nanette’s organization was a natural fit, and the students were enthusiastic. But what could they, as mere college students, do to help human trafficking survivors?

The students brainstormed together, finally landing on the idea of combining service with trick-or-treating—a student-friendly, nostalgia-filled night of fun that doubled as a way to provide basic needs, like food and household items, to newly freed survivors of trafficking. What began with 10 Missouri students has now, after three years, grown to a group of about 30 trick-or-treaters helping to serve some of the most vulnerable in Columbia.

The logistics of the event are impressive. A week before Halloween, students canvass different neighborhoods with flyers letting residents know that they’ll be seeing some students in costumes trick-or-treating and inviting them to partner by donating items when they come to the door.

That night, students dress up. “There have been some good costumes,” Danny recalled. “The inflatable dinosaur is always a fun one. And last year, a bunch of students dressed up like all sorts of fruit.” They fan out through different neighborhoods. Six or seven cars wait at strategic locations to collect the donated items from students and deliver them. Then everyone heads back to Danny’s house for a massive bonfire.

This event has given incalculable help to those who are newly freed from human trafficking.But Danny has also seen it galvanize his students and chapter. “My student leaders are now seeing creative ways to engage a campus and invite people to see Jesus through service,” he said. “On our campus, I’ve loved the way that students have become fired up to make change in the world. To see them connect [with God’s mission] has been amazing.”

The campus has taken notice. Students at Missouri’s School of Journalism, one of the largest in the country, have interviewed Danny every year about the event. With more and more students interested in conversations about social justice, Danny’s chapter, and their ‘hallowed Halloween’ event, is helping bridge the gap between these discussions and the good news of Jesus. By embodying Christ’s servant heart, they’re helping Missouri students see an important truth.

“Being a Christian isn’t just about planning the best Bible study or being the best preacher,” Danny said. “It’s about finding ways to walk alongside Jesus like this [event], even if people don’t recognize that it’s because of Jesus. The hope is that it will spark conversations later . . . but the end goal is just to draw closer to him.”

News Keywords

#good4campus

University of Missouri

Working for Shalom on Campus

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Sat, 14 Nov 2015 02:13:31 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Working for Shalom on Campus

��ñ�� staff and students were among those swept into the maelstrom at the University of Missouri-Columbia this week as the pain of unresolved racial tensions boiled over on campus, resulting in the resignations of the school’s president and chancellor, followed by threats of violence against the Black student community.

Matthias Chan, one of four volunteer staff re-planting an Asian American chapter at Mizzou, found the students he talked with unsurprised at what happened. As members of an ethnic minority they see frequent examples of systemic injustice. They were disappointed at how people were responding to the events but not quite sure how to respond themselves. Asian Americans often feel like outsiders looking in at the issue.

But rather than sit out the dispute, a group of Asian American and international students felt called to engage and support the Black students out of their conviction that God wanted to see his shalom recognized on campus, and an end to racism and marginalization.

Late in the evening on Wednesday, November 11, 2015, ��ñ�� team leader Adam Leong reported on their efforts to provide healing and hope on campus:

We put out a prayer box in case folk needed prayer. No one took us up on it, but it was there.
We bought 30 pizzas for the students at the Black Culture Center (BCC). The pizzas were greatly appreciated and quickly consumed.
There was a march scheduled for 5:00 p.m. with students from Kansas City, St. Louis, and Jefferson City, but it was called off due to a tornado watch.
Once the tornado watch passed, students walked the short distance from the BCC to the Student Center and held a rally. The rally consisted of solidarity chants followed by students getting into groups and sharing about their experiences as Black students in college. Non-Black students who were at the rally formed their own group to workshop how to be allies and advocates.
We bought a whole bunch of Chinese food and a few more pizzas for dinner. Again, it was greatly appreciated and quickly consumed.

Our staff team worked tirelessly in a number of essential ways:

Megan Leong coordinated food and logistics. She also baked cookies that were delicious and helped ��ñ�� students think through racial justice in their own contexts.
Charis Chan coordinated dinner and used her bilingual skills to get us a great deal.
Matthias continued to engage with our Asian American students.
Omolara Josephine Lawal connected with Black students at the BCC, let me use her car to pick up food, and did an interview for the student newspaper.
Willin Weng made copies of our prayer sheets for us to give to students at the BCC.

��ñ��’s vision is to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed. Our hope is that renewed campuses will be places where students are appreciated for their innate human dignity and not marginalized because of their ethnicity.

Adam's blog: How My Hat Cost ��ñ�� $650

Jazzy Johnson, ��ñ�� staff member in the Chicago area, posts a report from Northwestern University

Greg Jao, ��ñ��'s Vice President and Director of Campus Engagement, is interviewed by CBN News in a story about the University of Missouri

��ñ��'s Asian American Ministries joined with other similar ministries in a Joint Statement on Recent Racial Tensions on College Campuses

_{University of Missouri photo by Jay Buffington via WikiMedia Commons}

News Keywords

University of Missouri

Shalom

reconciliation