University of Pennsylvania

Committed to Campus Ministry

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 19:11:53 +0000

Gordon Govier

Committed to Campus Ministry

Looking back now, Liz and Jesse North see one glaring omission at the beginning of their marriage. “Our whole married lives have been about ministry with ��ñ�� but there was nobody from ��ñ�� at our wedding,” Liz said.

Married just four months before leaving Pennsylvania for Orientation of New Staff (ONS) in Wisconsin, Liz and Jesse hardly knew any ��ñ�� students or staff. They had met at Shippensburg University, which does not have an ��ñ�� chapter.

What Shippensburg University did have was an independent Christian fellowship that used ��ñ�� chapter camp for leadership development. Liz attended chapter camp for three out of her four years at Shippensburg. “It was at camp where I really fell in love with Scripture for the first time,” she said.

Changing Direction

Upon graduation Liz and Jesse both concluded that the degrees they received weren’t really in fields that they wanted to spend their lives on. “As we were having these conversations I realized that the thing that I most enjoyed was leading Scripture studies and discipling younger students on campus,” Liz said.

They contacted Dan Siewert, who was the ��ñ�� Area Director they knew from chapter camp, to learn about campus ministry. "We came back from our honeymoon and started meeting with Dan to talk about coming on staff with ��ñ��,” Liz said.

“I already knew they had been effective as student leaders,” Dan recalled. “They were passionate about the mission and were ready to be sent. The fact that an opportunity to plant at Bucknell University opened up through the initiative of students, just as we needed to place the Norths, was God’s timing.”

Dan’s advice to Liz and Jesse was to do what they knew: start a small group at Bucknell and lead a Bible study. “As the ministry grows your ability to lead that ministry will grow along with it,” he told them.

Growing the Fellowship

From that small beginning God blessed their chapter plant with vigorous growth, like the mustard seed Jesus talked about. They started with two students at the beginning of the first year; by the year’s end they took five students to chapter camp. The next year they had two Bible studies going on, and 18-20 students in their large group meetings.

Nakhia Grays, now ��ñ��’s Black Campus Ministries Coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Region, was one of the first students that Liz and Jesse worked with. She remembered how deeply Liz cared for her, despite their different backgrounds.

“I have fond memories of her teaching me and others how to cook soups and casseroles for gatherings at their home,” she recalled. “We would talk about the Bible, outreach, and leadership all while cooking together. A lot of my discipleship happened while we were doing things together. She was always hopeful about what God was doing and what he could do.”

Gretchen Greenawalt, now on staff at Ohio State University, remembers hanging on every word when Liz would speak to the Bucknell fellowship. “Liz has the ability to take the love of Jesus and make it concrete, relatable, and compelling to students,” she recalled. “She empowered me as a woman, as a student, and as a staff. I want to follow Jesus boldly like Liz.”

Seeing the Fruits of Ministry

Within five years the chapter had grown to over 150, and more than a dozen students had become ��ñ�� staff members. Then Jesse and Liz were promoted to Area Directors and saw further growth in the number of chapters in northern Pennsylvania.

This summer Liz and Jesse moved back to Liz’s hometown of Lancaster to be more centrally located for their new responsibilities. Liz is now a Division Director and Jesse an Area Director. Just before the move they were treated to an alumni reunion covering their 15 years of campus ministry. And unlike their wedding, it was almost all ��ñ�� people there.

Liz and Jesse reveled in the opportunity to see so many old friends and meet their growing families. They were able to hear about the places they’re going, the work that they’re doing, and the way their faith is impacting the decisions they’re making, from stay-at-home moms to medical doctors, engineers, church planters, and campus ministers.

“The longer I’ve been doing this the more I've gotten to see the lasting impact of our ministry beyond the four years,” Liz said. “It's been so encouraging and defined for me why I want to keep doing this.”

News Keywords

University of Pennsylvania

Shippensburg

Bucknell

��ñ�� Alumnus Michael Oh to Direct Lausanne Movement

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:27:10 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

��ñ�� Alumnus Michael Oh to Direct Lausanne Movement

Michael Oh, who told his story of faith and commitment at ��ñ��’s 2009 Urbana Student Missions Conference, has been selected to become the next Executive Director/CEO of the Lausanne Movement, a global coalition of evangelical Christians. Michael is a Korean-American missionary who founded Christ Bible Institute in Nagoya, Japan. On March 1, 2013, he succeeds Douglas Birdsall, who becomes president of the American Bible Society.

Michael became a leader in his ��ñ�� chapter as a student at the University of Pennsylvania and was also connected to ��ñ�� while a graduate student at Harvard University. “I consider my involvement with ��ñ�� as formative to my own spiritual life and calling,” he said.

As an ��ñ�� student leader Michael attended the Urbana 90 Student Missions Conference. “I was personally challenged to consider the nations during the amazing talks by Ajith Fernando and Isaac Canales,” he recalled. “I never could have imagined that I would be standing on the stage sharing my own story at Urbana 09.” Michael responded to God’s call to become a missionary to Japan, in spite of the suffering his family had endured in Korea at the hands of Japanese conquerors during World War II.

Becoming CEO of the Lausanne Movement gives Michael the chance to further advance the calling he received at Urbana 90. Lausanne is a global movement that mobilizes evangelical leaders to collaborate for world evangelization. Michael has been involved with Lausanne as part of its Younger Leaders Network, and as a part of the Lausanne Administrative Committee. He is also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America.

“I'm eager to see a new generation of young Christians around the world engaged with the vision to see the whole church bring the whole gospel to the whole world,” he said. “I ask for your prayers and your partnership until the blessed task is finished.”

“I’m very excited about Michael’s passion for both global missions and catalyzing the next generation, the same things that are at the very heart of Urbana and ��ñ�� missions,” said ��ñ��’s Vice President and Urbana Director Tom Lin, who also serves as Lausanne’s International Deputy Director for North America. “I look forward to closely working with Michael. He embodies ��ñ��’s vision for seeing students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed.”

News Keywords

Urbana

University of Pennsylvania

Missions

Lausanne

Harvard

��ñ�� alumni - Michael Oh

webteam@intervarsity.org — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Alumni Profile

News

Gordon Govier

��ñ�� alumni - Michael Oh

Michael Oh faced two huge obstacles on his road to becoming a missionary and a seminary president in Nagoya, Japan. One was Japan’s legacy of imperialism in East Asia during the twentieth century. The other was the American Dream. But without either, he would not be where he is today.

Living Under Imperialism

His Korean family’s Christian roots go back five generations to the early twentieth century; they were among the first Korean converts to Christianity. But when his father was born, Korea was under Japanese occupation. His father was given a Japanese name and was beaten when he spoke Korean.

As a grad student, studying anthropology and Japanese history, Michael discovered that the tensions he had felt in his family toward the Japanese were part of a much larger history. Japanese imperialism caused suffering that claimed millions of victims all over East Asia. One historian has calculated that as many as 30 million Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Cambodians, Indonesians, and others were slaughtered before and during WWII.

“As I learned that, the anger of the Korean people became my own,” he said as he gave his testimony at Urbana 09, ��ñ��’s student missions conference. “That anger threatened the ministry that the Lord had called me to lead in Japan.”

It was only after the Lord reminded him of the depths of his own sinful nature and the price that had been paid on the cross to redeem him that he was freed from that anger. “I knew then that I could claim no human right to hate or accuse another,” he said.

Pursuing the American Dream

Michael’s parents emigrated to the U.S. in 1970 to pursue the American Dream. They worked hard and reaped the rewards, as many immigrant families have done. They made sure that Michael and his sister had every opportunity. But pursuing the American dream also had a price, Michael and his sister did not see much of their father. “Up through my toddler years I hardly knew him,” he said.

At the University of Pennsylvania Michael got involved with ��ñ��, attended Urbana 90, participated in evangelism and missions projects, and became a leader of the chapter. By the time he was a senior, he felt God calling him to the mission field. But when he told this to his father, after church one Sunday afternoon, his father said, “no.”

Michael’s father told him that he wanted to look forward to more family time together, and in particular quality time with his grandchildren. Michael thanked his father for all of his sacrifices, but he said that he could not turn his back on God’s call.

“I told him that I refuse to live my life just to work hard so I can make lots of money so my kids can have every opportunity to go to a good college, get a good job and make lots of money so their kids can have every opportunity to go to a good college and make lots of money.”

Michael’s father eventually accepted Michael’s decision. Today he supports Michael in his ministry, as well as Michael’s sister, who is also preparing for the mission field with her husband.

“My father had an independent spirit, and he understood that if he would do such a radical thing in leaving Asia to come to America to pursue earthly dreams, how much more so does he need to allow God to do what God would do, to allow his son to return to Asia to follow the dream to share the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Michael said.

Moving to Japan

Michael and his wife completed their schooling and moved to Japan in January of 2004, after serving as short-term missionaries there several years earlier. In this largely un-evangelized country, where Christians make up less than one quarter of one percent of the population, they had discovered that the biggest need was for a good seminary to train young leaders. Christ Bible Seminary opened in Nagoya in April, 2005.

“I had no interest or calling to theological education necessarily, but I wanted to do what could be most effective,” Michael said. He also pastors a church in Nagoya and has begun preparing to plant churches and other ministries in other parts of Japan.

One of his biggest concerns is Japan’s young people, and providing safe space for them to grow up. “Japanese society for young people is predatory,” he said. “There are 30,000 suicides per year. There’s lots of bullying. And Japan is one of the few societies where possession of child pornography is legal.”

Looking back, Michael realized that one of the most important steps in his entire life was connecting with ��ñ��’s ministry during his first week on campus at the University of Pennsylvania. “It was a lifeline for me,” he said. “It was the single dynamic that God used to prevent me from falling into any number of pits that I was wired to fall into, such as the pursuit of wealth and power, sexual temptation, and the idolatry of intellectual pursuit.”

Update: Leading the Next Generation

Today Michael is pursuing a dream that is much larger than the American Dream of personal fulfillment. After several years of pursuing a dream of peace and reconciliation for the Japanese people through the gospel of Jesus Christ with Christ Bible Institute, Michael was named the Executive Director/CEO of the Lausanne Movement, where he'll lead the organization as they mobilizes evangelical leaders to collaborate for world evangelization.

News Keywords

Missions

��ñ�� alumni

University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

Committed to Campus Ministry

Committed to Campus Ministry

Changing Direction

Growing the Fellowship

Seeing the Fruits of Ministry

��ñ���� Alumnus Michael Oh to Direct Lausanne Movement

��ñ���� Alumnus Michael Oh to Direct Lausanne Movement

��ñ���� alumni - Michael Oh

��ñ���� alumni - Michael Oh

��ñ�� Alumnus Michael Oh to Direct Lausanne Movement

��ñ�� Alumnus Michael Oh to Direct Lausanne Movement

��ñ�� alumni - Michael Oh

��ñ�� alumni - Michael Oh