Virginia

God Brought Us Together “In a Unique Way”

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 21:19:13 +0000

Gordon Govier

God Brought Us Together “In a Unique Way”

“Everything happens at Rockbridge,” LeLe Hsu said, describing one of the most important connecting points in this story. The scenic conference center in the Shenandoah Valley is well known to ��ñ�� staff and students in Virginia and the Carolinas as the site of Chapter Camp retreats, winter conferences, and other events where students and staff spend time away in Bible study and discipleship training.

As ��ñ�� students who held almost every position available in their chapters, both LeLe and her husband, Greg, spent many days at Rockbridge, training to be student leaders. But despite these similarities, their backgrounds were very different, including being from different college generations.

Greg’s Story

Greg arrived at Duke University already familiar with ��ñ��, having heard about the Urbana Student Missions Conference from his parents. But being raised in a Chinese immigrant church, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in a chapter that was mostly Asian American.

Attending a fall weekend retreat changed all that. Greg’s faith flourished through the speakers and small group sessions, and he met lifelong friends. “My faith came alive with a new joyfulness,” he said. Greg went to Rockbridge that May for small group leader training.

His father was a doctor and his mother a lawyer but neither profession appealed to him. When his campus minister pointed out that he was spending about 30 hours a week on ��ñ�� chapter activities and that he might consider joining the ministry full-time staff, Greg laughed. “That got me thinking about it though, because I’d really never considered it.”

During his senior year he participated in a vocational discernment program at Duke. “Through the course of that program, I got the sense that God was saying, ‘I want you to apply for staff,’” Greg recalled. He applied, was accepted, and spent his first seven years on staff at the University of Virginia.

LeLe’s Story

LeLe found ��ñ�� as a confused freshman at the University of Mary Washington. She had many questions about faith (and about why she had just been kicked off the basketball team). The ��ñ�� community warmly accepted her, though she was one of the few people of color in the chapter.

During her sophomore year LeLe was encouraged to start an athletes Bible study. She opposed the idea at first but eventually realized that athletes, often placing a lot of their identity in their sports, need to know the freedom that comes through faith in Christ.

As a senior, she was president of the chapter. And she resisted the idea of joining ��ñ�� staff. She considered graduate school, applied to the Peace Corps, and almost accepted a job teaching math in Africa. “All I had to do was send in the name of the country where I wanted to work, and the Lord was like, ‘You know you’re just running away,’” LeLe said.

I Wasn’t Expecting This

Greg had already been on staff at the University of Virginia for several years when LeLe joined ��ñ��’s ministry at Old Dominion University, and they were introduced to each other. LeLe remembered Greg from her time as a student, impressed by his preaching during a track at Rockbridge.

��ñ��’s 2016 Asian American Staff Conference—hosted in California, not Rockbridge—finally brought them together. As Asian American staff coordinator for the region, Greg encouraged LeLe to attend to help her understand more about her biracial heritage as a Black American and second-generation Filipina.

Several months later, while at Chapter Camp at Rockbridge, Greg’s questions during a debrief helped her process her initial tension, fear, and discomfort and what she learned through her interactions with other Filipino staff. (LeLe explained more about this in a story she wrote last year for inheritance magazine.)

Still feeling slightly unsettled the morning after their debrief, LeLe realized one more thing, she was romantically attracted to Greg. “I came to the conclusion that I would tell him because I’m okay with rejection,” she said. Greg, meanwhile, had thought that she had already figured out that he was similarly interested in her.

They knew they had to talk but dreaded it. As an East Asian male, Greg had “a deeply ingrained insecurity about his desirability and eligibility.” LeLe had a long-standing sense that other Asians did not consider her Asian enough.

Though they did talk, they didn’t quite get to a DTR (define the relationship) moment. After they both returned returned home from Rockbridge, LeLe decided to call Greg:

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. You don’t have to feel the same way. This is for me, to get this off my chest.”

Silence. For a whole minute.

Then Greg said, “Okay, actually I’m interested in you. This is really great!”

More silence.

“Well, I did not prepare for this outcome,” LeLe said. They chatted aimlessly for a minute, and then the call ended, awkwardly. A few days later, Greg left for a previously planned family vacation in Europe. But finally, at the end of summer, they had their first date.

Moving to Boston

From 2016 to 2018, Greg and LeLe devoted much time to “working through a lot of things,” including how to be a staff couple. For a short while they enjoyed conferences at Rockbridge even more because they could spend time together, even if they had different responsibilities.

Then Greg became an Area Director in Boston in 2017. “We set aside a lot of time and money to visit each other and met every five to six weeks,” he said. “We were thankful for direct flights to Boston.”

Communicating well has been critical. With the help of ��ñ�� staff friends who offered counsel and spiritual direction, they realized that they didn’t want to fall into a pattern of coaching each other. “We had to learn different practices of how we shared,” Greg said. “It could be either, ‘I want your ministry thoughts about this,’ or ‘I’m just sharing personally about this.’”

They were married in June of 2018. Greg is now Area Director for North Boston, which doesn’t include Boston University, where LeLe serves as a Campus Staff Minister. “The Lord has provided so much community for us in the first year and a half of marriage,” LeLe said. “We feel loved and cared for.”

But even more than that, they appreciate how God used ��ñ�� to grow each of them in their ethnic identities, and it’s emphasis on discipleship that offers emotional healing and transformation.

“The beginning of our relationship undermined the lie that we would never be accepted by someone of the other’s ethnicity and culture,” LeLe wrote. “Greg and I noticed that our unimaginable relationship was truly healing and redemptive of God’s deep love for us, specifically around our ethnicities.”

“God used all of those things to bring us together in a unique way,” Greg said.

News Keywords

University of Mary Washington

DTR

Poised for Growth in Virginia and Carolinas

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 16:08:24 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Poised for Growth in Virginia and Carolinas

At the end of this month, ��ñ��’s longest tenured regional director will step down and the Blue Ridge region will cease to exist, except in the memory of thousands of ��ñ�� students. A new era will begin that opens the way for many more students at more campuses to be reached with the gospel message.

��ñ��’s Blue Ridge region—Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina—broke off form the Southeast region in 1983, when Jimmy Long became regional director. In July Jimmy will use his final month on staff to box up the records from 41 years of ministry with ��ñ��. Two new regional directors will take his place. John Hanna (left in photo) has been appointed as the regional director in the new Carolina region, and Shane Arthur has been appointed as the regional director in the new Virginia region.

For Blue Ridge region ��ñ�� staff and students, the school year ended last month at Chapter Camp, at one of the two weeks set aside for intensive training and discipleship. Jimmy left camp not sad, but with a sense of joy and peace, thankful for the opportunities he’s had to train and disciple staff and students, and confident that the work started in the Blue Ridge will continue in Virginia and the Carolinas. “My job’s done,” he said. “It’s time for other people to carry on.”

For many staff members the parting was more emotional, knowing that next year their two regions will be holding camps separately and that they will miss what has been for them an annual reunion. The students also realized the significance of the parting and clapped endlessly. “It was kind of a sweet ending,“ Shane said.

Shane Arthur was halfway through college when a friend called him on his faux Christian faith. He decided to get serious about Christianity and therefore he jumped right into an ��ñ�� small group when he returned for his third year at the University of Virginia. He quickly became involved in the chapter, attending chapter camp and Urbana 2000, and meeting regularly with his staff worker for discipleship. But when he was asked to think about joining ��ñ�� staff, he wasn’t interested.

It wasn’t until Shane had worked a number of part-time jobs after graduation and began to realize how much he missed the ��ñ�� community, with its emphasis on Bible study and discipleship, that the light finally went on for him. “I was out of school a full six months before I considered staff at all,” he said.

Most of his early staff years were spent at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Shane and his wife invested in the leaders of the small chapter. “I think it was at Old Dominion that I realized how much I love calling out leadership gifts in people who don’t recognize it in themselves,” he said.

The chapter grew significantly and was doing so well that Shane was at first reluctant to consider an area director position that opened up. But when he finally decided to take the job he was surprised to find out it was an even better fit. “I love helping people who are motivated and gifted to get better,” he said.

John Hanna grew up hearing about ��ñ�� from his dad, who had been in the chapter at the University of North Carolina. He was invited to a freshman small group Bible study his first week on campus at North Carolina State and eventually became one of the chapter leaders. “I went to Chapter Camp every year while I was in college because of the way the Lord met me there,” he said.

But like Shane, John was not interested in joining ��ñ�� staff when first invited either. He was planning an engineering career. Seeing how the Lord used him to disciple fellow students and hearing a strong call from God to vocational ministry at Urbana 90, however, changed his mind. “The joy and the love I had in seeing God work in other people’s lives made the difference,” he said.

John spent his formative years on staff at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. His engineering training came in handy in figuring out how to work with a leadership team of 60 students. “I set up structures that would allow me as the only staff for the chapter to have those students cared for, and also to be able to have leaders who were caring for other leaders,” he said.

Both Shane and John reflected on how much they have enjoyed being part of a team led by Jimmy Long. John described Jimmy as a great strategist for campus ministry but also a great pastor in the way he cares for the people he supervises. “Jimmy is a very empowering supervisor,” Shane said. “He creates a lot of freedom for area directors.”

Few ��ñ�� regional directors have come close to serving in their role for 33 years Jimmy has in the Blue Ridge region. The number of future leaders he has helped shape would fill a college football stadium. Several years ago he calculated that more than 20,000 students have been trained at the Chapter Camps he’s served at over the 41 years he’s been on staff. And many of these students, such as former U.S. Congressman Mike McIntyre, have told him how important ��ñ��’s leadership training was for their career success.

Jimmy’s research into how to connect with college students more effectively led to him having several books published by ��ñ�� Press, including Emerging Hope in 2004 and The Leadership Jump in 2008. A strong commitment to community has also been one of the hallmarks of Jimmy’s ministry. He frequently held staff meetings in his home in Chapel Hill, which forged deep bonds among those on his team.

Characteristically, Jimmy began preparing for this leadership transition about five years ago. He is pleased that John and Shane are ready to step into their new roles. “John is a great man of God, committed to prayer and the personal development of people,” he said. “Shane is a good chapter builder, a good recruiter, and a good equipper. I have confidence that both of them will lead well and they will lead differently.”

Virginia campuses already have some of the largest ��ñ�� chapters in the country but Shane is still looking for ways to reach new corners of each campus. And though twenty-four four-year campuses in the Carolinas have ��ñ�� chapters, almost twice as many do not. “It’s my hope that the Lord will use ��ñ�� to see more students on those 43 campuses reached with the gospel,” John said.

One of the more obvious impacts of this split of the Blue Ridge region is likely to be outreach to more campuses in Virginia and the Carolinas. As a result, the number of Area Directors is expected to double in the next few years.

In the midst of these changes, two things are certain: God will continue to be faithful and the legacy of the Blue Ridge’s 33 years will continue in the lives of ��ñ�� students for many years to come.

News Keywords

Virginia

Regional Directors

Carolinas

The Road to Multiethnic Ministry

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 19:37:01 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

The Road to Multiethnic Ministry

Joe Ho became director of ��ñ��’s Asian American Ministries last July. It is not the career path he expected to be on when he joined ��ñ�� staff 20 years ago. “I was fairly distant from Asian American ministries for quite a long time,” he said.

Attending Urbana, ��ñ��’s Student Missions Conference, as a college sophomore he sat in on a workshop on Asian American identity. “It was a way of thinking that I didn’t really get,” he recalled. Multiethnic Ministry was not on his radar.

His first five years working for ��ñ�� at his alma mater, Duke University, he was the only Asian American Campus Staff Member in his region. The Duke chapter was thriving and his work with the chapter was very similar to what other staff in the region were doing.

Leadership Tested

But then the number of Asian American students at Duke began to grow. Many visited the ��ñ�� chapter but didn’t seem to fit in and drifted away. As he took some intentional steps to help Asian American students fit in, and train some of them for leadership, he was surprised to see the chapter develop a reputation as an Asian group and became less attractive to White students.

“That was the crucible in which my leadership was tested, and when most of my mistakes were made,” Joe said. Looking back now, Joe sees things much differently than he did then. “The years between five and ten were the ones where I had the least confidence in myself as a campus staff but also the years where I made the most significant contributions to the ministry at Duke.”

Developing As a Leader

Ten years ago, nearing the end of his tenure at Duke, Joe received an invitation to join ��ñ��’s first Daniel Project, a development program for Asian American staff with leadership potential. Daniel Project director Paul Tokunaga, now ��ñ��’s Vice President, Director of Strategic Ministries, was Joe’s mentor.

“What immediately impressed my about Joe was his can-do spirit,” Paul said. “Other Asian American staff might have wanted to transfer to another part of the country with more Asian Americans. But Joe had a ‘bloom where you are planted’ mindset.

Joe started Asian American conferences in the Blue Ridge region and Asian American break-out sessions at other ��ñ�� gatherings. “He started partnering with Asian American churches even though he attended a predominantly white church,” Paul said. “To Joe’s credit, there are now more Asian American students and staff in the Blue Ridge than any time in its history.”

Wider Responsibilities

By the time Joe left Duke to become Area Director for the Shenandoah Area in Virginia he was strongly committed to multiethnic ministry. His wife Traci, who had been teaching at a predominantly African American school, also played a role. “I think my wife’s journey in terms of the public school system was as integral to my thinking and our family’s calling to multiethnic ministry as anything that ��ñ�� taught me,” he said.

Later Joe was also invited to join the Asian American Ministries Leadership Team. This further deepened his appreciation for Asian American ministry, and helped him make the decision apply to become Asian American Ministries director.

During his seven years in Virginia the number of white students in the area’s ��ñ�� chapters grew steadily but they also began to reach new populations of Greek students, black students, and Asian American students. However, Joe felt a persistent desire to contribute more to Asian American and multiethnic ministry. Strangely enough, he realized later, he never prayed to ask God about fulfilling that desire.

When the Asian American Ministries Director job opened up and his application was selected he was pleased. “It shows God answers the desires of our hearts that are according to his will, way beyond what we could’ve asked, even when we didn’t have the faith to ask,” he observed.

True to His Calling

Joe grew up in a Chinese American church community in Cincinnati. During his college years he discovered that many of his church youth group friends had left the faith. He also discovered, in a conversation with a close non-Christian friend from high school, that she had gone through four years of college without having a spiritual conversation or thinking about faith.

“I joined staff at first because I thought neither of those two things should happen; that was my motivation,” he said. “I didn’t realize until two years ago, all of those high school friends are Asian Americans. I was drawn to lead Asian American Ministries by the realization of how my life had intersected with Asian Americans who were not believers. It turns out my calling with ��ñ�� is the same as it always has been.”

Joe believes he has a compelling vision for his new position. But he’s thankful he’s not doing the job all by himself.

“I’m riding on the coat tails of 250 of the most passionate, talented, committed, creative, culturally-savvy, leaders that I know,” he said. “All ��ñ�� staff are remarkable but this Asian American staff team…if someone could run with this crew why wouldn’t they?”

News Keywords

Virginia

Shenandoah

Duke

Asian American Ministry