Native American

Can Culture Fit with Faith? One Graduate’s Story

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 19:10:39 +0000

Nathan Peterson

Can Culture Fit with Faith? One Graduate’s Story

“It completely blew me away.”

That’s how JD Mercado describes his first ��ñ�� large group at Northern Arizona University (NAU). They worshiped in Korean, Swahili, and Spanish—something he’d never experienced before. “I just felt a sense of peace, not fully understanding the significance of multiethnic worship at the time, but just an innate sense that something was right, something was being done the way it should be, and that God was at the center of that experience,” he said.

JD had just transferred to NAU during the spring of 2013, and he had only known about its ��ñ�� chapter for a few weeks. But this large group experience inspired him to apply to be a Worship Team leader, a role he served in all four years at NAU.

Later that same year, JD was invited to the Native ��ñ�� Would Jesus Eat Frybread? conference to explore his heritage as a member of the Piipaash and Quechan tribes of the southwestern US. He agreed to go but felt a little uncertain, as he remembered one pastor’s warning that culture couldn’t blend with faith.

The conference proved to be just as moving as his first large group, especially when a group of Native Hawaiians performed a hula. “I remember being invited into that moment,” JD said. “That was so memorable for me to see Indigenous people being gracious with their culture, that Jesus gives us an ability to offer an invitation, and that there’s a way to honorably engage with culture. That was something that I immediately began to want for myself, something that I’d never thought about before.”

JD’s four years with ��ñ�� continued to help him grow in his appreciation for multiethnic worship and explore the connection between his faith and Native heritage. He also had the opportunity to perform through spoken word and song at ��ñ��’s Ambition Conference in January 2018.

Preparing the Way

Upon graduation, JD decided to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, with hopes of becoming a published author and teacher. But he also began to experience what he later called “a dry season,” during which he felt like expressions of Christianity revolved too much around Sunday morning corporate worship and prayer and then were neglected the rest of the week.

He reached out to Native ��ñ�� Director Megan Krischke to discuss opportunities to continue serving with ��ñ��. This led to his decision to help plan the upcoming Would Jesus Eat Frybread? conference in November 2019. Struck also by John the Baptist’s example in Scripture, JD sought to prepare the way for a movement of the Spirit by prayer walking four campuses, including Coconino Community College. He plans to return to Coconino to continue building relationships with Native students.

“Volunteering has been really affirming that God is active in my life,” JD said. “In the midst of this dry season, I had this conversation with Megan. I just felt like God was hearing me, saying, ‘I want to use you, even though you’re feeling dry and burned out. Would you just come to me and be replenished and trust that I know what I’m doing with your life?’”

In many ways, JD’s volunteering experience has helped address his disappointment in not sensing the call to join ��ñ�� staff after college. “I think I needed to understand that whatever I was planning to do after college, God was going to be in that,” he said. “The world needs more writers, more teachers, who are not just Christians but who believe in the things God cares about. The fabric of our society is strengthened by the type of people that ��ñ�� impacts during their college experience.”

JD encourages fellow alumni, “God begins a work in us through ��ñ�� in college, and it doesn’t end when you graduate. In this longstanding partnership between chapters and alumni, there are only beneficial things that come from that.”

Like JD, do you long for a way to continue serving college campuses? Consider prayer walking a campus as part of our EveryCampus initiative, a partnership of multiple ministries to launch movements and communities of Christians sharing the real hope of Jesus on every campus in the country. Click below to find a campus to prayer walk near you!

Prayer Walk a Campus

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A Holy Ambition to Grow Native Ministry

AD-16225 — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 21:21:07 +0000

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A Holy Ambition to Grow Native Ministry

Megan Murdock Krischke nurtured the vision for her dream job for over a decade, and is now seeing her perseverance rewarded as ��ñ��’s first ever National Coordinator of Native Ministries. She became National Coordinator in July 2016, after many years of working with Native students.

Megan is a member of the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, and began exploring Native Ministries shortly after joining ��ñ�� staff in 2000. She attended Native staff gatherings and the LiSteN (Learn and Serve in Navajoland) project. In 2006, she and her new husband moved to Durango, Colorado, to start a Native chapter at Fort Lewis College.

Soon after she became the Area Director for the Four Corners–��ñ��’s first ethnic specific area–overseeing Native chapters at the University of New Mexico and Northern Arizona University. She took a very small and sparsely attended Four Corners Fall Conference and played a key role in building it into the Would Jesus Eat Frybread? Conference, a national Native student conference that attracts more than 100 ��ñ�� and Cru students from all over the country, including Alaska and Hawaii.

In her new role Megan continued to coach staff to reach and bless the Native students on nine campuses in eight different states. She has also worked hard to train and develop Native staff, and to remove cultural and economic obstacles that would prevent them from thriving in ��ñ��.

“Megan has a holy ambition and a drive to fill it,” said Courtland Hopkins, a member of the Lakota Tribe and an ��ñ�� Campus Staff Minister in the Four Corners area. “Her ambition is to reach every Native student on every campus. She has encouraged me by saying in words and action that there’s a place in ��ñ�� for me.”

Megan has also encouraged long-time ��ñ�� staff who have not always identified with their Native heritage, such as Tim Webster, an Oneida tribe member who has been with ��ñ�� in northeastern Wisconsin for more than 25 years. “Megan’s enthusiasm and welcome are both relentless and healing,” he said. “Hanging out with and serving Natives and those involved with Native ministry is now my social equivalent of comfort food.”

Paula Fuller, ��ñ��’s Executive Vice President, People and Culture, remembers Megan passionately supporting her vision for Native Ministries in meetings a dozen years ago. She has watched that vision take shape and grow over the intervening years.

“In the last few years, there has been tremendous momentum for Native Ministries,” Paula said. “We have new Native Ministries staff, growth in the number of student-led small groups, and most recently three chapter planters in the national cohort. Megan’s presence and voice at our national leadership table means that we will reflect the beauty and diversity of the Creator a little more fully.“

Ray Aldred, director of the Indigenous Studies Program at Vancouver School of Theology, has also been watching Megan’s vision develop and applauds her tireless efforts on behalf of Native Ministries. “She brings the best of newcomer culture—this is not an oxymoron—to be in a true treaty (conventional) relationship with Indigenous peoples,” he said. “She has shown indomitable fortitude in the face of generations of dominant society–induced trauma on Indigenous identity, showing that the past creates wounds that need healing. Megan has taken on these wounds and has been and is an agent of reconciliation and redemption.”

Megan is passionate about seeing Native students develop into world changer—women and men who bring hope and healing to their communities. “We have graduates working in tribal government, social services, ministry, and law,” Megan said. “As these graduates return to their community they are able to speak about Jesus in ways that resonate with the heart language of their people.”

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