Boston

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

The Cost, and the Reward, of Obedience

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 13:32:32 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

The Cost, and the Reward, of Obedience

Four years after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Derek Wu was on the fast track to become a vice president for a private equity firm, directing a team that managed $150 million in assets. He was also in a quandary, however, because he was finding ministry as an ��ñ�� staff volunteer more fulfilling than the financial markets.

For two years he struggled with God’s call to become a full-time campus minister.

“When I finally said yes to Jesus, to coming on staff, it was in part out of obedience but also because I realized I wanted more hours to spend on campus,” he said. “I couldn't do it with the ten hours a week that I was giving, I wanted to do it full-time.” But coming on staff meant not only financial sacrifices, it also meant sacrificing his family.

Derek grew up in southern California, the son of Taiwanese immigrants. When he came to MIT as a freshman, he wore a cross around his neck, given to him by a friend. He met some ��ñ�� students, who helped him settle into campus housing. They invited him to attend chapter meetings of the Asian Christian Fellowship (ACF), which he did sporadically. He was indifferent towards Christianity.

The following year his fraternity big brother called him on his indifference. ACF became his community on campus, and he began to seriously consider the Christian faith. He was particularly intrigued by the mention of hope in Jesus because he didn’t see much hope in his life. Due to a difficult childhood, Derek was dogged by feelings of worthlessness.

He recognized that a university education offers a kind of hope that results in stability and comfort if good grades in the right classes lead to a successful career. But that was not the kind of hope that attracted Derek. “At MIT the hope was in technology,” he said. “The great hope of humanity is education but it doesn’t touch the soul.”

His junior year he went to ACF’s fall conference at Toah Nipi, ��ñ��'s retreat and training center in New Hampshire. That weekend he heard the story of Jacob, who was called a deceiver in the book of Genesis, and was dogged by that identity for much of his life, until God renamed him Israel. “There was something about the idea that God could give me a new identity in that story that would set me on a new path,” he recalled.

Derek’s yes in response to God’s call to a new identity in Jesus Christ unfolded slowly, as he continued to attend large group meetings and Bible studies in his fraternity for the rest of his time at MIT. He graduated with a degree in Finance and began the career he had prepared for.

That was 2005, the year that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. When ��ñ��’s New England chapters began sending teams to Louisiana to help clean up, his best friend, still a student, invited him along. Derek returned to Boston after the trip with a sense that God wanted to give him an opportunity to do something that wasn’t for himself. So when he was asked by an ��ñ�� staff minister to disciple a couple of ��ñ�� students, he said yes.

That meant that Derek’s first ��ñ�� leadership experience came after his student days were over. “Those volunteer years were actually very formative,” he said. His mentoring role continued to grow over the next three years and he invested considerable time helping the MIT chapter improve its outreach programming so that it could better connect with students who were indifferent, as he had been.

And then he realized that God was calling him to join ��ñ�� staff fulltime. He resisted, praying, “Lord, you know my heart; let this pass.” But he sensed God say, “This is not about optimizing and stewardship. Are you going to steward your life for me or are you going to say yes?”

When he finally said yes, he had to tell his parents, who had moved back to Taiwan. “The conversation I had with my parents was one of the most terrifying conversations I’ve had in my life,” he said. While he called them, a small group of his friends interceded in prayer in the next room.

“Why are you doing this to us?” his parents responded. “You are shaming us.” He was disowned. The friends who had prayed for him in the next room became his only family.

Derek understood that parents who have sacrificed to send their child to college can find it hard to accept that their son or daughter plans to work for a non-profit ministry that asks its staff to raise their salaries through donations from family, friends, and other contacts. He hoped that his parents would eventually accept his decision.

As his ministry on the MIT campus thrived, Derek carried a heavy burden. For five long years he prayed for God to restore his relationship with his parents. They wouldn’t take his calls; there was no sign that they would relent. There appeared to be no chance that they would open their hearts to God’s mercy.

Then, around Christmas in 2014, Derek called his parents to tell them he was getting married. They listened. And then they talked. The family bond was restored. Last year Derek and his wife visited his family in Taiwan. His father told them that they were considering moving back to California, and his mother was even considering going to church.

“I was stunned,” Derek said. “Nothing I could have done could have controlled that situation. God is the one who is in control; all he asks of us is to say yes. The Lord is the one who works in hearts.”

New England has a reputation of being spiritually cold, more so than other regions. But as Derek—��ñ��’s Boston Divisional Director—leads ministry in the region, he sees God at work in the lives of more and more students, just as in his own life. “I think ��ñ��, God willing, is releasing a new generation of leaders that can help prepare the church for revival,” he said.

Derek is seeing it happen; the seeds of revival are taking root on New England college campuses.

News Keywords

"Why Would God Want Me to Have a PhD?"

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 15:26:17 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

"Why Would God Want Me to Have a PhD?"

Kathy Tuan-MacLean is one of the few staff members who were involved with ��ñ�� in high school. Growing up in Hawaiʻi, she was a leader of the InterSchool Punahou Christian Fellowship. Hawaiʻi was the “mission field” and not a state when ��ñ�� was planted, and high school ministry was included in our mission.

Despite her early involvement with InterSchool, a call to ministry at age 14, and peripheral undergraduate involvement at Northwestern University, Kathy didn’t really plunge into ��ñ�� until she began her PhD program in human development and social policy at Northwestern. Veteran campus staff member Dave Ivaska invited her to help him plant graduate ministry there. “Northwestern Graduate Christian Fellowship met in my living room for those first two years,” Kathy said. Conveniently, as a resident hall coordinator, she had an exceptionally large living room.

Kathy’s goal to study faith and moral development was foiled before she even began the program, due to her advisor moving away, resulting in a struggle to understand why God had called her to a PhD program. She attended ��ñ��’s Urbana Student Missions Conference in 1987, asking everyone she met, “Why would God want me to have a PhD?”

Because her program focused largely on urban poverty issues, she wondered whether God was calling her to serve him in the city. At that point she knew she didn’t really love the poor, so she gave God the opportunity to change her heart by signing up for ��ñ��’s Chicago Urban Project (CUP). “It was a dangerous prayer—God always says yes when you ask him to help you love the poor,” she said.

The following summer Kathy served as an on-site staff member for CUP and discovered her unique gifts in helping students process the experience, leading her to finally join ��ñ�� staff (after five years of being recruited by Chicago area director Jeanette Yep). She wanted to serve campuses in Chicago, work with CUP, and finish her dissertation.

However, her love life (and God?) led her instead to join staff in New York City, serving Columbia and New York University, with the goal of also starting the New York City Urban Project (NYCUP). She not only was supervised by Bobby Gross, the newly minted regional director, but also shared an apartment with him, his wife Charlene, and their son Evan for three-and-a-half years. After suffering through the worst first year on staff of anyone she knows and the breakup of the relationship that brought her to New York, she met Scott MacLean, a new staff in Boston, at Orientation of New Staff. They married two years later, after Scott moved to New York City and joined her at Columbia.

While in New York, Kathy planted the first Metro New York graduate student fellowship; designed, launched, and directed NYCUP in partnership with fellow staff member Orlando Crespo; and, working with Scott, saw the Columbia fellowship triple in size.

In 1996, Kathy gave birth to their first child 13 days after turning in her PhD dissertation, “The Interracial Friendships of White and Asian College Students,” and two months before moving to Boston so Scott could attend business school. She joined the Harvard Graduate & Faculty Ministries (GFM) team, serving PhD and policy students over the next eleven years, as a part-time staff member while she bore and raised two more children. “I’m grateful for the flexibility ��ñ�� gave me as a mother to both do meaningful work and parent,” she said. “I especially appreciate ��ñ��’s long memory—so that when I was ready to re-engage more fully, I was welcomed and encouraged to step up.”

In 2007, Kathy became the area director for Boston GFM and planted the Boston Faculty Fellowship, a city-wide ministry with faculty from nine campuses. “We noticed God was bringing missional faculty to Boston, many of whom had been student leaders in our Fellowship,” she said.

Now, as the newly appointed associate director of GFM (beginning July 1), she will be working closely once again with her first supervisor, GFM director Bobby Gross.

“Kathy brings so many strengths to our leadership team from her own personal journey,” Bobby said. “She earned her PhD as a working woman, she led GFM teams at the campus and area level, and she has thoughtfully achieved a balance between her roles as a minister, wife, and mother. Her wisdom, experience, and leadership in the area of multiethnic ministry will be strategic for GFM as we aggressively pursue our goal to see multiethnic growth and ministry effectiveness.”

Kathy, for her part, relishes the opportunities she will have to advance GFM’s mission in her new position. “Figuring out how to grow the ministry—that’s what I’m excited about,” she said. “There’s so much room for growth. And working with ��ñ�� means working with the best colleagues in the whole world.”

News Keywords

NYCUP

Northwestern University

Graduate and Faculty Ministries

CUP

Boston

Ready to Go Anywhere

AD-16225 — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:35:00 +0000

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Lauren Anderson

Ready to Go Anywhere

Becky Lahna’s adventure began with a prayer when she was 15.

“I’ll go anywhere you want me to go, Jesus. My life is yours now,” Becky prayed while taking communion for the first time. Having just come to faith, Becky not only knew Jesus as her Savior, but also wanted him to be Lord of her life. That day, she submitted her plans to his.

Now an ��ñ�� staff member, Becky says, “He took me up on it. It’s like God said, ‘Okay, I’m going to take you on some adventures, Becky.’”

The beginning of an adventure
Throughout high school, Becky continued to grow as a disciple of Jesus. By the time she arrived at the University of Washington, Becky knew she wanted to join a campus ministry. When she first went to ��ñ��, Becky didn’t consider it a good fit and looked elsewhere. Through her experience in another ministry, Becky found a passion for working with college students.

Upon graduation, Becky felt God calling her to the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, where she worked as an associate director of a college ministry. In her position Becky got the opportunity to do what she loved: train staff and student leaders, reach out to students, and lead Bible studies.

“I loved everything about my job. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” Becky said. Becky was content, settled, and could see herself in Chattanooga for a long time. But then Boston happened.

Four years into her position with her ministry, Becky unexpectedly found herself caring about Boston, a city she had never even visited. For months, Boston was on her mind. Everywhere she turned, Becky seemed to find Boston-related encounters. She bumped into a man with a Boston accent while standing in line. The Red Sox won the World Series. Boston showed up in the news at an unusual rate.

The circumstances were seemingly random, but Becky believed God was trying to tell her something. Confused by what it meant, she started praying for the city and eventually other students joined in her prayers. For months, she asked, “God, what are you saying?” only to be met with what felt like silence.

A Bostonian call

And then God answered. In 2004, Becky attended a large worship conference in Chattanooga with her students. Sitting in a gym of over 20,000 people, Becky watched an opening video with amazement as God’s message about Boston became perfectly clear. On the screen were students from Boston, saying, “Please come to Boston. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”

Becky cried as she and her students recognized this as the fulfillment of months of question-filled prayer. The video reminded Becky of the Macedonian Call in Acts 16, when Paul received a vision of a man from Macedonia begging, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Becky knew where the Lord was calling her next.

After finishing the school year, Becky packed everything she owned into a moving truck and moved to Boston in August 2005. She didn’t have all the details worked out, but she knew she was supposed to love college students in Boston.

“I think I’m going to Boston”

As soon as she arrived, Becky was on a mission to find the students she was called to love. But as Becky began researching churches and ministries, she didn’t find any open doors. Wherever she went, she was told that they had too many volunteers and that she wasn’t needed.

After several months of talking to random students in the area, but never making any real connections, Becky began to doubt. “Why did I even move to Boston? Did I miss God’s call?” she questioned.

One day in May, discouraged from the seemingly fruitless search, Becky asked a seminary classmate to pray with her. As the two women stood in a parking lot praying, names popped into Becky’s mind. The captain of a football team, the editor of a school newspaper, a dorm resident assistant, a campus worship leader.

As they came to mind, Becky jotted down the names of students she had met during the past few months. Later Becky realized the list included an influential student from each campus on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

A city on a hill

That same night she called the students on her list. Later that week, all of the students met in a coffee shop to pray for their campuses. As they began talking, Becky discovered that the meeting was an answer to more than just her own prayers. “One by one, students said, ‘I have been praying for that very thing. This is exactly what my campus needs,’” Becky said.

Throughout that summer, the group continued to meet together to pray and study Scripture. They decided to call themselves “The Hill,” in reference to Psalm 24 and Matthew 5:14. For four years, The Hill continued to meet, without resources, money, or any affiliation with a church or ministry.

As Becky pursued connections with churches and other ministries, she once again was met with closed doors. Meanwhile, as Becky led the fledgling ministry while working full-time at a coffee shop, she was offered multiple job opportunities with ministries outside of Boston. But Becky stayed. The Hill continued to grow as students invited friends, and other students came to faith.

A perfect partnership

In 2009, Becky was hired in the admissions office at the seminary she attended. In December of that year, the seminary sent Becky to ��ñ��’s Urbana Student Missions Conference as their representative. At Urbana, Becky found a different ��ñ�� than she remembered from college.

As she attended the evening sessions, Becky realized that her vision for Boston aligned with ��ñ��’s vision. Three days into the conference, Becky approached the staff booth to learn more about ��ñ��’s presence in Boston.

When she expressed interest in working with ��ñ��, the staff representative was stunned. He was on the New England regional leadership team and, for years, his team had been praying for staff in Boston. Once again, Becky knew she was exactly where she needed to be.

Becky joined staff with ��ñ�� as a planting area director in the Boston area. This past year, she supervised ministry at five schools, dividing her time among the campuses.

Being affiliated with ��ñ�� allowed Becky’s ministry to establish witnessing communities on campus, where students have launched evangelistic Bible studies and other forms of campus outreach. This fall, Becky serves as area director of North Shore, equipping a team of staff to minister to students on campus.

Today, telling the story of her long journey in ministry, Becky exudes the joy of someone who has said “yes” to the Lord’s call and has committed to following him wherever he leads.

“I want to be a woman who listens to the Lord and obeys. I want to know that what he has for me is better than what I could have planned for myself. Even though it may be hard and it may be a long process, it’s worth it if it means following and serving him.”

News Keywords

Boston

Salem State University