NYCUP

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

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

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.”

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NYCUP

Northwestern University

Graduate and Faculty Ministries

CUP

Boston

Serving the City

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 18:43:52 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Serving the City

Jonathan Walton loves New York City. He calls it a God-given affection—because when he first arrived in the city as a Columbia University freshman, he hated it.

New York City was a big change from his hometown in rural southern Virginia. “The people are loud,” he remembers thinking. “There’s no reason for this many people to live in one place.”

He admitted he wasn’t prepared for Columbia. What saved him was an invitation from a friend to attend an ��ñ�� small group Bible study. “If I hadn’t had people to talk to, I probably would have flunked out,” he said. “��ñ�� definitely kept me in college.”

Poetic Flair

Jonathan had won a scholarship to Columbia on the basis of his already-published work as a poet. Eventually he started to win attention as a speaker and performer in New York City, and while the attention was exciting, the constant self-promotion was deceptive. God was calling him to something more through ��ñ��, where he saw people who followed Jesus instead of their ego. God emphatically got his attention during the summer after his sophomore year.

Everything came crashing down all at once. He lost his job. There were money problems, and a check bounced. He didn’t have a place to stay. He didn’t know where to turn. Finally he had a long conversation with his ��ñ�� staff worker, Ashley Byrd.

“I was trying to figure out why a guy like Ashley would care about a guy like me. And he said, ‘Because Jesus cares.’” Jonathan renewed his commitment to follow Jesus and became more involved in ��ñ�� when the school year started. His last two years at Columbia he was the chapter’s Large Group Coordinator.

Loving the City

Immediately after graduation in 2008, he became director of ��ñ��’s New York City Urban Project (NYCUP), a program involving spiritual formation and advocacy. NYCUP had been struggling to find consistent leadership, with three different directors in five years.

“When I came on staff I really didn’t have a grasp of what urban projects were, but what I did have was a conviction that students should be loving the people on their campuses so that it causes them to push out to the boundaries of the entire world,” Jonathan said.

Greg Jao, ��ñ��’s National Field Director for the Northeast, admired the way Jonathan tied justice advocacy with Scripture study and prayer at NYCUP. “We believe this generation of activists will burn out and become embittered—like prior generations of activists—if they aren’t renewed regularly by the Holy Spirit’s work and presence,” Greg said. “Jonathan models this in the way he lives, teaches, and directs the project. He’s an activist because he’s a faithful disciple of Jesus.”

Instead of focusing primarily on spring break and summer vacation programs, like other urban projects, Jonathan began a year-round program that offers students the opportunity to live out their faith by feeding the homeless, as well as fighting human trafficking and modern slavery.

“His regular one-day programs (Feed 500) have been key places for Christian students to invite non-Christian students to meet a God who cares about personal and social righteousness,” Greg noted. “He has created long-term relationships between non-Christian service organizations and ��ñ�� chapters. I love the way NYCUP not only reflects ��ñ��’s convictions about Scripture, justice, spiritual formation, and mission but also actively advances our campus work.”

The number of students involved in NYCUP has grown steadily. Jonathan believes students are looking for tangible ways to express their faith and make a difference in the world. “Christians are the only people on campus who have a vision for what God intended and how He will restore it,” Jonathan said.

Reaching Out to the City

Jonathan now has the additional responsibility of being the official spokesman for Price of Life New York City, a call to faith and justice that culminates in a series of events in early October, 2013. ��ñ�� and dozens of collaborating organizations will be inviting students attending 18 targeted New York City colleges to participate. “I expect this to be a catalyst for ministry and city renewal if we are obedient in our calling to be bold and unashamed,” he said.

Through the Price of Life it’s hoped at least 10,000 students will be personally invited to follow Jesus and fight human trafficking. It will be one of ��ñ��’s largest evangelistic outreaches ever. But Jonathan is already thinking ahead. “Maybe in five years we will be in a position to reach 594,000 people—the total number of students in New York City,” he said. “In the long term, yes I think we can do it.”

For Jonathan, nothing less would serve the city that he loves. Because it’s a city that God loves.

Jonathan Walton and his wife Priscilla are mentioned in this article on Christianity in New York City.

In the video below, he talks further about his ministry with ��ñ��.

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