Planning unplanned things

One of my top priorities as InterVarsity staff is to help students meet Jesus.

The problem is, I don't always know how to to do that.  I myself am not Jesus, and I don't always do a great job of knowing what Jesus wants to say to a student in any given moment to be able to help facilitate that.

Or, you know, I'm a sinful person and my own sin can get in the way of recognizing God's invitations.

It can be tempting to get caught up in the training, and coaching, and leading and forget that they're all for the purpose of creating space for students to meet Jesus.

Students, too, can have a hard time spending time with Jesus or recognizing God's presence throughout their day.  It's easy to procrastinate, put too much on their plates, and then have a hard time managing all of the things, thinking that they're all more urgent than spending quality time with Jesus.

This past week, the Rochester Area InterVarsity Staff came together to create space for students to meet with Jesus.  We invited all of our students from our chapters to come to Geneseo to spend a couple of hours in the middle of their day on Saturday for a self-led retreat.  We set up a few stations centered around nine spiritual temperaments and provided them an inventory to help students recognize ways they may best engage with God, and have space to try a new way of engaging with God.  We also allocated a sanctuary with beautiful stained glass as a room for complete silence.  We gave them a retreat guide, but told them that they didn't have to use it.  Students brought their own lunch, and they had the option of eating their lunch in silence as a way of continuing to engage with God.

I didn't really know what to expect.  For me, it was freeing to be able to create a space that students could lead themselves through.  It was freeing to not have to teach something, or lead something, or plan exhaustive details.  I myself got to spend some quality time in silence with the Lord.  For students, it was freeing to dedicate some quality time to meet with the Lord in silence, while also doing it in community.

Praise the Lord for the way He meets us when we create space in our lives to hear from Him!

Post-Basileia Story: The gift of an image

It's been another hard year, but Basileia was so good and refreshing that I nearly forgot all about how hard it was.

One of the reasons is because of a significant moment for me during chapter time.  While I had been leading these sessions earlier in the week, I decided to step back and give control over to the new Servant Leadership Team (SLT, student exec board) to get some practice.  So I kept my mouth shut as much as I could and let them run with their ideas.  They started off by posing the question, "What does vision mean?" to the group for discussion.  Then Marian spoke up.

"Well, I like to think of vision as a picture of an island," she said, in her usual light-hearted manner.  She went on to explain how we are standing on an island, looking out and seeing another island across the water, and how it looks so beautiful and wonderful that we just can't stay on this island any longer - we must get in a boat and go to that other island.  Vision is the picture of getting to that other, better island.

via Unsplash

To you, it may seem silly or insignificant, but let me tell you a little bit about who Marian is.  Marian was one of the very first students I started working with when I switched campuses to RIT.  My official capacity began at Basileia the year Marian was one of my new student leaders.  It was a crazy year of learning about the campus culture and learning how to lead in the midst of that learning.

One of the ways I led was by teaching the new team what vision was and how it described the current state of the chapter.  The image I used was that of an island.  I said that some students were in the boat, ready to go to that wonderful island but just didn't know how, and some students were back on the shore, confused about why we needed to leave this perfectly good island in the first place.  I often exhorted the SLT to lead other students in such a way that invites more students to come on board the boat, and invites the students who are already on board to have greater clarity around the direction in which we're going.

It was such a distinct image for me that I even journaled about it.

So hearing Marian share about this image was a rattling moment for me in bringing the past 3 years of staff to the present.  It was a moment of experiencing God's presence, with Him saying, "I have been and still am doing a good work in you and through you."  It was a concrete, tangible way to hold on to Jesus in a time where not many of those moments come around.

What a gift from the Lord!

The vicious cycle of Basileia.

My students must think I'm a broken record.

Basileia this, Basileia that.  Come to Basileia!  Let's get you to Basileia!  Sign up for Basileia!  Basileia is awesome!  [Insert any fabulous, passionate vision about why you should come to Basileia here!]

They must think I'm getting paid on commission per student I get to register for Basileia, or get some kind of bonus.  Now wouldn't that be pretty sweet.  Too bad it's not true.

We start talking about Basileia early.  And yet, I don't think we start talking about it early enough.  We talk about Basileia a lot.  And yet, I don't think that we talk about it enough.

The hope is that students will have the dates in their calendar before they start setting up their summer plans.  The hope is that we'll communicate the value of Basileia enough so that students will actually make it priority to put it into their summer plans.

Makes sense, right?  Sounds like a great plan, right?  Well, somewhere along the way this plan always morphs into its own monster.  We talk about Basileia early, and then students say they don't know what they're doing at that time, so they don't want to commit.  We talk about Basileia the month before, and then we start hearing some form of a reason why they can't go.  Co-ops.  Not enough money.  Too far away.  Aka, "I committed to something else."

I often translate these reasons to really mean:  students don't trust God enough to provide their needs, and/or students don't think there's enough value to make it a priority.

But my goodness, if you don't think God can provide the funds, time, or transportation to get there, then what does that say about the God we claim to trust and follow, or seek?  

I don't know about my students, but I believe that God is trustworthy and faithful.  I don't want students to come to Basileia for the sake of having another body in the room.  I have personally experienced and witnessed the power of God through His ministry at Basileia and want others to have an experience of their own.  And that is not so that they could leave with a temporary, spiritual high, but that they can remember how God met them, how He is faithful, and how He will continue to be faithful and powerful even after they've come down from the Adirondack mountain top.  Basileia can be a tremendous turning point for us as individuals and as a community, and I don't want students to miss that opportunity. 

And here are 5 Reasons why I think Basileia is WORTH IT, students:

1. Your presence makes a difference.  You think it won't matter or make a difference if you're not there, but that's a lie.  That's why I don't just accept it when you say, "Oh, I'll just go next year."  I believe God speaks to us individually, but He also speaks to us as an RIT community as well, your voice and presence is a vital part of shaping our response to His invitations.      

2. Your leadership potential and spiritual growth is worth investing in just as much as your education.  You spend tens of thousands of dollars and/or work to earn that money in scholarships to invest in your vocation.  How about spending a few hundred to invest in your spiritual growth and leadership development?  And guess what?  I don't think figuring out the money is a big deal because we believe in the God of the universe, a God of abundance, not of scarcity.  Do you trust that He'll provide?  Have you tried to creatively problem-solve your situation with your co-op, your family, or others?

3. Basileia is a unique time and space you can't re-create at home.  Yes, God will still be present with you wherever you are.  He is still doing a work in you.  But there's something about spending a week off campus, with peers who share the same values, at a beautiful lake with no school work or tests to worry about that creates space for the Holy Spirit to move in ways that you just don't experience in a different setting.

4. You gain skills for personal growth and community leadership.  It's not this temporary spiritual high of meeting with Jesus and then coming back down the mountain only for the glow to fade and everything to go back to the way things were before.  These are skills you can take with you back to campus, as well as the rest of your life either directly or if you apply them to your context.

5. Meet InterVarsity students and staff from other colleges and universities.  RIT's chapter is part of a bigger movement.  At Basileia you get a glimpse of what God is doing in others on different campuses.  These students and staff can have such valuable insight, wisdom, and ideas to share with you, but they also understand some of the burdens you carry as a college student and the difficulties of leading others.  Take advantage of the time you have there with them!

Weeping for RIT.

My Servant Leaders (the student exec team) and I have taken on the practice of spending 15 minutes of our weekly meeting to study and discuss a Bible passage.

As you can imagine, 15 minutes is not a lot of time to study a Bible passage.

To combat that a little bit, I've asked the leadership team to spend the entire week prior to the meeting in that passage during their quiet times with Jesus.  They can study it however they want.  They're encouraged to pray through whatever comes to the surface for them.  They're expected to come to our meeting having spent much more time with this Word on their own than we're able to do so together, armed and ready to share what came up for them during the week.

We're going through the book of Nehemiah, and this past week we went over the first chapter, where Nehemiah hears about the tragic state of condition of Jerusalem and Judah:  "The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame.  The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (Nehemiah 1:3, ESV).

Like I said, 15 minutes is not a lot of time to study the many layers of scripture we could unpack.

So we focused on one point - how Nehemiah responded to the news.  Here's what we found:

He immediately wept and mourned for days.  Nehemiah must have cared deeply enough about Jerusalem and his people that it brought such grief into his heart, as one would if someone very close and dear to them had passed away.

He fasted and prayed.  Nehemiah is brought to his knees, but not only that, he does not pray a prayer of, "Please help and deliver them, Lord!" or, "Why must my people go through this suffering?".  Instead, he interestingly prays a prayer of confession.

He identifies with the good and the bad of his people.  Not only does Nehemiah pray a prayer of confession (weird), but he identifies with his people in their sins!  "We have sinned against you," Nehemiah 1:6b says.  "Even I and my father's house have sinned."  He doesn't try to put the blame on anyone else.  He doesn't distance himself from his confession; even though he seems like he has the right not to involve himself.

He wasn't physically there.  This was in response to news that someone had brought to him from afar - he hadn't even seen the state of his community with his own eyes.  Either Nehemiah was super touchy-feely and sensitive, or he cared so deeply and identified so deeply with his community that he was moved deeply by this tragic news, even though he was miles away from the desolation itself.   

As we discussed these observations in our mere few minutes, one question kept coming to mind:

Why don't we respond to the brokenness on RIT's campus the way Nehemiah responds to Jerusalem's brokenness? 

It was a question I posed to the Servant Leadership team.  I asked them to imagine if they had gotten some news from someone during the winter break that RIT's campus was in shambles, would they react the way Nehemiah did, in weeping and mourning and praying prayers of confession on behalf of the sins we as a community committed?  Definitely not, we all agreed, myself included.

But why not? I wonder.  And what would it take for us to get to a point where we did identify and care so deeply with the RIT community that we wouldn't hesitate to respond to and lead out of the spiritual shambles we face everyday?

A staff worker's response to student complaints.

Okay, Tammy, here are some examples of issues students have brought up to you this week.  Let's work on how you should respond.  

'Tammy, InterVarsity is not feeding me spiritually.'
'Tammy, you're going to lose these people if you don't personally invite them to participate or involve them in what's going on.'
'Tammy, I don't think the leaders are doing a very good job.'

How to respond to criticisms from students:

Step #1:  Repeat after me:  do not take it personally.  Repeat that over and over and over in your head.  Just because they've said your name or they're talking specifically to you, doesn't necessarily mean you're to blame or that it's an issue you have to take on alone head on.

Step #2:  Listen carefully.  Ask clarifying questions.  Dig deeper to find the core value beneath the complaint. The fact that they're talking to you and bringing it up in the first place indicates that there's some kind of significance or truth. 

Step #3:  Find out what the student has done so far to try and address this complaint personally.  Remind them that they are InterVarsity, not you, the staff worker.  The community is only as good as those who are willing to do something about it. 

Step #4:  Pray.  Ask the Lord to fill you with compassion.  Thank Him for the students' honesty and willingness to come to you with their thoughts and feelings in the first place.  Ask the Lord to help you be mindful of these needs but not let them become burdens that prevent you from working towards bringing God's kingdom to campus.

It's time to be strong and courageous.

I am not the kind of person you mistakenly label as a 'social butterfly.'  I tend to be quiet.  I usually prefer to process my thoughts inside my brain and be careful about the words I say before they come out of my mouth.  My energy tends to drain easily just by being around a bunch of people I don't know.  It's draining because meeting new people typically requires you to start with small talk, but I don't really care as much about the weather or what you studied or did for work today as I care about wanting to go deeper and learning your hopes, dreams, struggles, and opinions (which doesn't usually happen when you first meet someone).    

So when it comes to New Student Outreach events, where, as a staff worker, I'm trying to model for and mobilize my college students to reach out and talk to other college students who are new to campus and new to our group, you can imagine how difficult it may be for me.  A room full of strangers infested with small talk and the innate social demand for me to process my thoughts quickly so as to avoid awkward silences?  Not an ideal environment for me to thrive in.

But just as God and Moses and the Israelites call Joshua to be strong and courageous over and over and over again, God calls us to be strong and courageous to lead God's people into the kingdom of God.  God's mission is bigger than I or my discomfort could ever be.  

While I could have sat on the sidelines and leave all the mingling up to my students, I've pushed through my fears and discomfort and introduced myself to new people.  I've learned not to wait for the ideal opportunity - I need to ask for strength and courage from the Lord to take every opportunity I get and try to turn each one into the ideal.  I know that if I don't put myself out there to meet new people, then I am either denying myself the opportunity to partner with God in what He is doing in other people, and/or I'm denying other people the opportunity to hear about who Jesus is and why InterVarsity exists on campus.

So as the start of the year has been officially kicked off, I'm sure in addition to meeting new people, other fears and discomforts will surface when it comes to engaging in God's mission on campus or in my neighborhood.  But when it comes time to make a decision about how I will respond, the question I'm going to have to ask myself again and again will be:  am I going to let my fear and discomfort dictate my behavior, or will my faith in God's love and mission define the decisions on how I live my life?  

Nom nom nom com.

It was the middle of my sophomore year when InterVarsity's Nomination Committee (Nom Com) invited me to serve on our Binghamton chapter's Exec Board as the Administrator for the 2009 calendar year.  I almost thought they were crazy.  Me?  Serve on E-board?  I saw my sister serve on E-board and knew how intense and how much commitment it would be to serve on the team, considering they had meetings that lasted two hours every week and got together for days on end to plan during the winter break.  And Administrator?  Really?  I didn't even know what the Administrator did.

It was risky for me.  I came into college as a very burnt out freshman; I had a track record of not being able to say no to anything, and served or led in everything I wanted to do or felt like I should do and didn't know how to rest well.  I was tired of leading and was wary of jumping back in.

At the same time, I didn't feel like I was qualified - I didn't know what was expected of me, I didn't know what my role would look like, I didn't know if I could live up to it all.  But I soon found out that being a leader in InterVarsity was a matter of saying 'yes' to Jesus and being humbly open to learn whatever Jesus wanted to teach me.

It's been 3 years since I've served my last term on E-board, and I am where I am because I chose to say 'yes' to Jesus at that time.  My leadership, visions and decisions in life are all influenced by my experience serving on E-board.  It was a hard but refining process that allowed me to fall on my face, get back up, sacrifice everything I knew, and take risks beyond my understanding, but it is an experience that drew me into a deeper dependence on God and opened my eyes to ways I was blind, and I believe that it was worth it all.

Now, as a staff worker sitting on the other side of the leader selection process, I'm excited to see what God will do in the lives of these students who are willing to say 'yes' to Him.  It's exciting because what it boils down to is not simply what abilities, vision capacity, or leadership skills they have that qualifies them for leadership.  It's exciting because leadership is about how much these students are willing to learn and sacrifice in order to follow Jesus, serve and love like Jesus, and empower others for mission like Jesus.   

And it's particularly exciting for me because Jesus invites me to be a part of the process of what He's doing in and through them.   

Go deep and cast the net wide.

Luke 5 is following me everywhere.  Well, not quite everywhere I guess.  But it's enough to get my attention.

Last Sunday, during our leadership meeting, two graduating seniors (and previous exec team leaders) from our chapter led a short manuscript, inductive Bible study of Luke 5.  They had studied the passage with the thousands of others at Urbana this year and wanted to cast vision to the core members and leaders of the chapter to take risks for the sake of the gospel.

It was clear that in the same way Jesus was calling Simon to follow Him, Jesus was calling us as a chapter to "put out into the deep" and "let down our nets."  Casting fishing nets in the deep part of the lake in the morning after fishing all night and catching nothing?  Come on, Jesus, seriously?  Apparently, Jesus was being serious.  He was calling Simon the same way He is calling us now to take risks of faith for Christ even when it may seem ridiculous at times.  He was calling Simon the way He is calling us now to reach out even when we've come up empty before.  He was calling Simon the way He is calling us now to take action when we're tired and have already started washing our nets.

The questions that lingered with our chapter were:  what risks do we need to take?  What will it cost?  What do we need to leave behind?  Where do we need to cast our nets?

The questions weren't quite answered that night.  Maybe for some individuals, but not quite as a whole.  It was exciting, though, to see how the following Sunday's meeting began connecting those loose ends.  By using Tootsie roll candies as a visual for the students on campus that we are called to reach, a couple of our current Servant Team (exec team) leaders gave us a bigger picture and cast the vision for our spring quarter New Student Outreach (NSO) events.

This is it - this is where Jesus is calling us to put out into the deep and let down our nets.  Our RIT chapter needs to invite everyone - friends, professors, students they don't know - to NSO and follow up with them, not just so we could have a lot of people at our events, but so that we could invite them to meet this Jesus who has so transformed our lives.  We need to invite whoever we can because we don't know whom Jesus is inviting to say 'yes' to Him.  If we're expecting a 75% rejection rate, we need to sow more seeds.  We need to cast our nets wide.  We need to go where everything's a lot less familiar, a lot less comfortable, a lot more uncertain of the outcome.  We need to go to the deep.

The next day after the first leadership meeting where we studied the Luke 5 passage, I went to a nearby retreat center to spiritually re-calibrate my vocation with the Lord.  At the midpoint of my retreat when I sat down for lunch, there was a little calendar that had Bible verses and a little devotional thought for each day.  Lo and behold, here's what it said:

Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything.  But because you say so, I will let down the nets."  When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.  --Luke 5:5-6

We're tempted to haul in our nets, grumble, and go home until hearing the invitation, "head to deeper water and see what you can do there."

My, my.  How indeed the Lord calls us personally and communally into deeper water - inviting us to trust Him more and more.

Striking the flint rock.

When I thought about how I'm doing recently in this season of ministry, I thought of a quote from the movie, It's a Wonderful Life:

Clarence:  You sent for me, sir?
Senior Angel:  Yes, Clarence.  A man down on earth needs our help.
Clarence:  Splendid.  Is he sick?
Senior Angel:  No, worse.  He's discouraged.

I'm going to be honest, I think I subconsciously try everything I can to beat around the bush of admitting that I'm discouraged.  That's probably because my temperament likes to lean towards the image of having it all together and being super positive all the time.  It's also probably because I know the truth in my head:  I have a God who is stronger and greater than any obstacles or issues I may face.  How can I be discouraged if our God is for us?  What can ever stop us or stand against, right?  That's how the psalms and songs go.

Also, it's bothersome that my attitude tends to bend with the weather.  I find that it can sometimes be harder to see the exciting things God is up to through the pelting sheets of rain and depressing gray sky.

But there's this one thing that has been coming back to me again and again ever since I spotted it during one of the sessions at Expedition, our InterVarsity Upstate NY Fall Conference.  I was in the Map & Compass Track, where students were equipped with tools and skills to dig deep into God's Word by studying the book of Jonah with the inductive, manuscript study style.  I noticed that even though Jonah went out of his way to flee God and go in the opposite direction of where God wanted to send him, God drew people to Himself.    God worked through Jonah's disobedience to bring the sailors on the ship Jonah was taking to flee the presence of the Lord came to faith in Him.

That's pretty amazing, especially to a young woman like myself who tries so hard to "do the right thing" and go in the "right" direction.  It's a deep, freeing reminder of how God is in the business of drawing people to Himself in His time and His way and that it doesn't rest alone on my own abilities or power.

I'm realizing I need to spend some time reflecting deeply on the vision I have for RIT's campus and its students.  I'm not as excited as I once was because the vision I once had is leaking and getting fuzzy.  I need to practice some self-leadership and do well to uncover and steward the vision God graciously offers me for the sake of the gospel.

If I don't cultivate the vision for myself and for others, how can I expect my student leaders to do the same?

The picture on the box.

The start of classes last week was also the starting pistol for my one-on-one meetings with key student leaders.  And as I've been meeting with leader after leader, I find myself having similar conversations around a very important thing I learned to develop as an InterVarsity student...the big picture of vision.

I used to consider myself an extremely detail-oriented, present-minded person.  I remember freshman year I couldn't really plan beyond two weeks ahead of time, and two weeks was really pushing it.  I got annoyed with the way announcement emails I received were formatted to squeeze important details for six events going on that week into one fat, plain-texted paragraph.  I knew if we were going to have a potluck, we needed to figure out how many people were coming in order to bring enough utensils, plates, napkins and cups and if it looked like most people were bringing starchy food and meats, I would provide some vegetables or desserts for a little variety.  On spreadsheets, charts, and word documents, well, I was the one who wanted consistencies in capitalization, indentation and punctuation.  Believe me, it wasn't just because I was an English major.

To some extent, I'm still like this today.  In some ways I've changed, and at the same time, some things haven't really changed.  But when I became a student leader in InterVarsity, the concept of vision and question of "where are we going?" really stretched and over time shook everything I knew about my detail-oriented, present-minded leadership.

"What do you mean, 'where do you want the fellowship to be in two years'?  How can we think about two years from now when we barely have it together for next week?"

That's what I used to ask myself incredulously when my staff worker challenged me and/or my E-board team to think beyond "here."  This big, fat, abstract, fuzzy picture of "there" was nowhere near my radar.  But over time, my way of thinking has shifted.  I've made connections of how lacking a clear vision can cost your leadership and the growth and change you want to see happen.  Or how without it, this "vision" can become a delusion or the groundwork for cynical and jaded leaders and followers.

Among InterVarsity staff in the NY/NJ Region, I've heard the analogy of "big picture" being the "forest" and "details" as the "leaf" on a tree in the forest.  But while I think it's a helpful picture of identifying those who tend to see things in bigger, more abstract ideas and those who see the smaller details, I think it's lacking the depiction of how the big picture and the small details relate to each other and how both are necessary in leadership.

Last year I was listening to a Tim Keller sermon (which had nothing to do with leadership, vision, or anything of the sorts) while I went running one morning, and he used an analogy that I love applying to this concept of "big picture" to "details":

Let's say you just bought a new house appliance that you need to assemble.  Well, let's use an Ikea dresser as an example (I heard those can be quite complex).  It comes with all the nuts, bolts, and parts in a giant box that are necessary in putting it together.  All of it is necessary, including the box.  The goal is to have a completed and functional dresser.  If you only had the pieces and didn't have the picture on the box, there'd be a good possibility that you'd get frustrated with putting it together and quickly lose sight and motivation of what you wanted to make in the first place.  And obviously, if you didn't have the pieces and only had the box, you would simply have an empty box good for uses other than to make the beautiful dresser pictured on it.  In order to build your Ikea dresser, you need to have the picture on the box ready for you to refer back to when you get stuck focusing on the pieces, and sometimes, you'll be able to figure out where a piece goes better by looking at the picture as opposed to the thorough but unclear typed instructions in the manual.

That's the relationship between vision and details/next steps.  We need to develop the big picture of our vision before we can set off on our day-by-day, week-by-week decisions and evaluations.  It doesn't mean we don't care about details.  I still deeply believe that the small things make a big difference...that they matter.  But understanding what the vision is helps make sense of the details and next steps and what you're actually working towards in the long run, not just today.

Embracing my Asian American background

"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

This Japanese expression characterizes the attitude of many Asian Americans.  We should not put ourselves forward and stick out.  Many of us aren't sure whether we can or should lead.  And the Western models of leadership don't seem to fit.

This was taken from the back cover of Paul Tokunaga's book, Invitation to Lead:  Guidance for Emerging Asian American Leaders.  I read this book earlier this year and just finished reading, Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents, written by Jeanette Yep, Peter Cha, Susan Cho Van Riesen, Greg Jao & Paul Tokunaga.  Both are excellent reads and I highly recommend them!

As I dive into ministry work and transition through post-graduate life, the Asian American aspect of my identity has begun to surface in ways I hadn't anticipated.  Growing up as an American-Born Chinese (ABC) in an Asian American Christian community is a huge part of my identity, but I haven't really faced the large-scale implications and impact that Asian Americans may have as a cultural group until I started college.

Throughout my life I more often than not saw myself as very American because I didn't seem to have your typical Asian parents compared to most other Asian Americans I encountered or heard about.  So I didn't really understand what it meant to embrace my Asian American culture.  But recently I've begun to see that perhaps a number of the conflicts or struggles I've experienced throughout my life were rooted in a tension between these two worlds.  

Paul Tokunaga identifies it this way in Invitation to Lead:

Philip Slater, in The Pursuit of Loneliness, states that America stresses competition, individualism, independence and technology.  Asian cultures, on the other hand, tend to stress cooperation, community, interdependence and tradition.  "The cultures pull in opposite directions, and it is the soul of the Asian American that provides the rope for the tug of war."

Being partly in two worlds but not fully in either makes for a difficult high-wire balancing act.  What makes it so tough is that Asian and Western values are often polar opposites.  


It's true.  I feel like I fall closer towards the Western end of the Asian spectrum and closer towards the Asian end of the Western spectrum, and it's just confusing sometimes trying to figure out how to deal with certain issues or conflicts that arise.  

Susan Cho Van Riesen, though, makes an important point:

The key to wise discernment begins with knowing what kingdom values are first, and then listening well to our parents for wisdom and reflections of the kingdom in what they are saying.

I don't think this applies just to our parents but with any relationship we may encounter.  And I'm recognizing the importance of embracing my Asian heritage, while identifying areas where being an Asian American needs redemption and how Asian American values may have gifts to contribute to the body of Christ as well.

All in all, it's a vital part of growing as a leader and understanding what kind of impact my cultural background has/will have.  I know my journey as an Asian American leader doesn't stop here - it's just beginning to bud - and it won't be an easy or smooth road, but it's worth it to see how God will let it bloom.

An excerpt from Tokunaga's epilogue:

The biggest challenge for the next generation of Asian American leaders is to be one.

It will be far easier to be that nail that stays hammered down.  Leadership is risky, costly, dangerous and complex.  It can be nerve-wracking, faith-shaking and seductive.  It can drive you crazy.

You can say no.  Many potentially pretty good leaders do.  They just walk away and go about their business.  When they do that, however, there are three losers:  themselves, the lives that could have been affected by their leadership and then their followers.

Of the three, you lose the most.  Being a leader stretches us to our limits and beyond.  It forces us to trust God like never before.  We live out faith in once invisible dimensions of our lives.  We end up leading and serving some people we used to dislike even despise.  We might even end up loving them.  

But others lose too.  You have things to give that others need; stuff you weren't even aware was yours to offer.  Be that stick-out nail.


What kind of insight or experiences have you gained as an Asian American or as someone who has worked with/encountered Asian Americans?