Unexpected Twists of Leading Mark Study

This fall (2014), I co-led a weekly inductive bible study on the gospel of Mark, colloquially known as Mark Study. My co-leader and I were excited about making a regular space where folks could encounter the Jesus of the Bible, the one who frequently confounds us unless we expend time and energy entering into the first-century world he lived in. We eagerly anticipated Jesus showing up in the lives of the Mark Studiers. We just didn't know who those Mark Studiers would be.

Fifteen weeks later, and my co-leader and I are marveling at how much God moved in unseen ways (that is, unseen by us until pretty recently).

1. We consistently had 6 students attending.

2. The study that I felt the most insecure about leading was one that folks mentioned the most in their conversations with us at the end of the semester.

3. We had two opportunities to look for Jesus in our present day social climate: one in Oakland, talking about police brutality and racial injustice, and the other in Berkeley, a prayer vigil organized after the non-indictment of Darren Wilson. After these events, my co-leader and I were unsure whether or not folks were able to make connections between Jesus in the gospel of Mark and Black Americans advocating for justice in their communities. But our last study of the semester tied in the way Jesus sends out his followers to see and be with communities previously unknown to us!

4. Students are excited to be part of Mark 2 (the second half of Mark) next semester; and they are excited to lead the study!

5. Students have individually thanked us for the space that we helped create each week because they have seen things they had never seen before in Jesus and in the Word.

It maybe oughtn't be much of a surprise to me that God shows up when people seek him--and yet, I am so much like the disciples, who say, "Jesus, don't you care --- ?!" and get afraid whenever he does anything. So that's the last twist: how Jesus has stretched my belief/faith by putting me in the position of leading others when I'm barely a step ahead!

The [Squirrel] Monster Within

I was meeting with a student on a clear Friday afternoon at Free Speech Movement Cafe on campus. We were talking about insecurity and pride, and how both these human postures communicate a similar rejection of God as Creator and Sustainer. I shared some about my temptation to tell God that he designed me poorly when I found myself not measuring up to my own standards, and the student, Rachel, was listening with rapt attention.

It was then that we saw the squirrel perched on our table, mere inches away from our coffee and food.

This is not the squirrel, but it is about as close to you as the squirrel in my story was to us. 

Too close.

With exclamations of surprise and fear, we leapt up from our table, snatching away our beverages and snacks. One crumb remained and the rotund squirrel gobbled it up greedily, showing even less of an inclination to back down. I watched it in disbelief--when did it get so bold that it would sit on a table, less than a foot away from humans, and not flinch at their words or gestures? How did this abomination come to be??

It was then that Rachel and I realized that this squirrel standoff was a perfect illustration of what we had been discussing: this moment was a story that, along with the associated feelings of terror and helplessness, would sear this conversation in both our minds for a long time to come.

This squirrel is so much like the pride within us--when we feed it a little here and a little there (musing on our accomplishments, dwelling on our failures, investing in our reputations at the cost of our souls), it soon grows bold beyond our control and begins to terrorize us. It starts looking at us with hunger, no longer satisfied with the little morsels we've been feeding it. My wake-up call came in the form of a deep depression*--I had been feeding the monster of vanity for a long time with both self-aggrandizing and self-condemning thoughts, and it eventually swallowed my identity whole. As a result, I experienced what felt like death, but was really God destroying the false beliefs I had about who I am and teaching me to compassionately interpret my emotions.

Rachel and I were a little in awe at how neatly our table-side encounter with the squirrel fit into what God was teaching us in that moment. I am grateful to serve such a creative and concrete God!

*I am continually learning to interpret my experience with depression, and I offer it as a story about my life (no one else's). Everyone's depression is different!

Love First, Ask Questions Second

God has recently been overturning a paradigm I've unconsciously held regarding my relationship with my student leaders.

Firstly, as a function of my own personality and culture of origin, I interpret leaders as those given rightful authority and responsibility to direct followers. When I was a student and staff invited me to respond in specific ways, I invariably did what they requested. And when I deviated or defaulted in any way, I was acutely aware that I had done so and anticipated "the reckoning"--the time when I'd have to account for my procrastination and inaction.

There are various unhealthy dynamics in this approach, but one positive one is that I understood the two-way commitment of my relationship with my staff workers. They were committed to oversee my ministry, help me understand what next steps to take, and hold me accountable to what God was calling me to do in obedience and trust. In order for that relationship to work, I had to hold up my end of the bargain, which was to follow their leadership by obeying, or at least by conscientiously objecting when I felt like obeying was not in my or others' best interest. But nowhere in my mind was there an option to not do something and not communicate with my staff worker about not doing it.

Then I became a staff worker, and this dynamic of one-way communication (me, initiating with my students) and unmet expectations became rather frequent.

As a relatively new staff worker, I have a tendency to overpersonalize ministry situations. This inclination usually starts me going in the wrong direction. The truth is, there are so many things competing for my students' time and attention, many of them worthy pursuits in their own right. Still more carry the brightness of urgency or the allure of prestige. And to interpret a student's non-responsiveness as a rejection of my leadership misses that reality. All of us live within social systems in which there are rewards and punishments--the very least I can do when experiencing students' flakiness is ask some good questions about what's driving them, inviting them to honestly own their priorities without shame. I don't do that very well when I'm trying to defend my own leadership.

While these realizations were stirring around in my mind, I asked God for a way out of the zero-sum mentality of "If they obey me, I'm a good leader, and if they don't, it means I suck." He invited me to think about how he leads me--with intention for my flourishing, with compassion for my struggles and with a whole lot of patience for my wrong choices. God invited me to choose into that style of leadership--self-giving rather than self-evaluative--by pursuing my students' hearts the way He pursues mine.

So then I thought long and hard about how I could show them God's love, and I decided I would buy each one of the leaders I oversee a gift that wasn't expensive but somehow drew on my knowledge of who they are and what resonates with them. For one student, I bought him three different (used) DVD's that had his name in the titles. For a female student, I bought her flowers and chocolate. Each time I spent energy, money, and time on thinking about these individuals and what makes them special, I found myself softening in my approach toward them.

I was loving these students without requiring anything of them but with the intention of showing them God's love. It was not about them liking me more or about me convincing them to undertake an action plan of some kind. It was not about me. It was about God using me to let them know how much he loves them, and in the process, he changed my heart. I was no longer so inclined to be resentful of times when I set clear expectations that students did not meet. I held them accountable to their word and asked them what happened, but it was a not punitive conversation and I didn't feel wronged by them.

God taught me to love first, so I can be in the right place to ask questions.

A New Kind of Gathering -- Encounter

So we used to refer to our weekly (or every two week) community gathering space as "large group." This title had some drawbacks:

• No clues as to what the gathering is about or who is invited
                 (Is Jesus invited? I don't know. Is he large?)
• Sociological nature of the name has generic/static connotations
                 (Does this nondescript group change or is it stuck forever in ambiguous largeness?)
• Not especially welcoming to new folks, and taken for granted by members
                  (Why do we do this again? What are we hoping for in this space?)

At the start of the semester, our fellowship (in various settings) voted on the new name, Encounter. Encounter is meant to be a place where we encounter God, and God encounters us. We've experienced the reality that encounters with God transform our thinking, feeling, and acting. We can expect God to move because he is active and engaged and because he goes out of his way to be accessible to us in our limited frailty.

As we have been exploring this new space, we've had different kinds of Encounters. Our first was a talk series on "What Comes First?"

We also have had two Prayer Encounters -- one focused on intercession, and one focused on prayer ministry.

It's still a bit experimental week-to-week, but it has definitely been a space for our community to gather around Jesus, renew our minds, receive unconditionally accepting love from God, and respond. May God continue to Encounter Cal Christian Fellowship!

Receiving Grace in the Midst of Self-Centeredness

So I thought that throwing up in front of people was the most shameful thing that would happen to me all summer. [If you haven't heard about this, read here!] Turns out it was only the most externally shameful thing that happened.

All summer long, I wrestled (and continue to wrestle) with my self-centeredness, particularly when I am experiencing a strong negative emotion such as anger, fear, or sadness. This struggle happens all the time, and those who know me well know my tendency to withdraw and focus on it by myself, but at BayUP there's not a lot of space or time to be alone, and I was not always willing/able to articulate the space I needed. Thus, I began to feel trapped and saw others (students, staff, innocent bystanders) as agents of my captivity. I resented the people around me for being too loud, or not speaking up enough, or making my life more challenging by asking questions, as though they had nothing better to do than to absorb my time and irritate me with trivialities.

Ah, yes. The noble plight of the introvert.



Even though I knew that everyone was actively processing, projecting, or fleeing from their own issues--same as me, so we're all in the same boat--it was challenging to maintain that perspective in the swirl of my own reactions and resist the tendency to blame others for how I felt when I was around them. I'd be thinking thoughts like: "Their inside jokes make me feel like an outsider; therefore, I am justified in blaming them for my sadness and assuming they don't want me around". I experienced the poison of my pride--I don't want to ask the questions that would help me to understand this person or situation better, because then I have to forfeit my right to be a victim, which is the only thing keeping my vulnerability contained. I know I have a choice to open up or shut down, and I choose the distorted sense of control I feel when I shut down.

But what happens if I choose out of this pattern? What other choices are available to me?

When I experience God as the one who draws near to me in my pain--the one who is neither indifferent nor overwhelmed, but wholly present with me--I can look without judgment on my emotions and know that my identity isn't defined by whatever I'm experiencing. That makes just enough space to take a breath, refrain from blaming everyone within my field of vision, and let truth illuminate the way forward.

For me, the way forward was acknowledging that I had let my own emotional responses cloud my ability to engage with the frequent injustices occurring in Oakland. In order to that, I had to be willing to say I had made a mistake rather than justifying my mistake by pointing to what others had done. After that, there was a time for me to apologize for the harm I had done to multiple individuals. And after that, I listened to others share about how my actions affected them and I owned the consequences.

The only one who could have convinced me to lower my shields instead of running away was Jesus. He encouraged me that the truth would set me free, and moreover he made it clear that it was what he wanted. Because I have made the choice to live under his leadership, he was giving me the opportunity to affirm that choice by obeying his voice. It wasn't magical or heroic what I did--it was simply me following through on promises I made, and that follow-through allowed me to see what God can do with submitted hearts.

He redeems the broken trust and makes the relationships even more secure, grace-filled, and loving than they were before. This reality is what gives me hope. Someone much bigger and better than me is guiding me and will not fail to turn my mistakes into blessing when I acknowledge them before him.

Pre-BayUP Prayer Update

Hello dear friends and family,

I write to you on the eve of the Bay Area Urban Project 2014! I've been in our staff orientation for the past three days, which has been full of its own God-moments and preparation for the next six weeks. Let me share a couple:

Our first day, Monday, we went on a food tour of Oakland. Unfortunately, somewhere between the Ethiopian food and the Korean seafood pancake, I picked up some kind of funky bug. By the time we got to our Vietnamese-French dinner, I was feeling queasy, and though I tried to make it to the bathroom in time, I ended up emptying the contents of my stomach on the dinner table. (I KNOW, RIGHT?? It's like the textbook example of "most embarrassing moment"!)

Why do I tell you this? Because God used it to bring us together as a staff team and to remind me that I don't have to pretend to have things under control. It was super shameful in the moment--I barely knew any of my teammates, so this was their first impression of me. And afterwards during that night, I was just super tired and not really able to meaningfully interact. But it paved the way for us as a team to be real with our tension, confusion, and inadequacy. Now we laugh about it: "That was the moment we became family--when Estelle vomited on the dinner table and all the pretense was gone."

I'm grateful for this lesson so early on in the program because I am tempted to evaluate myself by how well I perform and by how others perceive me. God, in his mercy, humbles me to realize that it's not my fake competency that he desires, but my very real, very obvious mess. It's also so helpful to be surrounded by people around whom I can drop the facade of control and just be vulnerably human.

If you are a person of prayer, please pray that the other staff and I would remain humble and centered in God's plans for the summer (not our own)!

(photo taken at dinner, minutes before my... erm ... episode)

Today, we took a prayer walk around the different work sites we'll be at this summer. I will be volunteering at College Track, an amazing organization that commits to first generation students for eight years (from the beginning of high school through their college graduation).

One of the main hopes at College Track is to produce students with GRIT-- guts, resilience, integrity and tenacity. They realize that students need more than just external resources to make it through the challenges that face them; they need internal guidance and strength, which is built through daily, mundane decisions that add up over time. This also is the process of discipleship--Jesus forming his followers into people who recognize the present moment is an opportunity to choose to say yes.

Please pray that our BayUP students are able to develop GRIT like the College Track students they will be teaching!

​

If you'd like to continue to stay updated on the adventures of our team, please visit our blog at calteambayup.wordpress.com. 

Thank you so much for your support, love and prayers! This experience would not be possible without you, and I am so grateful for your influence in my life.

Visual Journey through the year

http://prezi.com/wzzqvdfbvaes/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

I created a visual presentation of our community's journey this year on Prezi that I'd like to share with you. When I walked through this journey with our students, I paired it with the spiritual discipline of the Examen, the regular practice of which has helped many Christians recognize the presence of God in the good, difficult, and mundane events of their lives. 

Afterwards, we responded with a post-it note activity so our community could see the ebb and flow of joy and sorrow over the course of the year. Each person wrote on three post-its: green for a meaningful, life-giving event; pink for a confusing, painful situation; and blue for a gift/good thing we are grateful for. Reading over these responses, I could see that God had been gracious in the midst of trials. I also noticed that our post-its together created a kind of balance at each point in the year--not everyone individually suffered or rejoiced at the same time, but we were a body together in the midst of those unpredictable waves.

I am so thankful that God made community to encourage, challenge, and resource us for all seasons. This picture of teamwork and mutual concern invites us to experience God's intention for relationships.

Asian American Focus Group Wins Video Contest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugsw2_7ttuE

Our Asian American Focus Group was recently invited by Oakland Asian Community Center to enter a video for their context highlighting Asian Pacific Islander narratives (#APIvoices). The opportunity to participate in spaces outside of a Christian context excited us, so we decided to go for it! 

We pulled this video together (with help from a former CCF staff, Nate Lee, who lent us his spoken word piece) in a week! We actually won the Juried Award for the contest, which means that the judges (Terry Park of Hyphen Magazine, YouTube artist Jason Chu, and Angela Pang of AsianWeek Foundation) chose our video as their favorite. To see their shout-outs, and the other video that was chosen, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cjLqO9hj_o&feature=youtu.be

The entire undertaking brought our focus group closer together as well as established tighter bonds with the broader API community at Cal and in the area. We are so grateful for God's hand in all of this, knowing that the way things came together so well was a blessing.

Check out this photo we took with YouTube star AM Kidd when we attended OACC's Rhythms and Sounds show:

(it's nice that we had specially labeled chairs, too!)

Last Mark Study of the semester!

What a great semester of diving deep into the gospel of Mark. I am so grateful for the way Jesus showed up in our group. Sometimes, I saw Jesus in big, obvious ways, such as when our one international student shared how much he appreciated the Mark study community and how he could see God's hand in his time at Cal, teaching him to humble himself so that he could return to his home country with a spirit of love and generosity.

Other times, the work of Jesus felt invisible as we plowed through stories without coming to any firm conclusions as a group. I knew that it takes time to build the skills of asking textually based questions and identifying the core tensions of a passage, but I wondered if we as teachers should be pushing harder or backing off of the correctives. I wrestled with Jesus myself in the process. Then, as we invited students to reflect on what the stories have shown them, I read this student's response:

What I learned through Mark Study was to be curious and ask ... To not be fearful of the future and what it may bring, for when I am afraid is when I do not ask ... 
I should just ask him, whether to get rid of the fears that paralyze or the daily issues that I deal with daily. I should ask humbly of my Lord and he will be compassionate. Just as he was to the woman with bleeding, the man whose daughter died, and the paralyzed who he healed. It is by approaching God that I can find him and be healed.

Praise God for opening pathways into places of struggle for students and pouring His grace and love in. I am blessed that I get to see students making new, bolder choices as a result of experiencing Jesus in this seminar.

"Estelle, whatcha up to this summer?"

I'm staffing BayUP!

Since 1993, Bay Area Urban Project, sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, has been bringing college students to urban cities in the Bay Area to witness and partner in the Lord's sacred work among the urban poor. Over the course of six weeks, students live, learn, and work in the city of Oakland. In addition to 100 hours of service learning with local grassroots agencies, students participate in intensive weekly seminars/training - learning, praying, analyzing, and influencing systems (education, immigration, criminal justice, human trafficking, socio-ecology) through our Christian lens.  Students are equipped to engage the brokenness of the systems on a personal, interpersonal, and systemic level.  Our prayer is to raise up agents of shalom, committed to a constant journey towards wholeness that requires persistent efforts at personal, societal, and structural level.

  Our Vision

• Mutual Conversion as a Paradigm for Witness - opportunities for all parties to experience major paradigm shift
• Prayerful Activism as a Paradigm for Seeking Justice - marriage of intercession/lamentation and social activism
• Prophetic Presence as a Paradigm for Urban Ministry - prophetic posture of being, learning and speaking shalom in partnership with communities in the city

for more info, visit https://sites.google.com/site/bayareaurbanproject/

Transcript of my first talk--April 3, 2014

Tonight, I feel really honored to be in this room with y'all as fellow disciples of Jesus. And if you're not a follower of Jesus, I'm really glad you're here. This is a space where we want to learn from each other and from God.

So I have this task of addressing the topic of "walking humbly with your God," and that's actually something I continually struggle with, and will probably struggle with for my whole life, so while it might be tempting to see me standing up here in front of everyone as a cue that I must know what I'm talking about, I see this time tonight more as a conversation I'm having with Jesus, and I'm inviting you to be involved in that conversation. To listen, to be present, to have your own reactions, to take from it whatever God wants to speak to you. Sound ok?

Ok, so I'm asking Jesus, "What do you want to communicate to us, to show us tonight?"

Jesus goes, "Well, why not start by looking at the Micah 6:8 verse? It's short, so you can really get into the different nuances of the verse." I enjoy sifting through the different meanings of words and savoring their different connotations, so I like his advice. We'll start by looking at the verse:

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Jesus asks, "What words and phrases stand out to you in that verse?"

I'm reminded of what Erica said about the phrase "required of" (for those of you who were at the first large group of the semester). She talked about how if you're an EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) major, coding is required of you; it's in your nature. Or how if you're a musician, practicing your ear and your skills is required of you, because it's in your nature. Or if you're an English major, doing close readings and tracking the origins of words (also known as their etymologies) is required of you. So I'm remembering, ok this verse has to do with the essence of being human. What does the Lord require of you? Something to do with who we are as humans.

Jesus goes, "Yeah. Walking humbly with God is something that's built into you as a human creature. Into your human nature."

For me, I'm thinking, "Built into my human nature, ok. But... wait. I know that I'm not naturally humble. At Urbana '12 (a student missions conference that InterVarsity holds every 3 years), I was on the prayer ministry team, and I was also on staff, and so on my nametag, which was in this fancy, heavy-duty plastic thing with a really cool lanyard, I had a ribbon for being on InterVarsity staff, and it was black, and a ribbon for being on the prayer ministry team, and it was red. And that small amount of responsibility and status actually went to my head really quickly. If you've been to Urbana, you know that it's so crowded--there's like, what, 15,000 people--some huge crowd of people. And in the midst of that crowd, I'm like, "But I'm special. Because I'm on InterVarsity staff. And I'm on the prayer team." So when I was walking in a crowd I was thinking, "People should just get out of the way, because I need to go pray for people, because that's SO important!" I'm feeling pretty self-important, and Jesus reminded me, "Hey, what are you doing? This is a conference about me, and people in the world, and your role matters, but it's definitely not the whole conference."

Jesus goes, "I'm glad that you remember that experience with such clarity, because it helps you differentiate between the moments of truly being human, and moments when you lose touch with the truth. Moments when you try to be more than human. That's when you start condemning others, or looking down on yourself. It's good to correctly identify that as pride, and not humility."

"So, being judgmental of other people and condemning myself...that's not the path to humility? I sort of feel like it should be."

Jesus says, "Where does that message come from? Does that come from me?"

Me: “Well … you do say some intense things to people, Jesus. Like, ‘O wicked and perverse generation! How long must I put up with you?’ But you also say things like, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ and ‘my daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace’ and ‘my son, your sins are forgiven’. So I guess you’re not as interested in accusing me as I am interested in accusing myself.”

Jesus: “It’s good to hear you say that. It’s not fun when I am misunderstood, even by my own followers, as a harsh taskmaster with impossibly high expectations. I don’t play that game of high-status/low-status, but others are constantly trying to loop me into it and get me on their side. How would you describe how I interact with you, if not to accuse?”

Me: “Micah 6:8 says that God has shown me, a mortal, what is good; and I remember Erica saying that for us, the showing part is in the life you lived, Jesus. You showed us what good really looks like. And instead of trying to play the victim, and say, ‘How do I get this demanding God off my back?--how can I placate him with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?’ you move me toward seeing the good that is available to me in my life. And you free me to experience that goodness.”

Jesus: “Where in your life, Estelle, do you need to be freed to experience more good?”

Me: “Well, I’ve been trying to change my lifestyle to a healthier one. I am trying to exercise or at least walk every day. I flirt with the idea of eating more vegetables and less meat. I know I could plan ahead better so that I’m not rushing out the door grabbing the fastest food option available (which often means sugars and carbs). But I am half-hearted about it because I like being able to eat tasty things whenever I feel like it--like when I walk past Sheng Kee bakery, I can just go in there, get a huge loaf of taro bread, and just start chowing down. I want to preserve my right to do that, at any moment, whenever the mood strikes. But then, I somehow get to the end of the day and realize, 'I didn't stick to this value at all.' But how do I change? I know my body isn’t a tool that I get to use however I want; it’s a temple where you choose to dwell. But beyond knowing that in my head, it has to filter into the things I tell myself on a daily basis and the choices I make. Those choices tend to say, ‘it’s not a big deal what I put into my body--at least it’s not as big of a deal as feeling emotional release or making sure I get someplace on time.’ And at the end of it, I just feel like a failure, so much so that I don’t want to even think about how I’m doing so many things wrong.”

Jesus: “It is hard for you, Estelle, to imagine what freedom looks like in this area. You are quite convinced that your body is both a means to experience fleeting pleasure and a source of constant shame. You are disappointed with it. You’d rather not be bothered with loving it since you don’t respect it. But I see your body as good. Are you willing to surrender your old way of viewing your body and discover the good purpose for which I gave it to you?”

Sidenote: Jesus is great at asking those questions that cut to the heart of the matter. I like to think of myself as complex and deep; having multiple motivations for things; I have so many layers. And Jesus has this way of putting things so plainly, in a way that's honestly very offensive to my ego. He doesn't oversimplify, but he reveals that my reluctance is generally more basic than I expect.

Me: “So what you’re saying is, I am truly stuck until I give over my right to define what is ‘good’ for my body and let you show me what good really looks like.”

Jesus: “What if you acknowledged that your body obeys the law of sowing and reaping--if you sow discipline, you will reap freedom, and if you sow indulgence, you will reap dissatisfaction (and probably high cholesterol)? Instead of trying to justify eating Sheng Kee all day every day, choose to take that choice away from yourself and commit to a food plan that doesn't have room for improvising based on mood."

Me: “Ah, that's so logical. Ugh. It’s true that I do expend a lot of mental energy justifying my choices on complex grids that weigh costs and benefits; and in so doing, create enough background noise that I can avoid hearing things like this that are so direct and difficult to hear. I ‘need’ this food/drink right now to stay awake. Or, I might swing to the other extreme by saying, I’m not worth the energy it takes to love myself well by carving out time to exercise, eat properly. And when I inevitably mess up, I reinforce the cycle of blaming, shaming, and using negative feelings to get myself to do better.”

Jesus: “It is good to be as truthful as possible when evaluating your own habits. You don’t have to attach judgment to true statements. Truth sounds like, ‘Today I ate three chocolate cheesecakes, pizza, garlic fries, chicken wings, and ice cream.’ It doesn’t have to become a validation or rejection of your character.”

Me: "But isn't it pathetic and sad that I can't exert control over my appetite? Don't I have to believe that?"

Jesus: "Actually, being deficient in self-control reflects only that you are a young human being. It actually is an invitation to the process of maturing. This is a process that every human being undergoes. The ones who have been faithful to the process for a long time are certainly more mature than those who are just starting, but that does not make them intrinsically more worthy."

Me: "So, with the people I admire, if it's not their talents, gifts, skills, achievements that makes them worthy, then what does? Where does their worth come from?"

Jesus: "Their worth comes from how loved they are. Not something that has any relation to their ability, skills, resume, even how Christian they are. My Father loves them more than they could ever deserve. He loved me before I ever did any miracles. He loves you, too. Not for what you can do for him: you only exist because he sustains you. He loves you because he is love."

Me: "So it is God's unconditional love for me that actually gives me my worth, and humbles me because it isn't about how I achieved anything; I didn't do anything to get God interested in me. Judging myself is choosing to reject God's love and make me the judge instead of God. But if I accept that I don't deserve to be loved, where do I get my motivation to try to do anything?"

Jesus: "I'm so glad you asked, because that is the best part. You live for and work for joy. You endure all things for the sake of joy. For the joy set before me, I endured the shame and scorn of crucifixion, of being falsely accused of being a criminal, being executed, and enduring humiliation in that process. But it was for the joy that was set before me that I chose that. It was worth it. Once you taste eternal joy, you no longer want to settle for the meager fleeting pleasures that achieving things for your own advantage brings. You are free to live for what is most beautiful."

Me: "When I'm honest with myself, that is what I really want. It's why I moved to Berkeley to staff here. It's why I am staffing BayUP this summer, even though I am honestly very afraid to do it."

Jesus: "Your honest confessions of your fears and limitations allows my work in your heart to be made visible to your students and co-workers, to your donors, to the campus. Just as the cracks in a broken vase allow the light to come in, your imperfections make space for my light to be displayed. Now ask these students to take courage from my love for them and confront their own weaknesses for the sake of joy."

So we're going to take a few minutes on our own with Jesus. You just heard a conversation similar to many conversations I have with Jesus about things I don't like or understand. We're making space for you to be in that place with Jesus and think about: are there places that I'm stuck in, or weaknesses that I keep facing and feel bigger than what I can do about them? This can be something chronic, mental health, physical health, a relationship, or maybe a series of relationships, like your family? It could be your relationship with God, or with church, or with InterVarsity, or any number of things. But take this space to consider, what is that area that causes me shame? What is that area that I feel stuck in and unable or unwilling to do anything about? We'll reflect on that for about six minutes and as God leads you, consider, what is the invitation to joy that he offers you in that difficulty?

What does it mean to know we are Made Well?

This year's theme for our Asian Pacific American (APA) InterVarsity conference was Made Well. Many Christian APA students struggle to find meaning and purpose in their ethnic heritage, whether their families have lived in this land for many generations or have recently arrived. 

Since the term "APA" encompasses a diverse range of experiences, the conference also aimed at expanding our definition of who is in our APA family (Southeast Asian, South Asian, Islander, etc.) and creating spaces for underrepresented narratives to be shared and valued.

What did that look like, you ask?

As each person arrived at the conference, they were invited to have their picture taken with a sign saying "Made Well." 

Then we added their photo to the wall collage!

Each person also reflected on the following questions:

What do you like best about your cultural or ethnic heritage?

Answers pictured:

honor/respect; large families are fun; the making of food, bomb food; hospitality and respect for elderly; love in our actions; Dat Korean BBQ all day, every day; family loyalty; favorite thing? The FOOD!; Self-Sacrifice; Korean food and pop culture

What are some fears and insecurities about who you are?

Answers:

any emotion is dangerous; being overweight; not manly enough; not good enough; parents control too much of life; losing my ethnic culture/language; pressure to be successful; grades; failure; my voice is not important; feel less worth when I'm alone

The weekend's speaker, Jonathan Tran, shared his experience as a Vietnamese immigrant whose family struggled financially in the United States. He invited those of us with different stories (parents who came over for education, not to escape war and poverty) to embrace our own struggles as well as those of others. He reminded us that our experiences being an immigrant people are what enable God to use us fully in this world, pointing us to God's work through Moses with the Israelites in the desert.

He also called attention to the ways we are sorely tempted to "settle" -- to try to make a permanent home in a land we are journeying through -- by following various scripts that the world offers. We try to escape the discomfort of being caught between multiple worlds: am I Asian enough if I don't speak the language? am I American enough if I don't constantly talk and assert myself? Maybe if we acquire enough money, familial approval and cultural fluency, we'll finally feel at home.

On the other hand, if we stay with the tension of not fitting in, we could be called into the restorative work God is doing with others who are not welcomed into the social structure of this country because of class, race, or simply the perception that they pose a threat.

I appreciated this word because it made space for there to be pain and confusion in our journey--in fact, this very pain and confusion would serve to shape us into the blessing God intended us to be! It's very counter-intuitive to the narrative of "I suffered so that you, my child, could experience opportunity and never suffer" but I am constantly reminded:

"As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55:9

Made Well -- InterVarsity's Asian Pacific American Conference

Made Well | APA 2014 Recap from David Luoh on Vimeo.

Discipleship Cohort Photoshoot

We started off the semester with a two-day conference for the leaders. The first morning we spent in solitude and silence, walking around the campus before it got crazy busy and full. Then we came back together and sang together on Memorial Glade!

Soaring Upward on Thermals

Spring Semester is here!

In the Kingdom of God at UC Berkeley, students and staff alike are learning a new way of participating in what God is doing. It looks like this:

http://www.3sigma.com/prisoners-of-our-own-device/

We are learning to identify the spiritual thermals (rising columns of warm air) that already exist all around us and to soar with them to new heights. Instead of madly flapping our wings (read: recipe for burnout) in an attempt to gain altitude, we're taking a lesson from the birds God has created and trusting that when we do less, He does more.

Since we are people, not birds, what does this look like?

1. Communal prayer is happening more often! We have two weekly student-led prayer times, asking God to show us what He's up to in the lives of our friends, classmates, focus groups, and the world.
2. We are opening up more about our struggles. It takes a lot of faith for students to put down their polished masks and trust that it is actually good for our community and for our relationships with God to come clean about what's underneath: the darker stuff that goes largely unacknowledged by a highly competitive campus environment.
3. We are taking to heart what God tells us and making new choices. For many of the students, this looks like pursuing something that they are deadly afraid to fail at because it actually matters to them, like music and writing for some of our Electrical Engineering Computer Science (EECS) folks. For others, it looks like finally acknowledging workaholism is tied to pride in one's performance and trusting that letting go of some units is actually a faithful and God-honoring choice.

Wow! Praise God for the ways that He's engaging our whole community in this dynamic shift. It's not a brand-new concept, but there's a newness of hope and joy that I'm seeing each day and in each interaction with students. Please join me in celebrating and praying for more release of God's gifts within these beautiful sons and daughters!

My Testimony

My name is Estelle, and I want to give glory to God. 

2013 was a big year for me. In March, I made a watershed career/life decision and transferred from working at an InterVarsity chapter at Stanford to staffing the multiethnic chapter at Cal. God had already called me to the mission field, specifically to cross-cultural contexts in which I would be the least comfortable so that I would have the most opportunity to see Him use me for the kingdom. I saw the move to Cal as a step in the direction of that calling, a step that would take me out of the known, safe environment I'd been calling home for seven years and into new territory to try my wings.

Calling the move "uncomfortable" is a whopping understatement. Without deep friendships waiting for me in the East Bay, I felt incredibly lonely and turned to my work to fill that void. Unfortunately, staff work is notoriously unstructured and difficult to evaluate, so while I became very anxious about my performance and proving myself to be a good staff, I actually had very few concrete measures to go by. After a few weeks of escalating fear, I fell headlong into a depressive episode that made it difficult to remember why I had moved, what was good about my being at Cal, and whether God was a good, loving provider.

In this terrible time, the core narrative that developed was, "God must see this pain, and He must have anticipated it, but He allowed it. Not only that, but it's at such an extreme point that I am considering leaving Cal before I've been here a full month. He must want me to solve this myself, so I can't count on His help. I am completely alone."

With the severity of this depression, I felt as though whatever safety net I had foolishly expected to be there was absent. I could not interpret for myself why this was happening, let alone for other people, so meeting new people felt even more challenging. I wanted to be the "me" I had been at Stanford, but I was instead this frightened, lost, and helpless version of myself that was looking to other people for direction. This felt particularly undesirable in the realm of ministry where I am seen as a leader, responsible for bringing order and guidance. When it came to listening to God, I could not hear his response, however much I cried out to him. I remember praying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner" for an hour straight, sobbing in the midst of not knowing what was happening or why. I did not know what to do.

I see this as a moment of wilderness. In fact, the passage from Deuteronomy 8 was prophesied over me by someone at Stanford in the spring. I saw scorpions and snakes, I felt thirsty and hungry, I lacked direction and wondered if it was a good thing to have left Egypt. What if I had just made up this "calling" and now I was paying for my mistake? If that was the case, how would I ever make a big decision again? My confidence in myself was shot, and no one could really speak that truth over me because they didn't know me as well.

When I think back to the fall, I see more than just the narrative my fear painted for me. In fact, just as the Israelites' shoes did not wear out and their feet did not swell for forty years, I ended up in the care of a psychologist who was able to help me. She pointed me in the direction of some new concepts: self-compassion, mindfulness, ephemerality (thoughts and emotions don't last forever), and how Jesus encounters me not solely in words, but also through physical gestures (hugs). Though I could not always depend on people to know what I needed, people asked me what they could do. I had a friend who hugged me for probably 20 minutes while I just cried into her shoulder. My supervisor did what he could to help me enter in at a gradual pace and affirmed that he wanted to see me thrive in the long term.

I came face-to-face with my own fragility, and it overwhelmed all my attempts to get around it or ignore it. As I wrestled with what it meant to potentially have a chronic mental illness, I realized that my vulnerability would not be assuaged by a poultice of words, but only when bathed in tangibly expressed love would it be transformed into something that connects, rather than disconnects, me to God and to others made in His image.

It was my pride that died, painfully nailed to a cross of shame.

It was my joy that He revived, a joy that encompasses the pain that underlies all human experience.