Oh Epic.

You will always have a little piece of my heart. Despite everything and anything, Epic will always be a reason to seek God’s grace and guidance in the unfamiliar territory of leading an Asian American Christian community in a majority secular and majority-Caucasian campus.



I found Epic my freshman year. A flyer posted on the board in our central dorm building caught my eye – Asian American bible study. I remember how amazed and delighted I was to find it, and how eagerly I went that fateful Sunday afternoon. I walked into the small room, with less than 10 people sitting around a coffee table in the student union, and then proceeded to say nothing for the first several weeks I was there.

In all honesty, I went to Epic every week because I needed a “weekly dose of yellow”. Granted at that point, I had found a comfortable spiritual home with the Navigators, but I missed the comfort of the Asian American culture and my Asian American friends, and wanted some kind of that here in Indiana. And in all honesty, I stayed because I wanted their continued company. I was quite a lonely child my freshman year, and Epic provided just one more night a week where I wasn’t lonely, regardless of how ‘spiritually nourishing’ it was.

But God grew my heart for the Asian American body, and specifically the Asian Americans here at IU. I saw a group of people who were lost in their faith. And by lost I mean without strong direction, and without an urgency to move forward. I realized the identities of “Asian American” and “Christian”, were not one in the same, and being Asian American didn’t mean you were a strong Christian. It sounds ridiculous, and it was. But when I discovered the passion for Christ in the Navs, I knew I wanted to grow in Epic that same spirit – a love for Christ that transformed hearts and sought to transform others’.

And so it began.

I’m crazy, I’m certain.

We’re fighting a war, and a whole lot of odds in doing so.
IU is roughly 6.0% Asian American, up from 4.8% my freshman year. And you can only guess what fraction are Christian. Not only that, the AA’s have grown up in an entirely different culture – one that is predominantly Caucasian. They have less desire for things of ‘Asian-American Interest’, and the struggles most prevalent to the AA’s of Texas or California or other areas with larger Asian populations are not as relevant.

So where do you go from there?
What niche am I serving? Is there a niche?
How are we glorifying God and extending His kingdom?

Questions of the every day.
So then, why Asian Americans? Why here?

I think regardless of which ‘version’ of Asian American culture we grew up in, we still share similarities. Similarities that stem from having immigrant parents, from wanting to do well academically or extracurricular-ly. We bond over food and long conversations that may or may not end in lively debate. We struggle with letting go of control, with pride, with submitting before God. We ask questions – lots and lots of questions. Questions that we seek answers to, questions that beg for discussion and multiple perspectives. Questions on life, on eternity, on Christianity.

And because of that, I find that this group is still unreached in a lot of ways.

I’m not good at the questions – in fact I’m terrible. I don’t know what to ask, nor how to answer. But I know that these are questions that need to be asked, and aren’t being discussed elsewhere. And so I dearly pray that God is revealing Himself through all this.

I believe God’s moving at IU and in the Asian American body of believers. Whether or not Epic as a group stands in the years following my and the senior’s leave, is less important. I so sincerely hope that Epic can continue to be a place for Asian Americans (and all others) looking for a loving and Christian community far from home; a place that is open for discussion, safe for our struggles, and encouraging through everything. As long as an ‘Asian American’ subculture exists, there is a place and a value in contextualized ministries. And so I pray that we might continue to seek and reach this body with undying energy, for there is work to be done. But ultimately the goal is not a body of Asian American Christians, but a united body of Christians.

02.24.17