Steven & Jamie Chang
Steven
I grew up around LA and good food, and no matter how much you hate on them, loyalty to LA sports teams runs deep. (It’s there, I know it! You love the Lakers!)
As a kid, I pushed myself to live up to the high and lofty standards of Christianity and Chinese culture. I loved the values they stood for: piety and self-sacrifice on one hand, and ambition, honor, and family on the other. However, as life would have it, I soon realized that what drove me, more than anything, was an unyielding love of self, to ultimately put myself before the people and the things I loved.
I was taken aback and caught off guard by this self-realization. But while I was disoriented, I learned something unexpected. I learned that God had always known this about me and yet still loved me. So He came in the person of Jesus, and in the ultimate act of love, died for me, so that I could be made right - with Him, with others, and with myself - and finally experience life as He intended it. I knew when I heard this that that’s what I wanted, and that’s what I needed. I needed Jesus to be the new center of my life.
Since then, it’s been quite the adventure! God led me to Gracepoint Berkeley in college, where I fell in love with the Acts 2 church and doing college ministry with lifelong friends. I got married, had a kid, and then moved out to Philly with some of those lifelong friends to start a church and reach students at Drexel. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m hopeful and excited for what God has in store for us in Philly!
Jamie
I was born in Baton Rouge, moved to Chapel Hill, almost landed in Minneapolis, but instead grew up in Taipei. There, I went to a Catholic International School, where I was drawn to the sacred - but taking the Christian stuff seriously at school wasn’t a thing other kids did, so I tried to play it cool.
When I was 16, I moved to California with my sister, who was starting at UC Irvine as a freshman. We lived in a small one-bedroom apartment and in two weeks, learned how to cook, clean, do laundry, and live on our own. (Props to my sister; I don’t know how she did it!) With the move, I felt like I went from having everything to losing everything overnight -- my family, my eight pets, friends, good grades, and more. In my teenage angst, I zoomed out and thought about how the same thing would just happen when I died. I would lose everything again. What’s the point to life then? I could have easily plunged into an existential crisis, but instead I busied myself and tried not to think about it much. Yet, I could never quite rid myself of this gnawing sense that there has to be more to life.
The rest of high school went by with little worth mentioning. However, in college, God had a very different plan for me. I met a group of Christians who actually tried to live out what they believed. What made them different was the way they related with each other, treating each other like family and with love. I found a home away from home. But more importantly, through them I met Jesus and learned that I have an eternal home with Jesus, and that death is not the end.
My hope is that every college student would be able to use their four years at college to thoughtfully and courageously consider the why of life, and to discover that they don’t have to end up in an existential crisis, but can find hope in Jesus.