Jen Chen, one of my oldest friends!

My August prayer letter is now live! (right click to download and read): http://www.stephcheng.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/prayer_august10.pdf

I had a great time catching up with Jen Chen, who I’ve actually known since high school We also both attended UC Davis from ‘03-’07 and were involved in the Epic movement there. It’s been so fun to grow and laugh and share life together.

Please pray specifically for her and encourage her in her personal walk and ministry!:

Praise:

- Praise God that I got to take part in a women’s Bible study through Central Peninsula Church (CPC) in Foster City this past year where I was able to learn, grow and mature in my faith as we met weekly on Wednesday nights. It was also an amazing experience going through Tim Keller’s Prodigal God at CPC’s community group with Steph this past six-weeks. The best part was meeting up with Steph for dinner beforehand or for late night snack afterward to reflect on the study that night

Prayer requests:

- Pray for discernment, and that I continue to thirst for God and glorify him in all that I do.

- I’ve been a procrastinator all my life. Pray for diligence in all areas of my life, and that I get to work on time.

- Pray that God will continue to work in the hearts of three dear friends who do not yet know God personally. They have expressed their curiosities about Christianity, and I yearn for the day that they may know God personally.

Central Peninsula Church 20's magazine, issue 2

I really love how my church, Central Peninsula Church in Foster City, CA, loves, supports and engages the Bay Area. Our upcoming churchwide service project, Love Works, will use one Sunday this month to send the entire congregation out to local homeless shelters, soup kitchens, elementary schools, community centers and public recreation areas to serve our community. I’m so excited for the opportunity to do real good among our neighbors (think about it, what if this were one Sunday a month?!).

Another project that specifically my 20s group is involved with is the brainchild of our pastor, Justin Buzzard – a quarterly magazine where Bay Area twentysomethings can write and reflect on current events, stories of heartbreak and redemption, and faithful living in a place where few voices are regularly heard worshipping God even as we interact with the world.

Guess who got to reflect on the importance of community in this next issue, debuting Thursday?

I’m pretty excited. I love to write (mostly because I like to talk ) but have been going through a season of relative ’silence’ as I learn to better hear, interpret and meditate God and other people. This is my first longform piece of writing since summer and I’m so grateful to be able to contribute somehow. Part of the core of this article, on the relationship between a missional community and spiritual growth, came from reflections by UC Davis Epic staff member Mike Aalseth, and the rest a growing conviction for some time the words of John in 1 John 4: “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” and the prayer of Jesus just before he went to the cross that we would be one, just as he and the Father are one, so that the world would know for certain that Jesus was sent by God to love us till death.

I’ll put up a paragraph now and then post the rest of the article on Thursday. You can preview (and order) the issue here!

Let’s face it, real relationships from all walks of life are crucial to our growth, wholeness and joy. This is by no small part a function of my friendships being as different as my friends are. We’ll always have the kinds of friends who are better listeners, some who are better in times of crisis, and others who will drop everything to adventure with us on little advance notice. In fact, many of the relationships in my life have drawn out unique and better parts of me I hadn’t previously known existed. I’m much more accepting of my own weaknesses and of the doubt that so closely clings now because I’ve seen my college roommate Annette wrestle openly and humbly with a God beyond children’s storybook fables, and I’m slower to anger and quicker to love because my coworker Nich models what he believes before it ever comes out of his mouth. In short, God loves us each and all perfectly and he has designed a world suited for our every taste, but even when life was paradise it was “not good” for us to be alone. And now that we’re one family – now that we are literally blood-related – rescued and redeemed from ourselves, life is sweeter and more purposeful together.

me at cal state long beach!

May/ June 2010 – Summer Projects!

April 2010 – San Francisco Spring Break Trip

March 2010 – Southeast Asian Leadership Summit

February 2010 – Epic National Student & Staff Conferences

January 2010 – A Blessed New Year, A Blessed Calling

Fall 2009 – So I joined staff… what am I up to now?

Thank you for your continued prayers! I appreciate and am just in awe of what you all do so much. I am especially moved by teenagers who are giving a portion from their part time jobs to support me. Wow! What a testament to faithfulness. Please let me know how I can support and pray for you as well. I can’t wait to get back on campus!

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, let’s catch up! My email is steph.cheng@uscm.org

If you have been moved to give financially to help reach college students, here is the link for online giving: https://give.ccci.org/give/0599977

take care,

steph

This weekend is indeed where we’ll celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but it’s also one of my favorite weekends all year… our ministry’s student conferences! Some 500+ students will descend on San Francisco, CA (known as Epic West) and Philadelphia, PA (East) for our annual missions and vision conferences. (Epic Central, in Dallas, TX will be the first weekend of February.)

This year, themed “Hero,” and probably more like the dying NBC show than the Enrique Iglesias ballad, will be my seventh conference, which consists of talks, seminars and a day of outreach, and each year God has spoken another piece of His calling for me into my life. It’s a weekend where Asian American ministry is defined and refined within our college scope and sending opportunities via summer trips and year-long internships will be presented.

David Gaulton

This year Epic West is blessed to have Dr. Ken Fong leading us in teaching and sharing his heart! Please pray for him and our worship band, the David Gaulton band (pictured above), as well as our conference directors and other staff and students leading our time. Pray for traveling mercies for our students, from as far away as Hawaii and others who are driving long hours from Washington and Oregon and Southern California! I will be helping out with our Sunday Day of Outreach, where students can take what they’re learning from the preaching of God’s word as well as the training that they’ve received on their respective campuses out to love San Francisco – my favorite city. Please pray that many hearts would be turned to God and also for decent weather… so far it’s supposed to rain!

Will keep updating you all. It is a joy to partner with you! If you’re in the area, do come visit!!

steph

sigh... :0)

Merry Christmas wherever you are (all across the world as well)!!

and “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.” (2 cor 2:14) I am so grateful that God indeed sent Jesus and we can use this day to celebrate that he made a way for us to know him, and to be truly his, by grace through faith.

Thanks to hope that does not fail us, granted through endurance to our character, for his glory. He loves us and he is the king!

PS. (Newsletter in the mail tomorrow!)

(l-r: nich, adam, jaci, hsiang-en, me, larry)

Hi! Thanks for visiting my new site @ stephcheng.info.

This past summer I joined staff with the Epic Movement (the Asian-American ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) in Orange County after interning with them the past two years, and I am so excited to share what’s been going on with my life – namely, that I get to serve God and the thousands of college students of Southern California!

I have been blogging on a personal level since 2001 and hope I can write more regularly on my life and ministry, from fun little stories to big ideas and concepts that I’ve been learning as I enter this next stage of my life. My hope is to better connect with you! friends, family and supporters.

For now, please feel free to browse blog archives, check out pictures, and read more about what I’m up to. I hope to have everything up and running smoothly soon!

cheers,

steph

///

quick links for now:

> EpicMovement.com – Read more about Epic and our vision to see students’ lives transformed by the gospel!

> Epic West Coast Conference 2010 – January 15-18 (Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend) just outside of San Francisco, CA! This is pretty much my favorite weekend all year – ministries all over California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Hawaii and beyond come to worship God, hear the Word taught, laugh, dance and play and love this city (my hometown).

> Epic at UC Irvine’s Facebook page (requires login)

> Ministry updates and highlights from my teammate Whitney Chen, first year intern

> My Twitter account (microblogging) is here for smaller daily updates: youaresteph. let’s be friends!

favorite excerpt (new york magazine):

The signature Keller sermon is a mix of biblical scholarship, pop culture, and whatever might have caught his eye in The New York Review of Books or on Salon.com that week. The intellectual component is the key to winning over New Yorkers, he says. “When you communicate in a way that touches a person’s heart culturally, you get growth,” he says. “I come here, and people say, ‘Oh, look, Tim quotes The New Yorker and Nietzsche and talks about the existentialists. He’s an intellectual.’ Another way to put it is: ‘He’s showing me what Christianity would look like if I believed. Because I think like him, and even though I’m not sure I agree, it resonates.’ ” Using the author of The Antichrist to get across a Christian message is a neat trick, and I confess to Keller that an old cynical expression popped into my head: “Running with the hares, hunting with the hounds.” He doesn’t smile. “It’s not too deliberate, otherwise it does become an act—‘That’ll get the New Yorkers,’ ” he says. “You have to live here so you’re a lot like New Yorkers, you live the same life, and you have the same concerns.”

(thanks glennis!)

but even that’s a fine line (taking anything seriously) that we have trouble with.

how next shall we grow?

have you seen the nytimes columnist list of “100 things restaurant staffers should never do”? here’s part 1.

most of these are about being mindful, something i’ve thought a lot about since i read lauren winner’s “mudhouse sabbath” (basically, that as worshippers in God’s world, being “members of one another,” we are called to being mindful of each other and of everything that we experience – all come from and are meant to return to God). it’s interesting stuff, mostly for fine dining places… i like going out but i mostly try one course or take out a few things.

the ones that’ve stuck with me lately is “40. Never say, “Good choice,” implying that other choices are bad.” and “42. Do not compliment a guest’s attire or hairdo or makeup. You are insulting someone else.” and the resounding agreement that the commenters have.

i understand these guidelines are for a specific context – how to do a specific job well.

i just feel like… this is the kind of fear i had when i was in middle school.
maybe it is about being professional, but come on. are we really that self-centered that praise for another eats at us from a stranger?!

/ / /

all that to say… dj chuang looks like a very good listener, but that’s not the point here is it.

“The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears: ‘Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for you until you die,’ says the Lord God of hosts.” (isaiah 22:14)

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (galatians 2:20)

women etc

benson hines on college ministry:
gets me very excited for long term ministry

http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/01/28/missions-means-difficulty/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/02/11/big-idea-5-the-word-and-the-whys/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/02/12/cuz-we-should-or-cuz-its-obvious/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/02/24/big-idea-8-four-years-or-forty/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/02/25/for-a-lifetime/
http://exploringcollegeministry.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/specific-discipleship-for-your-nearly-grads/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/02/28/topics-for-beyond-the-graduation-grave/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/03/01/how-much-would-change/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/03/06/going-niche/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/03/07/what-only-we-can-do/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/03/18/for-the-budding-evaluator/
http://exploringcollegeministry.com/2009/03/21/an-evaluation-brainstorm/