Surprising Destinations——Jason Chen

When I was considering the move to Iowa City in 1967, several of my dear friends at Calvin Seminary in Michigan offered their kind advice, “Why do you want to go to Iowa? They are all farmers there, they will never accept you.” Little did they know that waiting for me in Iowa was a “Field of Dreams,” not to mention my beautiful wife, Donna. But by the grace of God, certainly not by my own doing, I came and remained here for more than half a century and counting.

​My assignment was to invite students from the Reformed background to join a Bible study organized under Inter-Varsity and assist in outreach to 800+ International students at the University of Iowa. The emphasis on personal discipleship and friendship evangelism proved effective which lead to a 3-year appointment as Inter-Varsity staff for western Iowa and living in Ames. But with the unexpected departure of the senior staff the following year, I returned to Iowa City, once again, to direct the ministries of the state’s three major universities.

​After 3 years as Inter-Varsity staff and exposure to various approaches in campus ministry, I launched the Geneva campus ministry in 1971 to complement the existing mainline and evangelical presence on campus. Trinity Christian Reformed Church in Iowa City became my calling church and staunchest ally and supporter. Generous financial support also came from Home Missions and Classis Pella (now Central Plains).

​A Sunday Worship was started in 1973, and Geneva Lecture Series was organized in 1976, bringing nationally-renowned Christian speakers to present campus-wide lectures and engage faculty and staff from diversity of disciplines in public dialogue. And in 1977, seeing the general lack of understanding the true meaning of community, Donna and I and our two sons, Jeremy and Jonathan (ages 7 and 3) moved out of our home and lived in community with students from all over the world including NW Iowa. Geneva House became a center for study, worship, evangelism, and service.

​The mood on campus changed dramatically in the late ‘70s and presented a new challenge for campus ministry. In 1982, Donna and I together with the Geneva Board made the difficult decision to return to a more traditional approach in student ministry. With the influx of Asian faculty and students, particularly ethnic Chinese to the university, a weekly Sunday afternoon worship for Chinese began in 1982, and a weekly Bible study and fellowship focusing on Reformed graduate students and their spouses was organized. And the International Bible Study Group which begun in the mid 70’s also grew rapidly with emphasis on student leadership and personal discipleship.

​In Spring 1983, I was encouraged by those involved to spend more time with the ministry to the Chinese until as much as 70% of my time was devoted to this important ministry. In January 1992, the Chinese Church of Iowa City was officially organized, and in Fall 1998, an evangelist from the Chinese Christian Reformed Church in San Francisco was called to be its pastor, thus allowing me to return to full-time campus ministry, once again, until my retirement in August 2005.

​Looking back to nearly 40 years of ministry in the “City of Love” forged by the partnership between Geneva campus ministry and the Chinese church, I am fully convinced that it was our faithful God who called the nearly 200 students to himself and be baptized; the many more who became professors and heads of departments in the colleges and universities in our nation; and the hundreds more who have returned to their home countries or scattered throughout these United States to serve God and His church in practically every sphere of society. To God alone be the glory.  

​Now, 17 years after my retirement in campus ministry, my love for the university has not diminished. I continue to maintain strong ties with longtime faculty friends and former students, and cultivate relationships with new students and professors. But it pains me to see the decline of interest in the pursuit of wisdom at the university I love. T. S. Eliot who saw the beginning of what we are now facing in 1934, raised the questions, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”  

​But the present crisis is unprecedented and the roots can be traced back to the various movements calling the status quo into question in the ‘60s, such as the Civil Rights Movement, free speech movement, women’s movement, and the sexual revolution. Author and social critic Os Guinness, explains the present crisis this way: Since the issues raised by the various movements were never truly resolved and continue to fester like gangrene until they spilled over into colleges and universities, the press and media, government agencies including the military and the high tech. Is there hope for us? And what is the role of the church?

​As Christians, we are always on the side of hope because God is in control of all things. And God is sovereign over history. But to meet that challenge, it is necessary not only to know what we believe and why but to live what we believe in a conscious and decisive way—nurturing our faith as a total life response to Jesus Christ. Allow me to share briefly what I believe are the unique challenges before us:  

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​Firstly, it is more important to know “whose we are” or “to whom we belong” than “what we know” or “what we own or possess.” Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago lament the fact that “We 21st century creatures no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. But what we own and possess fail to satisfy and our victories often turn to ashes.” That’s why today’s university is no longer whole but often is broken, fragmented, and alienated. Actually, the word university comes from the word “universe” which means wholeness. But as Reformed Christians who are sons and daughters of St. Augustine and John Calvin, we are called to bring depth where there’s life. Our challenge as faculty, staff and students it to remind the university the need for totality and wholeness and encourage the university to seek true community. This was the reason why Donna and I decided to live with students communally as a family.

​Secondly, as Christian believers, we actually are stake holders of the university. Since “All truth is God’s Truth,” wherever the university is searching for truth that is where we must affirm her and partner with her. Thus the purpose of the church cannot be to call members of the university apart (or away) from the learning process but to be faithful in it. To be sure, the university has abandoned the church in the past even though historically it was the medieval church that gave birth to the university. But the church must not abandon the university now because we share the same purpose as the university which is to search for truth. And after years of experience at the university, one of the reasons many are suspicious or hostile towards the people of faith or the church can be attributed to fear and ignorance resulted from severing with its Judaeo-Christian roots.

(Note: Many at the university often misunderstood the statement “separation of church and state” to mean that the people of faith or the church have nothing to say to a state university because it is owned by the state (unlike private or religious ones), therefore, the university should remain non-religious or worse, anti-religious; not knowing that historically the reason for the separation was actually to protect the state from the encroachment of the church or the Protestant Establishment, and not the other way around).

​Thirdly, as Christians committed to the Biblical world and life view, we have a unique role to play in a public university like Iowa with a university culture preoccupied with fairness and diversity, then, a Christian perspective in teaching and learning also becomes a legitimate alternative in the market place of ideas. And because Jesus teaches us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength—not our mind only but all of our mind—we can model what it means to love the life of the mind and commitment to the exploration of God’s world since all academic disciplines are studies of God’s revelation in nature whether it is science or the arts.

​Needless to say, Christians today are living in difficult and confusing times because everything is socially-constructed, fluid, and changing. Those who wish to live faithfully following his or her convictions will be ridiculed, ostracized, if not persecuted. Nevertheless, the choices we make now will make a big difference in the future of the church and of the university, and possibly of the world. So it doesn’t matter, really, whether yours is a big church or small church, and whether your ministry is in Iowa, Ohio or Idaho. With God, everywhere we go is a “Field of Dreams”. So go and shake the world, including the world of ideas, even if just a little!  And may God richly bless you in all that you do. Amen.

Jason Chen (Founding Pastor of CCIC)