My Journey in International Student Ministry (ISM) by Ned Hale

for Association of Christians Ministering to Internationals (ACMI), written March 2001    

Early Vision

            As American Christians we often think it’s “harder” to be involved in cross-cultural relationships, especially if the relationship is with a “foreign” person, and more particularly if the relationship involves being a Christian “witness.” My experience defies these categories, since I was a non-Christian in my earliest relationships as a Yale University undergraduate, and one of my few relatively close friends was from Mexico.

I first met Sergio when he was a newly arrived freshman on campus and I was working my way through school selling contracts for a dry cleaning agency on campus. We became ping pong partners (he could beat me!) and had long and serious discussions on issues of the day (which included the Harvard-Yale football rivalry, and which were the best fraternity houses worth joining as sophomores). Sergio joined Phi Gamma Delta after I did, we double dated together and grew fairly close as friends.

When I became a Christian in my junior year, Sergio (secularized now from his earlier Roman Catholic upbringing) tried to protect me from dreaded “Fundamentalism” by going with me to many evangelistic meetings and resisting my faith, even questioning the speakers in after- meetings! By the end of my senior year, however, Sergio came to me confessing he’d witnessed a profound change in my life and wanted to know how to become a Christian himself!

During that final year on campus I had joined Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) and dedicated my life to Christian service at my first “Urbana 1957” student missions convention, along with a few of the ten others there from our “IVCF chapter.” IV in North America was founded by two internationals: Howard Guiness, who came from England to Canada in 1928, and Stacey Woods, an Australian, who started IV in the United States in 1940. I had the privilege of meeting Stacey on one of his visits to our campus group and was deeply impressed with is traveling ministry all over the world. He spoke of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), founded by him in 1947, and how students in difficult places like Rome were reaching out to fellow students. So, right from the start of my Christian life I was exposed to worldwide witness.

 From its beginnings in North America IV had had a deep concern for all students and especially internationals. With only a handful of traveling field staff in the 1940s and the priority of pioneering an entire new student ministry during the war years, very little staff energy could go to international student ministry at that time. After the war, however, veterans returned to the campuses older, more mature from their war experiences, with many freshly converted and carrying a burden and vision for the needs of countries they had fought in.

Stacey Woods believed strongly in students reaching fellow students with the Gospel, including and especially international students. Since there weren't staff enough for the more than 400 campus Christian groups that suddenly developed in the late 40s, some of them with over 200 students in the group, students had to do most of the job of outreach. This indigenous idea was Biblically based, exemplified by the Apostle Paul in his 1st century itinerant ministry, taught as the "three-self" ideal by 19th century missionaries. So self, or in this case, student-led groups were embraced on their merit throughout Inter Varsity movements worldwide and took hold naturally in the USA situation where there were few staff but strong student war-veterans to lead them.

Later that year I met Bob Finley, Irving Sylvia and Mark Hanna during their visits to our IV chapter. They had all been missionaries and were now leaders in an organization called International Student Inc., (ISI). I later found out that Bob Finley had been on IV staff before founding ISI and had tried to persuade Stacey in the late 1940s to let him set up special community-based programs to reach out to international students on campuses in the States. When Bob suggested to Stacey that some staff should invest time in developing local churches as well as student groups for outreach to internationals, Stacey opposed the idea as diverting precious staff energies into the community when students could do the job on campus. This led eventually to Bob forming a new organization, ISI, in the early 50s with the vision of mobilizing community resources. When I met these ISI leaders, therefore, I was deeply impressed with their commitment to reaching internationals through all means available, including graduates and local church volunteers living near campus.

Seminary Experience

At seminary I soon discovered that southern California as compared to the northeast, and particularly Fuller Seminary, was a “hotbed” of mission-minded churches, students and even faculty! In my first year I linked up with Bill Bright, who I discovered liked to take international students on “evangelistic retreats” to a cabin at a conference center called Forest Home. I joined these retreats bringing international students and fellow seminarians. Eventually in early 1961 I joined Campus Crusade staff for 6 months to work with internationals at Cal. Tech. and Pasadena City College.

Along the way I also attended an IV sponsored “International Holiday Houseparty” led by the IV staff, Evan Adams, in the mountains of San Bernadino. I then discovered that IV had a long tradition, inherited from earlier Commonwealth models, of these annual 4-7 day-long events for internationals at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Rental sites in Washington DC, Lake Tahoo in CA and Mt. Baker in WA were among the many houseparty locations. Nate Mirza, Navigators ISM staff leader today, is testimony to the fruit of these early efforts, having met the Lord while a student in California through a houseparty at Lake Tahoo in 1959 where Paul Little spoke. Evangelistic "International Houseparties" were held at IV’s two newly-purchased training centers, Bear Trap Ranch in Colorado, and Cedar Campus in Michigan, starting in 1954, led by our Missions Director freshly home from being a missionary in China, David Adeney.

In my final year of seminary 1961-62 I branched out on my own creating weekly evangelistic Bible studies for internationals which rotated to 5 homes in the Pasadena area and utilized seminary students for small group leadership. One group met in the home of Mrs. Betty Fletcher, sister of IV’s then HIS Magazine Editor, Paul Fromer. It was at that point that God brought into my life my future supervisor, Paul Little, who in 1958 had formed the first National Department of ISM in Inter Varsity. I met Paul in three different places and times in that one year: 1) speaking to Campus Crusade’s new staff candidates (incl. myself) at Mound, MN, 2) after speaking in one of Fuller’s daily chapel services, and 3) at the Urbana 1961 convention. All three times Paul was enthusiastically speaking about the opportunities to do international student ministry. It was like God speaking to my soul, and three times in a row to get my attention!

That spring of 1962, with seminary graduation looming and no certainty of God’s leading in terms of organization or placement, Paul asked me to consider IV staff work among internationals in the Chicago area. IV, however, could only add me to their already tight budget, if I would fly (at IV expense) to Park Street Church in Boston for their annual 10-day Missions Conference, and if God would move folk there to give minimal support ($200/month in salary)! I became one of the first IV staff to raise full support (about 20 years before it became normal for all staff in IV).

Early Years in Chicago

When I joined Inter Varsity staff in 1962 there were four of us nationally out of a total staff of about 40, or 10% of our staff focusing our ministries on internationals. When the ISM Dept. was dissolved with Paul Little's moving into full time evangelism in 1964, this handful of ISM staff continued to maintain local ministries of outreach to internationals and keep the annual Houseparty tradition going. My first 5 years on IV staff were a learning experience, with much trial and error in terms of ministries and results. IV chapters at the primary Chicago schools were too small and weak at that point to do much with internationals, although the Univ. of Chicago chapter (to which I was assigned) was made up largely of international graduate students. Evangelist that he was, Paul wanted an expansion of the suburban community model, which he called “International Coffee Hour Discussions,” modeled after our American “evangelistic dorm discussion” approach on campus. By the end of my first 5 years we had seen 10 such groups started all over Chicago and its suburbs. I pioneered and directed new Houseparties also during the 60s involving many Christian faculty as speakers such as Archie MacKinney (Madison) and Gordon Van Wylen (Ann Arbor).

Annual midwest weekend conferences for Christian internationals were created with ecumenical sponsorship of three other Evangelical organizations in Chicago. One student from Kenya came all the way from Toronto to one of these and told me that he’d moved from a campus in the USA to Canada. He had been near a campus in the downstate Illinois “Bible belt.” He’d almost lost his faith in Christ there because of not being allowed to worship at a nearby local church which was the same denomination as the missionaries who had led him to Christ back in Kenya! At the end of that conference in a sharing time he publicly reaffirmed his faith and said what a “taste of heaven” it was to be among so many fellow believers from all over the world!

The Years as an IV Staff Director

            From 1967-1971 I was an IV “Area Director” for Illinois and Wisconsin. Then starting in 1971 for 10 years I was a “Regional Director” for the “Central USA” (incl. 14 states west of the Mississippi River) and Director of Bear Trap Ranch in Colorado for much of that time. My wife, Sharon and I had been living in Chicago since our marriage in 1966. We moved to Madison, WI in 1973 after our national office moved there. Various jobs helping Dave Howard with Urbana 73 required my presence in the national office. These changes obviated any intensive work with my first love, international students, but I found it possible with each new responsibility to increase my influence over new and younger staff to get them involved with internationals. One policy I instituted as Regional Director was to ask every staff to attend at least one international Houseparty during their 3-5 year tenure on staff. Many resisted the idea initially because it took them away from family at Christmas and wasn’t a main part of their job. They thanked me afterward for making them go because it opened their eyes to the internationals openness and hunger for spiritual reality and winning gratitude for whatever was done for them in Jesus name!

The 1970s were marked by phenomenal growth in Inter Varsity under the leadership of John Alexander with over 32,000 (largely American) students in 800 campus groups and over 300 staff by the early 1980s. Though there were few staff specializing in ISM, Urbana mission conventions, regional training conferences, and local chapters continued to minister to internationals in this period. Paul Little finished his big 1974 Lausanne convention and soon afterward called asking if he could speak at a Houseparty that Christmas. It was to be his last and one of his best series of four Gospel messages before he died in a tragic car accident.

I continued to direct or speak at Bear Trap and Cedar Campus Houseparties and was deeply impressed at one in 1979 with a Muslim student from Iran studying in South Dakota who came up to me after one of my evening messages looking very agitated. He’d grown up in Qum, he said, “Khomeine’s birthplace and a very conservative Muslim area.” He’d wanted as a teenager to become a Mulla (teacher) and considered himself very religious. But he’d become very disillusioned with what Khomeine was doing back in Iran and felt that he now needed to reject Islam entirely. Without a religion to believe in he felt empty and lost. However, in his heart he could not bring himself to believe in Jesus as God, because all his life he’d been schooled against this. Could I help him believe in Jesus as God?

I did my best to show him from scripture and with illustrations why and how God could be fully Divine and fully Human at the same time. He said: “I will decide before we leave this Houseparty and let you know!” I didn’t hear from him for two weeks after that, so back in Madison I wrote him a letter asking how he was doing in his religious pilgrimage toward Jesus. He wrote back: “Dear Brother Ned…” and praised God for bringing him not only to believe in Jesus but to be baptised that week in a local church there in Vermillion, SD!

International Student Ministry Director

In 1979 Bob Fryling became the National Campus Director and brought into the movement a new vision for the diversity of the campus and for multi-ethnic ministry. This led to my appointment in 1981 as the Director of a restored National Dept. of ISM. Our vision then was to restore specialized staff throughout the movement with "ISM focused" staff in each region and on each local staff team. In the 80s we succeeded in getting an ISM staff into about half of the then 50 Area staff teams. (We're still working on it).

To resource them I helped our multi-media branch TWENTYONEHUNDRED (“2100”) develop a landmark 30 min. show called "FRIENDS," which ended up getting amazing exposure to a total of over 75,000 delegates in 4 URBANA conventions from 1984-1993. Though slide-tape formats are out of date as a type of media it's still available now in video format and has been seen by probably a few hundred thousand believers in churches and other groups all over North America. A new 2100 production was introduced at URBANA 96 entitled “BRIDGING THE GAP,” now available in a three-part 22-min. video as an educational and training tool for students and community volunteers.

IV Press books were developed as "books-of-the-day" at URBANA 84 and 87, including Internationals at Your Doorstep (by Lawson Lau) and China at Your Doorstep (by Stacey Bieler and Dick Andrews). These were ground-breaking steps for Inter Varsity and a significant ministry to the churches and other parachurch movements. Another book project I worked on with a team of 6 staff is an IV Press book, PASSPORT TO THE BIBLE, released in August 1999 with 24 cross-cultural Bible studies designed for international “seekers.” This Bible study guidebook is already in its second printing and has sold thousands of copies, to the astonishment of all of us. (I.V. Press initially questioned its “marketability” as targeted to a “niche” international audience). 

One of my greatest delights was being part of the formation in 1981 of the Assoc. of Christians Ministering to Internationals (ACMI), which provided in its annual conferences an external resource for training new staff and volunteer workers. It was invaluable to Inter Varsity staff and volunteers in reaffirming our ISM vision and calling, and helped keep us all from discouragement or growing "weary in well doing” by relating to the larger body of international workers.

As a Board member of ACMI in its early years I watched it grow as its annual conferences were held in a different city in the USA and Canada each year. Many paid staff of churches and mission groups or volunteer ISM workers who were not attached to an organization found a home in ACMI. Many of us in the larger organizations with an ISM Department were able to join hands speaking and giving training seminars to the benefit of others both within and outside our organizations who came to the annual training conferences. ACMI went a long way toward bringing all the Evangelicals together and instilling a new vision for prayer and cooperative ministries at local campus levels.

In 1987 a first “Consultation” of leaders in ISM nationally met in Denver and presented papers summarizing their organization’s or denomination’s ministry to internationals. This led to a hunger for more of this level of sharing, and another of these was held a few years later in Houston. In the early 1990s a few of the leaders of the larger organizations working with internationals began to meet together at ISI’s national offices in Colorado Springs. We called ourselves the “Cheyenne Mountain Gang.” There are now over 20 of us, and we have met every year, sometimes twice in a year since then.

In the late 90s Paul Cedar of Mission America invited us to form an “International Student Ministry Track” and meet with hundreds of pastors at their annual meetings. Besides “networking” a lot of practical things have resulted from these leaders gatherings. For example, the expansion of the International Bible Society’s grant of free English and other language Bibles for international students….or the distribution of tens of thousands of JESUS films in many languages to our staff and volunteers for give-away to individual internationals on the condition that follow-up requirements be met.

Perhaps the most significant ministry I have been involved in personally in recent years is directing our national triennial “Conference for Christian International Students and Scholars” held immediately following each URBANA student missions convention at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Begun in January 1988, following URBANA 87, this conference has consistently attracted over 400 Christian internationals representing over 70 countries of the world. The recent (5^th) conference, Jan. 1-4, 2001, surprised us all with 870 representing 80 countries! There were 20 plenary speakers and 80 elective seminars in this conference. Many students commented that this gathering of fellow believers was a “taste of heaven” for them and much needed preparation both for going back to campus and going later into places of work around the world as ambassadors for Christ and workers in His Kingdom!

The Legacy of a Vision for ISM

My original vision as a new ISM Director in IV 20 years ago was to create a new body of staff workers with a focused ministry among internationals within the larger ministry of Inter Varsity. A good beginning for this vision has been fulfilled as I write. In March 2001 Inter Varsity now has 41 paid staff "focused" on international students in their ministry. This is more a reflection of the IV organization’s commitment to cross-cultural ministry at all levels than it is to my efforts, though my presence and establishing an ISM Department nationally clearly gave sanction or “permission” to the field to move ahead with more confidence in an otherwise difficult area of ministry.

Additionally, about 400 regular field staff are known to be either personally involved or have campus groups with some internationals involved within them. This may seem surprisingly gratifying, but when you consider that IV serves over 800 campuses in the USA, the numbers pale in some respect to the overwhelming task still ahead. ISM is “on the map” in Inter Varsity, but not with an ISM focused staff in every area and not with international students involved in an IV student “witnessing community” on every major campus. 

Our census shows 4,087 mostly American Inter Varsity students involved in a "cross-cultural" international student friendship, but this is actually only about 13% of the total 30,999 students in Inter Varsity. Again, we have a very long way to go in mobilizing Inter Varsity students to cross-cultural friendship and witness! Considering the fact that we have an annual turnover of at least 25% of Inter Varsity students, it is probably bordering on the miraculous that so many of our students do learn to reach out cross-culturally.

Our Inter Varsity census also tells us that we have over 2,280 international students involved in our campus groups. This figure has leveled out in the 90s, paralleling the number of focused staff we have fielded. Still it is a remarkable thing that so many Christians from other cultures feel comfortable enough (or are spiritually desperate enough) to identify with a largely American organization in order to have their spiritual needs met.

Partly for these reasons, and because it fits with our ethos and new IV Purpose Statement, we have a new vision these days for establishing “International Student-led Witnessing Communities.” One of the reasons is that many internationals (Christian and non-Christian) feel more at home in a non-North American cultural group. It is a well-known fact from sociological studies that most internationals on campus drift into sub-cultural groupings of their home culture by the end of the first year on campus here. Some move off campus into apartments where they can cook their own kind of food, most often with other students not only from their country of origin but if possible from the same linguistic and societal group. This is not just "cocooning." It's survival in an otherwise inundating North American cultural context.

For Christian internationals study abroad in North America is a kind of spiritual as well as cultural starvation unless they are fortunate enough to find or create a home-cultural Christian group of some kind. It is not surprising, therefore, that we have seen "sister" groups develop along ethnic lines on most of the major university centers: Indonesians, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Japanese, Malaysians, central Africans, east Indians, etc. etc. Many have formed larger networks and organizations, hold annual summer conferences and keep in touch by email, even with returnees!

The spiritual "trade-offs" for such groups, however, are significant. Perhaps without realizing it, they miss some opportunities they might otherwise have for significant input from gifted Christians outside their monocultural campus group or network. Some need leadership training or counseling ministries a qualified staff level person might provide. Others need the cross-cultural mission stretching that only comes by immersion in another culture. Some need the opportunity for reconciliation experiences with those outside their cultural group (eg: the Japanese with Koreans and other Asians). 

It is an exciting thing for me personally to be part of this new vision for gathering 

together on campus many of the otherwise disaffected internationals that would remain lonely or isolated without a cultural group they can feel more “at home” in. I look forward in coming years to helping Inter Varsity develop this new emphasis, and suspect it will soon be reflected in our census figures as a new breakthrough for us.

The Internet may help us, even though its not as personal and relational as we like ministry to be. We've developed an extensive ISM resources web page within Inter Varsity's web site and are currently working on a special web site for non-Christian internationals with the word "internationals" registered as a search engine title and "internationals.net" as a domain name.

Sustaining Memories

            As I approach the years when I may not be able to accomplish as much physically, I find that the vision for “loving the stranger in our midst” (Lev. 33:19) continues to grow in me. Memories of past personal ministries with individuals are sustaining to me, especially those who have found flourishing ministries of their own and where the ministry vision has multiplied in their lives. Some international Christians became my lasting friends and went on eventually to become missionaries and Christian leaders.

            For example, a Christian from India, Chong Singsit, came to the UW Madison to work on his PhD in Agriculture. A mutual (missionary) friend brought us together and we became good friends and prayer partners. I introduced him to a monthly dinner-plus-Bible-study for internationals. He became so excited by this approach to ministry that when he transferred to a graduate program in Virginia a few years later he began an evangelistic Bible study ministry of his own at that campus. He left there to become a college teacher, but carried with him this vision for international student outreach as well as starting a mission educational project in his home country.

            Again, Peter Ubomba-Jaswa from Uganda came to Madison for a PhD in Sociology. I met him as the leader of the African Students Christian Fellowship and we became close friends and prayer partners. At one point a few in our church helped him become reunited with his wife and family in Africa (having been forced to leave them behind for the four years of his study here). This saved him from quitting his PhD and, as it turns out, essentially salvaged a life long career of his teaching in Africa. He secured a teaching position initially in the University of Botswana, where he also pioneered a new student ministry for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). He is currently teaching in the University of Natal in South Africa and continuing to look for ways to extend the Kingdom of God as a teacher and church leader there.

For non-Christian internationals, it becomes imperative that they see the Gospel "incarnated" in the lives of people as well as hear the verbal proclamation of God's love for them in Jesus Christ. On campus this becomes highly effective if the "incarnational witness point" is an integrated Christian group, where the usual power of witness by fellow country-persons is augmented by the astonishing power of Christian love across cultural lines.

Integrated evangelistic group meetings and small group Bible studies are good places for this to happen. Internationals expect at least some Americans to be Christians, but they don't expect to see love between cultures. I'm sure this is why, for example, the internationals that have become Christians so often have done so because of the unusual love of American Christian roommates or families who have welcomed them into their homes and family life and genuinely loved them.

Passing the Baton

            As I move toward retirement years (I’m currently age 65) it has become obvious that the directorship of a ministry like this needs to pass on to those who can carry it into the distant future or as long as it is needed. God has been faithful not only in giving me this opportunity to share in His work, but also in preparing others to “take the baton” and carry it to the finish. The transition of the ISM Directorship in Inter Varsity took place this past year, with Lisa Chinn accepting the invitation to take my place starting in August 2000.

            It has been thrilling to see God choose a person with the precise background, gifts and preparation needed to not only carry on the ministry but move it significantly forward in the Inter Varsity context. As a woman in leadership, Inter Varsity immediately looks up to her as a model of women in a leadership role. As a Filipino-born American with work experience and student ministry experience in both countries she brings new credibility and sensitivity to the whole vision of cross-cultural ministry. As icing on the cake, she has even agreed to allowing me to continue on part time in the ISM Department to help in needed ways (hopefully without my getting “in the way”).

            My hope is that in coming years not only Inter Varsity, but all of God’s people involved in higher education will find that in “loving the stranger” on campus, they are actually not only obeying Jesus Christ but loving Him in loving the stranger. Perhaps even then it will still be a surprise to us all when we stand before the Master and he says: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me…just as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me.” (Matt. 25: 35, 40). May God give us all His grace and wisdom to form loving relationships with internationals and to introduce them into cross-cultural relationships and groups where they can see the love of Christ displayed in all its ethnic diversity and power!