A place for Asian American students to experience God's love.

Paul Tokunaga was appointed the Asian American Ministries Coordinator in 1993 and gathered the first Asian American Leadership Team to develop plans focused on the next generation of Asian American leaders. This resulted in a national Asian American Staff Conference specifically designed to develop Asian American staff in 1996, an in-house resource for all staff working with Asian American students called Developing Asian American Leaders in 1998, and the Daniel Project, an executive leadership development program for young Asian American staff.

The 1990s saw rapid growth in Asian American students on campus and the ministry grew to over 160 staff and 4600 students. In recognition of the need for a more sustained focus towards Asian American ministry development, the Asian American Ministries Coordinator role, which had been a part time position, became a full time role.

In the early 2000s, AAM, which was largely East Asian, started to sense the invitation to reach communities beyond itself. James Choung, who became the National Director of Asian American Ministries in 2009, decided to focus on evangelistic and multiethnic ministry. In 2010, to continue to learn more about reaching non-Christian Asian Americans, the national leadership of five major Asian American campus ministries gathered for the Asian American Evangelism Symposium.

During this time, there were emerging ministries in the South Asian, Pilipino, and Hmong student communities, and student leadership conferences were hosted by staff leaders in these communities. The South Asian Leadership Institute was held in 2008 and 2011, a Pilipino student leadership institute called KaLI was held in 2013, and the annual Hmong Christian College Conference was started in 2005.

Beginning in the mid 2010s, under the leadership of Joe Ho who became National Director in 2013, AAM began to recognize that the biggest question that Asian Americans were asking on campus was of what to do after graduation. As a result, AAM developed resources that helped Asian American students chart a faithful way forward between their own desires, societal and family pressures, and God’s calling in their vocational choices. A key innovation during this time was the AAM Vocation Conference, a scalable and replicable student “conference in a box”. The focus on multiethnic ministry development within AAM continued with the establishment of specific funds that would help sustain the burgeoning student movements in the South Asian, Southeast Asian, Pilipino communities.

Sabrina Chan became National Director in 2017 and AAM turned its attention towards cultivating focused spaces for Asian American students. This came out of a realization that the most important ingredient in Asian American ministry development was simply being able to gather together. The staff leadership of Asian American chapters started to receive coordinated and sustained training and development for the first time and a greater emphasis was placed on creating contextualized resources for Asian American ministry. The student movements in the South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pilipino communities also became fully formed ministries, with their own coordinators and directors.

AAM continues to grow and, at present, 260 Asian American staff serve in InterVarsity and 5,111 Asian American students are involved in chapters.