In our 7th installment of the #womenInYM series Fuller Youth Institute leader, Program Director for Urban Youth Resources, longtime youth ministry director and leader, Irene M. Cho sits down with Chad to talk about the difficult realities of growing up in a faith that seemed unbelievable.
This interview will surely challenge you, bless you, and encourage you youth ministry leader. Thanks Irene!
Follow Irene Cho on Twitter
Enter The #WomenInYM Giveaway For Your Chance @ $500 in year long prizes
Join The Conversation For #WomenInYM
Key Takeaway: "How do we help young people get pruney in God’s freedom."
In our 7th installment of the #womenInYM series Fuller Youth Institute leader, Program Director for Urban Youth Resources, longtime youth ministry director and leader, Irene M. Cho sits down with Chad to talk about the difficult realities of growing up in a faith that seemed unbelievable.
This interview will surely challenge you, bless you, and encourage you youth ministry leader. Thanks Irene!
Follow Irene Cho on Twitter
Enter The #WomenInYM Giveaway For Your Chance @ $500 in year long prizes
Join The Conversation For #WomenInYM
Key Takeaway: "How do we help young people get pruney in God’s freedom."
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 53 of the Youth Ministry booster podcast, the podcast from the people that want to get you put into a network of Caring and coaching youth ministers. Listen, here's the deal. Youth Ministry is hard. Youth Ministry can be discouraging and nobody understands other youth ministers like other youth ministers, and so if you do not have an intentional community that you meet with a community that speaks with power but not authority, then you have got to come by and give us a month try for a mastermind group at youth ministry booster. We believe it is the game changer for so many youth ministers. We have friends in ministry. We need the peer network to push us, to challenge us and to pray for us and we hope to be that there's a lot of great things going on this month for women and youth. Ministers is our seventh and Salma with Irene Cho. She is a force and an encouragement that you are going to love, so buckle up today. It is good stuff. You're going to have this interview with Irene and Chad. Make sure check the links below. We've got a giveaway going on and you your booster.com/giveaway. We also have a big announcement next week, but you will not want to miss related to art month, emphasis of women in Youth Ministry. It has been a lot of fun the last week and a half. We look forward to what's coming next. Make sure that you stick with this for this month long journey as we celebrate and encourage women in youth ministry. So hang tight. Buckle in. This is our interview with Irene Cho. I'll see you at the end. Oh, and welcome to youth ministry booster. My name is Chad Higgins and I am thankful that you
Speaker 2:joining us today as we get to hear from Irene show. Irene, how are you? I'm very, very well. Thanks so much for having me. All right, so tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Where do you live, what do you do? All those fun questions, and I work at the Fuller Youth Institute, which is a practical resource center from fuller theological seminary and been here for 10 years. I'm the program manager for Urban Youth Ministry resources. And we provide training articles, various different types of resources for urban youth leaders, those who are in the trenches with high risk young, young people and doing the ministry on the ground and been here for 10 years. Previous to that I had been doing youth ministry for 20 some years. Cough, cough. I'm not letting myself aging myself there. I'm currently, I am in Los Angeles. I just moved to the west side. For those of you who don't know, California, um, that means I live near the beach, which has not sucked at all. Not at all. The traffic to kept Pasadena has been pretty grueling, but I get to go home to the beach. So I'm not complaining that the Lord has provided this opportunity to be near the ocean breeze. So it's been great. I'm living in Oklahoma so I'm not jealous at all. I love it. So tell me, you've been doing student ministry for Awhile. How did that all start for you? Like where's the genesis story there? Yeah, um, it started my senior year of high school and I was determined. Again, I'm going to age myself a lot, but I was determined to be the next Connie Chung. I wanted to be in journalism. I wanted to be an anchor on TV with my New York penthouse apartment. Went to do it all. And guide was like, Hey, I got a different plan for you. Um, so he called me directly, you know, I grew up kind of costal. Um, so whatever we want to chalk it up to delusion, illusion, voices, you know, Holy Spirit. Um, I definitely heard from the Lord that he wanted me to go into ministry. I had a conversation with my mom. I mean I already had my applications all set for our universities with strong journalists and journalism schools. And I said to my mom at the dining table one day, I said, mom, what do you think about me going into ministry? She was not having it. She was like, she said later she prayed to God. I asked you to make her a good, strong Christian and marry a good strong elder in the face. Like, I don't want her to struggle and be a pastor to know, like she was, she was not having it, um, and I was not a rebellious kid. And so I think she was pretty shocked that, you know, a few months later I on my own called universities and said, I'm doing this and nothing could detour me. Um, I ended up stumbling into youth ministry. Actually, I got to my university and my advisor had already chosen my major for me. He put me in Christian Ed. I'm still in it. He's still actually at my university's all the way up in the VP position. Done Great. I love meeting up with him and he put me on Christian Ed. And so we have three majors at my university. Um, shout out to viola. It was Christian Ed Bible and then intercultural studies. And I realized as I went in that I had a heart for youth kids and my parents got divorced when I was in upper middle, upper elementary. Junior high was a hot mess for me on so many struggles there. Um, and I, I just really related to young people like youth kids in particular and the more, you know, you take various classes. I was like, elementary is not for me. I am like dictator Strip, very like not compassionate with, with elementary kids. Um, but like send me a middle schooler and I will sit with them for hours and hours. I'm just, you know, Oprah Winfrey their whole life and it was just something that I knew I was made for um, and connected with. And so as I stumbled into youth ministry, the more I was with these kids and more confirmation I had that this is where I was supposed to be. And so probably a year or two in, I was like, youth ministry lifer. I'm never moving on from this. This is what I want. I'm going to see these kids grow and flourish and you know, just connect with God in ways that, that may not. That just ways that I couldn't even imagine
Speaker 3:to how much. You mentioned a little bit about some like tough middle school years. I mean, talk to me a little bit more about what that played in your own life. I mean, journey into student ministry, what's at play now into what you do and how you think of ministry. Um, is that true for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Um, so my parents got divorced. We moved from California. I was born California in fifth grade. In the middle of fifth grade we moved to New York. I moved to Scarsdale, which at that time was 85 percent Jewish. I was one in four Asian kids. We had some exchange students that didn't know how to speak any English except to say run up to you and say, f you F you. Um, and you know, I was scrawny and skinny and fuck Keith and you know, we, I was surrounded by girls who were developing. My school was junior high and high school, so eighth graders were going to senior parties. It was just a very fast growing, very fast paced, very wealthy. And I was not wealthy, you know, we lived in an apartment and everyone else were in these very, very large homes. You know, I had a, I had classmates that were like, oh, I can't wait to turn 16 when I can get my baby Benz as my car, and I was going to so many bar Mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs where they're getting gifts from families that are like over 10,000,$15,000 in trust funds. And it was, it was miserable. So I think too, at the time of this crucial time period of identity formation, um, I was having problems with my mom who now that I look back as a 40 some year old woman, you know, divorce was such a shameful thing at that time. The failure of her marriage in a Korean culture, you know, all these things that I can relate to her as an adult. Now. I didn't understand that as a nine year old, 10 year old, I just knew mom was stressing out on me and it was unjustified and it was unfair. And here I am going through my own issues and why did we have to move here? And, and all these things. I'm moving down to Philadelphia. It got a lot better. I got a good, I had a lot of Chinese friends, a stronger nation community. I ended up, my mom went back to church and so we went back to. I went back to church with her and reconnected with God because all throughout junior high period I prayed a lot and thought a lot with God, but we didn't go to church. Um, and so there was a lot of angry dialogue happening on my end with God of why, where are you, why are you doing this? You know, so I think a lot of the adjuncts, um, I have compassion for that in this important time stage in their life. Um, I love being a message of empathy to sit with them in that pain, but also to say as a, you know, in a comradery way we can get through this, you know, let me be a beacon of light and hope that, that it can all flush out and like, you know, it's not the end later. There's a long term journey. Um, I encouraged them in a laughing way that it's gonna get harder. So let me give you some hope and try to figure out how to maneuver through it and here's some benefits that happens when you become an adult. Here's some horrible things that happen in as a note. I share with young people all the time because I love playing this game. Obviously I'm Asian. Hashtag Asian, don't raisin. I'm 44. I love and I tell young people when they get shocked to look over 27 and I'm like, this is a sign that I'm old because I want you to tell me that by the ear that. But I love telling them that, you know, when I was 16 I looked like I was 10. I was still getting children's pastors like going into places and that is not fun. As a 16 year old you want to fill out and you want to look older, you want boys to like you and here I am wearing a training bra and not, not happening. Like it just wasn't fun. And so, you know, and young girls, they look at me and they're like, oh, you're so pretty. I'm like, you know, girl, I'll feel you because I was with you in that, like so, so you know, it, it's, it's hard. And, and adulthood comes and it'll, it'll flush itself out. It'll me get through it. So tell me, over your years of student ministry has been one of your favorite moments. Yeah, it was a great question that I love. I was thinking about it. I mean, so many stories, but I think it's kind of tied to the, you know, some other stuff I was thinking about in particular. Those is one camp that I had. I was the speaker for in the last 10, 15. I've shifted so much in the way that I do ministry because of my own journey with God. Um, you know, I'm very, I'm a nine on the enneagram with a strong eight, so, um, which doesn't shock anybody who knows me on my social media presence. And so it was very. Everyone knew me, his readings, she's so great and understanding but don't mess with Irene. Scary. Um, and I went through this really transformational Damascus journey with guide on what it meant to really live out the Gospel in my ministry, um, and, and to, you know, live life and do ministry as Jesus did. And so a lot of it, you know, really stressing to young people what it means that God, that Jesus died and rose again from you for you, that you have freedom. What does freedom mean in your faith? That we don't live out our life in the way of replicating scripture because we have to, you know, this letter of the law, but because we desire to, and the action looks the same on the outside, but the internal processing and I, it was this moment, it was two, three stages in my life that the Holy Spirit really moved in me, um, to have this light bulb realization. And as I, I used to think the epistles, the letters were just a to do list that it was like, do this, don't do that. And I hated reading it because it was so burdensome. But when you look back with the lenses of freedom that you know, we do this not because we have to do because we're afraid of things, but because we live in this thriving, abundant, merciful, graceful, loving space because God has provided that for us. I look back on the epistles and Paul will not shut up about freedom. You know, the whole, we have these imperatives, but it is founded in this indicative Christ died for you. You are free. Therefore, why would you want to do anything else because this is the most life fulfilling thing that you can do. Um, and so, and he, he just over and over again repeated that and I came to this realization that it is so human nature for us to want to legalize everything. Even in even in a freedom. After a little while we're like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That freedom is nice, but now you got to get circumcised. Chap Clark talks about it all the time. Replace circumcision with Bible study, setting up chairs, building programs, serving on missions, coming to church every week. Like, I mean replace it all because we want to legalize and systematize everything. It's our human nature and so how do we help young people get pruney in that freedom, like just sitting in it till they're so marinated in it. Everything. Then from that point forward is the fruit of the spirit that comes forth from that freedom and so I have this thing where I. When I go speak, I'm like, this is what I. I will speak on for young people and those in particular for Asian, Asian, young people who are so immersed in their Christian faith combined with this Confucian very, very strict, very, very shame based, very obligatory type of faith. It's meshed together and so I have this mode where I want to just free them from that. And there was this Chinese camp were just pounding that through and at the end of it, you know, they have the testimony time, the sharing time and the senior kid went up to the mic and he said, this was the first time I cried. Tears of joy and not tears of guilt and shame. And he said, I'm going to be able to go to college knowing the fullness of Jesus's love for me and not move forward in my faith because I'm afraid of God. And I was like that right there. I mean, it was just so fulfilling. Like, you know, that's why we do this. This is the gospel message that we send forth. Kids, we don't want to send them forth with, Oh, make sure you do this because God might punish you. Know God's God's making these bad things happen because you're not doing what's right. And I'm not saying God doesn't utilize our life experiences or the bad choices that we make or all these things for growth and transformation absolutely uses pain and struggles and suffering. I mean, I tell young people the only thing the Bible promises is that life is going to be hard, but redemption in that comes because Jesus is saying there's a better way. There was an amazing way and in this pain, I'm going to bring beauty in this given these ashes. And that comes from freedom, not for guilt and shame. And so how do we lead? How do we help young people embrace the difficult journey that life is going to present and bring in a way that is full of abundance and joy, peace, you know, mercy, grace, love and empathy and all of that. Because that's what Jesus gives. That reminds me of this tweet I read earlier this week. Behave right? This the differences, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, we're called to something different. I love how you said, have, you know, like there's the, there's the freedom to experience like what obedience in the Lord looks like, right? Because we have ultimate freedom in that. It's not something that's like we're no longer bound to it, but we get to experience it and walk in it and see that God is good through it. Right? Um, so. All right, so before we both preach our own message and you're like, because I'm listening to Julia and I'm like, come on now. We'll do a response time. The buses can, um, tell me, uh, if you could rewind to like the very beginning for you, like you get to sit down with, if you're a nine, bend a right, like you're ready to go get them a little bit, right? Um, you could sit down and give your own self some encouragement or some wisdom. What would you say to yourself in that moment? Such a good question. I'm going to have to do a two parter. The first is, and my mentors had shared this with me as I entered into youth ministry, isn't just about, it is so much about the parents. It is so much about the leaders leading up to senior leadership that you work with the elders that you work with. It is about your volunteers that you work with. And when I was first told this as an 18 year old ministry because I want to do with the kids, I want to, I want to work with them, I want to counsel them. I want to see their life transform adults together. But I have come to realize a, the Hubris of the young, like how arrogant of me to brush that off and think that a, I'm the savior, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, bring it, and God's going to use me such amazing ways and not be obedient in 10, humble in the way that God desires that I work in. I serve the community and parents or the community and I am with my young people for a sliver of a moment in and it's their parents that are going to go and be with them every day. It's their teachers that are with them every day. It's these other adults in their life that are influencing them everyday. And parents, they need support. They need cheerleading, they need guidance. They need somebody to listen to their questions and help them through all of this. So I would tell myself in the same way my mentors told me, youth ministry, don't delude yourself into thinking that you're going in just to be with young people. It is a communal effort. Um, and you were entering into a part of the community and you're not there to babysit. You're not there to be just a coach or not there just to be the youth pastor that you are part of, of serving this entire community, this entire village it takes to raise these young people. So number one, I would say that, um, and the second part of that is in my Hubris of my young youth, I would tell myself, stop thinking. It's about you having all the right answers because it is not. I found that the last decade of my, of serving young people, it was so much more effective in creating transformation and in making an impact on young people and adults. When I asked better questions when I actually modeled Jesus never answered a close ended question where the close edit answer, he wasn't there to provide answers. He was there to elevate the conversation and to challenge folks to think further than what they're trapping question was. And so, and it's hard. Young people don't want it. They want the easy, quick answer, oh pastor every and told me I can't do this. I should do this. And I'm like, no, I'm not here for that. I'm here to journey with you because you have them at the most for three to six years depending on do you have them from middle school all the way to high school, right? Like how many years do you get to actually be with them? And my job as a youth leader is to help these young people have a better skill set to be more introspective, more self-aware, ask, learn how to ask better questions of themselves, of their community, of their society, of the world. And so it's, it might be, it's more, it's more work, it takes longer. Um, the end result is unknown, right? Like, I mean, if we're asking a yes or no question, the chances are 50 slash 50, what we think the kid is going to respond to us with. When you ask open ended questions, when you elevate and ask introspective questions, there's no guarantee of the journey. And that's hard for a lot of youth leaders. It was hard for me like I want to know and feel good about myself that my young persons regurgitating the right answer. And I'm like, yeah, now I'm going to send them off to college and it's going because they know the answer, but that's not how life works. It's a journey. And I'm like, just because at this 17 year old stage, they made the right decision to take a stand in their school. Doesn't mean when they're 25, they're going to make the right decision. Um, and we need to know that our position here is to be a constant person where they can come to that come to us and have a safe space to say, I have this question. And for me to flip it back to them and say, that's a great question. Now I have this deeper question. And then have them go back and sit with that deeper question and then come back and say, okay, I thought about that question. Here's my follow up questions. So the great follow up questions, I'm gonna ask you these deeper questions now to those followup questions. And I had kids that were like, just tell me. I'm like, sorry Kiddos. What I'm here for. I'm here to walk with you. I'm here to hear what you think. I'm here to say, let's dive into scripture and see what do you think God's telling you to do and I can give you advice and I can give you some introduction, but at the end of the day, as I walk with you, I'm here to let you have a space to be introspective, to walk with God, to hear from the Holy Spirit, um, and to hear from other people of your community like we're doing this altogether and I know you want your textbook sat, memorization answer, but that's not going to cut it when you go through even more gray areas when you approach an encounter more gray areas. And I love the alchemist book, um, because when I first read it and I think I was 20 when I first read it, I hated it because I, I wanted it to end with a bow tie and have a Disney ending and be all. But the ending is open ended. And I was like, what is that? It's so frustrating because the coin of the book is that life is about a journey and his long, arduous and painful and joyful as all the things and God's not about a checkbook mark, right answer. God's very, very ambiguous and very gray and the only thing he's about is us becoming more Christ like to follow Jesus, to grow in our faith, grown our compassion and love for one another. And that takes a lot of gray areas. So I would tell my 18 year old self learning how to ask better questions, don't learn how to provide better answers. One of the things you talked about earlier, just your personality, you know, when you're in middle school, high school wanting to feel like older. Right?
Speaker 3:And I, I think from hearing you and thinking back of my own self my first year because I think what you gave would have been phenomenal advice for me. Um, I wonder how much of it for us is that same kind of feeling when we first started out of like, we want to be older, right? Like we want to be a more respected, you know what I mean? And seeing as the professional maybe because we feel some of our own insecurities right in that. Um, do you feel like that's true or is that just me speaking for myself of who I was when, when I was 20 years old. And
Speaker 2:uh, so what are, what are your thoughts on that? I absolutely agree. I had a faith crisis around 30 2:35. I almost left the faith[inaudible] too difficult. My life, my personal life, my family life. Being an administrator as a woman in a predominantly patriarchal, very misogynistic, complimentarian questioning my validity and worth should I be their situation. There was a lot of things that were compounding and I broke'em. And by the grace of God, I didn't jump off the ledge and I slowly walked back and I, I confirmed with the Lord, Okay God, I'm going to do this. I am going to stick this through and reenter into engaging in the ministry, engaging in that way with folks. But I, it was such a different feeling of entering into the battlezone than my 18 year old self. I, I've told people there's so much my 18 year old self is like bill passed and character in aliens where you're just like you're running into the field. You're like screaming on just the zealousness and the passion and energy, all the beautiful things that come with being young, the hopefulness, the ID or logical face that great things are gonna happen and I never want to damper that. Um, what I want to do now as a, as a 44 year old person who's done this for 25 years, when I reentered at 35 back into deciding to I'm going to go into ministry. It was like the bruised general who size and knows what they're getting into. Now they know they're going into war and people are gonna die and it's going to be painful, but this is what we got to do and there's just a heaviness involved in it. That's, I think, different than when you're young with young folks now who are entering into ministry. I think there's this mode where I affirmed that excitement and I say to them, that's so great. You hold onto that energy. As long as possible because it will wane and people will wear you down because the humans. I always say that the humans, um, so you hold onto that and you remember that. And I encourage always young people who are entering in. You hold onto that, that stronghold feeling that God gave you that passion and that hopefulness. Don't ever lose that even as wisdom comes and you realize the older you get, the more you don't know, the older you get, the more you, you just sigh and you're like, we're going to do this. You got to hold onto that. And I want to be the older person who can say, I don't want to diminish that or scoff at it or say that's, that's silly because it's beautiful. The hubris of the young, the passion of the youngest selflessness and the hopefulness. And what I want to do is say, put that in your memory box. You hold onto that because all of this other stuff is going to bog you down. And so how do we intersect that and hold that together? Um, and not eliminate one to embrace the other. But to combine that and become holistic in the wisdom and the passion. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's almost like there's great wisdom in the body of Christ, right? Not doing it alone and being isolated either with our hubris or, um, best cynicism system. Yeah. It's a great word. Right. That's a perfect word for that. Um, well Irene, now that I'm convinced that I need to call you everyday, get this like, pump up for mild, like spirit and just talk to you in ministry. I want to say thank you so much for being on this episode and thank you for not giving up.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Such an honor to be here. It absolutely.
Speaker 1:Alright. There you go. That's our interview with Irene Cho. Thank you Irene, for your honesty, your insight, your wisdom, and your encouragement today. If you are a youth minister and you are feeling it, take heart and be encouraged what you heard from Irene today about the freedom, about the grace and the truth of what it means to be faithful. The outward actions may not change for you, but sometimes that change and internal processing, contention and direction, vision is everything. Thank you. Listen to this podcast, we'll be back tomorrow with another episode of Women Youth Ministry. Make sure you check the links for more info about all of that below. Thanks for listening.