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Dennis and Carita Chen

#0474280

Cru City is the ministry of Cru that focuses on the spiritual needs of the City, apart from the University campus.  It is a huge umbrella that encompasses dozens of varied ministries.  Our focus will be in two areas - to minister to Asian Americans who are generally 3-6 years out of college and Cru City’s Global Initiatives. 

Over the couple of decades, we have seen scores of Asian American students, many with vibrant and fruitful spiritual lives, graduate and enter the next stage of their lives where they may experience great successes professionally but flounder spiritually.  We asked our Epic (the ministry we had previously been serving with) alumni:  Which is the harder transition — the transition between high school/college OR the transition between college/work?  The overwhelming majority said that the college/work transition was the much harder one.  We have personally been burdened by this reality for many years.  Yet, we never had anything tangible to effectively help our graduates to integrate into local churches and continue to grow as disciples of Jesus.  Now, we have a chance to help and do something about it!  Our desire is to engage them in a ministry of discipleship that will help answer what it looks like for them to be disciples of Jesus (and to make disciples) into this next stage of their lives.  Along those lines, we will engage them in the work of missions because we believe that missions engagement —whether by going or sending — is a crucial formative expression of being Jesus’ disciple.

We are also a part of Cru City’s Global Initiatives.  Specifically, Global Initiatives is working in partnership with other entities to give people in the marketplace opportunities to experience missions in various contexts all around the world. For example, one organization we have been partnering with to bring filters to communities around the world who do not have access to clean drinking water is Filter of Hope. We have been able to bring teams to Cuba and Guatemala to pass out filters that radically change their day-to-day life by providing them an easy way to obtain clean water. In addition, we have been able to share with them where Living Water is found - in the life of Jesus Christ. 


Global Missions has been taking place for hundreds of years, but we see that there has definitely been a shift in missions. There is a new era of missions, and we have to pause to rethink how we go about doing missions work if we truly believe in partnering with the global church. As part of the work our Cru City team has been involved in, Carita is co-hosting a podcast called "Mission Shift" where we explore the changing face of global missions and what part each of us might play. You can find it here - https://www.cru.org/communities/city/missionshiftpodcast/

Locally, we are also involved in marriage ministry where we are meeting with both pre-marital couples as well as married couples to help remind us all of the meaning of a covenant marriage. With the busyness of life and kids, it's easy to put the work required to have a thriving marriage on the back burner. Together, we hope to help couples, including ourselves, refocus our marriage back on Christ so that all of our marriages will reflect the relationship Christ has with His bride, the church.

We are incredibly grateful for the blessing of God’s word in our lives and for the blessing of having ministry partners join us in what God has called us to do to help further His kingdom.  Thank you for your partnership for the past 28 years!  We pray that God would renew your vision and passion, along with ours.

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