Anti-slackers

Sojourners Magazine, Mar/Apr 2002

Young Christians are pushing the edges of faith. Here's a glimpse into the hearts and dreams of a few of them, in their own words.

The following people are not the "top young Christians of 2002." Such a ranking would be impossible (and a little out of line with the spirit of the gospel). Rather they are just a few of those named by our staff, friends, board, and contributors when asked, "Who are young Christians that our readers should know about?" Our goal was to survey a sampling of those 30 and under who are active in their faith-and to find what hope and challenge they have to offer.

The really good news? For each one of these women and men of faith and dedication, thousands of other young people worldwide are also serving, creating, leading, making mistakes, organizing, and praying, bearing the spark of God's love and justice.

Lee Huang

29

Founder and director, YES (Youth + Entrepreneurship = Success) business incubator

www.theenterprisecenter.com

West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I was not raised in a Christian family. To this day, none of my immediate family are followers of Jesus. I became a Christian in high school and had to work through my integration of faith and vocation without the blessings of my parents.

I came to the Wharton School with an interest in business, and as my faith in God and relationship with Jesus Christ grew, that interest got redirected toward finding a way to use my business skills and interests to serve others. Work can and should be worship, service, and ministry and not just a way to make money to support yourself.

At my church we have many active members who have been in the congregation and in my neighborhood for decades. Their perspective reminds me that 1) things don't happen overnight and 2) God is faithful through many generations.

David Deal

Founder and executive director, Community IT Innovators (technology consultants for nonprofits)

www.citidc.com

Washington D.C.

During a year in Mennonite Voluntary Service, I learned computer networking and programming on the job and saw that a small amount of appropriate technology could really make a difference in how a nonprofit works. This was a way to combine my passion for figuring out how things work with my desire to work for social justice.

I went to Duke on a Naval ROTC scholarship, but during the course of my four years in the Wesley Fellowship I came to believe the military service was incompatible with a life of Christian discipleship. I applied for conscientious objector status, was granted it, and am now paying back the scholarship.

I grew up Southern Baptist, then Methodist. When I came to D.C., I was looking for a Christian community where nonviolence and social justice were assumed to be integral to a life of faith; a community where being a Christian and being an American were not assumed to be one and the same. I found that the Mennonite Church comes as close to this as any church that I have experienced.

Kara S. Carlisle

24

Master of Divinity student and urban ministry intern, Claremont School of Theology; will teach in the New York City public schools after graduation this spring

Claremont, California

At the age of 16, I was in downtown Indianapolis with a friend and met a young man whose life was spent in the streets. He made his living selling drugs and found his community among gang members. He was convinced that he had been "damned to hell" long before he was born. I spent that evening trying to assure him of God's grace and love-a message he struggled to believe. Driving home, I felt betrayed by my sheltered Sunday school lessons whose simplistic answers failed to address the complexities of life on Saturdays. This encounter was an integral catalyst toward my focused studies in both theology and the city.

I was raised in the Church of God (Anderson, IN). Since college, I have served at a PCUSA church in Koreatown, South Central Los Angeles, and at a Nazarene church in Pasadena, California. I am in the process of licensing and ordination through the Church of God. I find myself struggling along with peers who were raised within a particular church tradition but now find themselves less committed to a particular denomination and increasingly ecumenical.

Carlos Aguilar (aka bookworm brown)

26

Philosopher, educator, writer, and hip-hop artist

mp3. com/bookwormbrown

Bassett, California

Hip-hop culture has educated me. I talk and walk with and to the inherited cadence of those hip-hop artists/activists that came before me, and gladly take on the responsibility to forward the art (and community) from here. Good art is good art; but on a more practical note, good art changes lives.

My formal education, in history and philosophy/ethics/theology, allowed me to investigate the ideas and actions that form our present condition. I intend to pursue doctoral work in the near future. My educational pursuit is, in some sense, my attempt at trying to deconstruct some of the false binary assumptions of our culture. As if one couldn't be both brown and educated; Christian and informed; emotional and intellectual. I'm forced to live with these imagined tensions.