About Us
Vision
"For Asian students at MIT to experience God’s transformative love and be invited into a community where every person intentionally seeks God and invests in one another."
We are a community of primarily undergraduate students at MIT seeking to love the campus – specifically the Asian and Asian-American community – and to embody Christ and the Good News as witnesses and in our day-to-day lives. We believe that God's love, ultimately embodied in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is radical and transformative, and that our community and this campus needs the healing and redemptive power of that love, which God first showed and continues to show to us. We desire to build up a Christ-centered community seeking holiness and living out love and fellowship together, so that our community as a whole would be a witness and light to MIT, especially amidst the brokenness and stress that many students face here.
We are one of many Christian student groups on campus, all seeking to spread the love of Christ on campus. Specifically, we are among the student groups under the United Christian Organization (UCO), the umbrella organization uniting many of the official MIT Christian student groups, as well as one of a few Asian Christian student groups and one of the InterVarsity chapters on campus. As an ethnic-specific ministry, we desire to be God's vessels in bringing about the impossible community pictured in Revelations — a people under God of many tribes, nations, and tongues. We seek to do this by working in the lives of a specific ethnic group, i.e. Asians, that needs to experience the love of God.
ACF is intended to complement engaging regularly in a local church community; in that light, the mission of ACF is tied to the unique position we have to reach MIT students in a way that other Christian communities outside of MIT cannot. Students of all backgrounds are welcome to join the ACF community and to be a part of our mission to love the Asian community and serve as a light on this campus in that way.
We are a non-denominational fellowship, upholding the doctrinal basis put forth by InterVarsity. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have questions about what we believe.
Leadership
Vision Team
Community Group Team
Large Group Team
Outreach Team
Fellowship Team
Worship Team
Staff
Staff in ACF help lead the fellowship in spiritual growth and witness through developing the vision, discipling students, and pastoring the fellowship. Some staff work more directly with specific teams, while others play a broader role in overall vision and discipleship for the community.
Greg Hsu, Part-time Staff
Greg grew up in the suburbs of Boston, attending a Chinese immigrant church. In college, he
was
a member and leader in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Duke University where he sensed
a call to ministry and joined InterVarsity staff in 2010. Greg served for 7 years at the
University of Virginia (where he started an Asian-specific IV fellowship), and he's now the
Area Ministry Director for InterVarsity for Boston schools north of the Charles River
(Harvard, MIT, Lesley, Bunker Hill). Greg loves helping Asian/Asian Americans discover how
Jesus is redeeming us and has equipped us for a unique life and witness in the world. He
got
married in June 2018 to a fellow InterVarsity campus staff (LeLe, who’s now staff at Boston
University). They love exploring the city, riding their bikes, and improving their
communication
by playing Nintendo Switch together. Outside of ministry, Greg enjoys cooking, cheering for
Duke and UVA Basketball, and ensuring that his cat (Cooper!) is happy.
Intervarsity
MIT ACF is a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (IVCF), an interdenominational evangelical student-oriented ministry incorporated in 1941. InterVarsity comes from England, where the term “varsity” referred to one’s school—thus InterVarsity literally means “Inter-School” Christian Fellowship. In 2017-2018, IVCF/USA had more than 36,000 students and faculty participate in its ministries. IVCF has more than 1000 chapters on over 650 campuses nationwide and employs nearly 1000 campus field staff.
As an InterVarsity chapter, ACF has staff trained specifically for and devoted to college student ministry. Additionally, InterVarsity provides numerous resources and opportunities for building community across campuses and growing faith through retreats, conferences, their publishing company, service and missions trips, and many other opportunities.
Our History
MIT ACF was started originally as MIT KCF (Korean Christian Fellowship) in the Fall of 1990. A group 10 students (including Cindy Kim, Gene Sohn, Franklin Ko, J.P. Kang, Young Park, Jane Song, Marie Lee and Esther Cho) believed that there should be an English-speaking services for Korean Americans in the Boston Area, and so after extended prayer and thought, they started an informal “fellowship” amongst themselves.
That winter at Urbana 1990, a member of KCF sat down with the Boston Area director of InterVarsity and talked about bringing in KCF to InterVarsity as well as the possibility of giving KCF an InterVarsity staff member. This became a reality in the Spring of 1992, when Soon-Chan joined as KCF’s first part-time staff worker.
The fellowship grew steadily, and in 2000, the name of KCF was changed to ACF (Asian Christian Fellowship), as there had always been a good percentage of non-Koreans in the fellowship and most of our outreach was to Koreans as well. We’ve been praising God as MIT ACF ever since!