Yale

The Impact of Christian Union Lux

Editor’s Note: The following article contains first-person accounts from alumni who were actively involved in CU Lux, Christian Union’s ministry at Yale University. 

Q and A with Dr. Vincent Naman

By Anne Kerhoulas, Staff Writer

Christian Union New York has teamed up with the ministry’s alumni engagement team to connect recent graduates and young professionals to mentors who work in the same field. Part of Christian Union’s mission is to transition college seniors into the workforce or graduate school well, linking  them with a broad Christian network to support and sustain their faith while also networking professionally. 

Christian Fellowship

By Tom Campisi, Managing Editor

When Dr. Ben Pascut prepared to teach a workshop on organizational excellence for CU Lux at Yale University, he did not have to look very far for subject matter—it is one of Christian Union’s core values.

Despite COVID Restrictions, CU Lux Digs Deep into Scripture

By Kelly Parks, Staff Writer

Community has looked very different on college campuses these past few months than it has in years past. However, these changes have not stopped Christian Union Universities from ministering to students across the United States, in person and also through virtual connections.

A Yale Student’s Lenten Reflection

Editor’s note: The following article was reprinted with permission fromThe Yale Logos, a student-led Christian Journal.
 

By Raquel Sequeira, Yale ’21

“Die to live.”

The words had been running through my head since before Lent—since before I moved back to New Haven to finally start my senior year. After a gap semester spent living at home, I prayed for guidance into spring and tried to be genuinely open to whatever God might ask of me.

Yale Alumna Recalls Seeking God Lifestyle Course    

By Alisha Reginal, Yale ’15

Christian Union whet my appetite for fasting. Nine years ago, I participated in Christian Union’s Seeking God Lifestyle Bible course at Yale. The course discussed seven principles to intentionally draw near to God. The first was “humility with fasting.”

Being Home When Home Is Hard 

by daniel chabeda, yale ’20 

Editor’s note: The following devotional was written by Daniel Chabeda, who served as a student president of Christian Union Lux at Yale University before graduating in May. This devotional was part of a series entitled “On Our Hearts, On Our Minds,” that encouraged the Christian Union community in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Loneliness Epidemic among Young Adults

Dr. Sam Kim is a scholar at the Yale-Hasting Center, where he explores the crisis of professional burnout in academic medicine and health care. He is a recipient of the Lifelong Learning Fellowship at Yale Divinity School and Yale Medical School and worked as a research fellow in global health and social medicine at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School.

The co-founder of 180 Church in New York City, which started with students from Columbia University, Kim earned a doctorate in ethical leadership at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is a regular contributor to Christianity TodayExchange and the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

You have previously written about a loneliness epidemic in society. Please elaborate on this in regards to today’s young adults.

A significant pattern related to the Cigna study of loneliness and social isolation is that Generation Z (ages 18-22) is now the loneliest generation in history. Although Gen Z is perhaps the generation that is most technologically connected, they scored the highest on the UCLA loneliness scale, an instrument that measures and assesses subjective feelings of loneliness by using a twenty-item questionnaire.

Christian Union Lux Helps Produce National Event

by tom campisi, managing editor

Christian Union Lux was honored to host the Collegiate Day of Prayer at Yale University on the evening of February 27 in Dwight Chapel. The two-hour event assembled Yale ministries in united prayer, worship, and exhortation from Scripture, and also served as the national broadcast for over forty thousand online viewers.

Over two hundred years ago, Yale, along with Williams College, Brown University, and Middlebury College, established the Collegiate Day of Prayer as a regular event on their campuses. By 1823, almost every major denomination and university in America “embraced the practice of a concerted day of prayer for colleges,” according to the Collegiate Day of Prayer Web site. The event lasted for about a hundred years and helped fan the flame of various revivals and awakenings on campus.

Christian Union Faculty Transitions to Online Ministry During Pandemic 

by tom campisi, managing editor

In the blink of an eye, the collegiate academic year was relegated to online courses due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March. No campus life. No spring sports or activities. No May commencement.

In the midst of the chaos, Christian Union Universities transitioned to an online ministry—Bible courses, Leadership Lecture Series, and mentoring sessions were hosted online via Zoom and other portals. Ministry Fellows were there to provide continuity by shepherding students and offering counsel to those grieving over what was lost.

Christian Union Lux Helps Produce National Event

By Tom Campisi, Managing Editor

Christian Union Lux was honored to host the Collegiate Day of Prayer at Yale University on the evening of February 27 in Dwight Chapel. The two-hour event assembled Yale ministries in united prayer, worship, and exhortation from Scripture, and also served as the national broadcast for over forty thousand online viewers.

Over two hundred years ago, Yale, along with Williams College, Brown University, and Middlebury College, established the Collegiate Day of Prayer as a regular event on their campuses. By 1823, almost every major denomination and university in America “embraced the practice of a concerted day of prayer for colleges,” according to the Collegiate Day of Prayer Web site. The event lasted for about a hundred years and helped fan the flame of various revivals and awakenings on campus.

May 30, 2020 and May 31, 2020

Strong Roots Help Sharla Moody ’22 Find Her Place at Yale

by kayla bartsch, yale ’20

While the rural hills of southern Ohio may seem a world away from the ivory towers of Yale University, Sharla Moody ’22 bridges the two with thoughtfulness and grace.

When she came to campus as a first-year in 2018, Moody’s transition to college life was starker than that of most Yale undergraduates. Her hometown, Gallipolis, Ohio, is nestled on the northern banks of the Ohio River, facing the shores of West Virginia to the south. Gallipolis is something of a quintessential Appalachian town, home to picturesque river valley views, a charming Main Street, and about 3,500 residents.

However, having experienced a slow and steady decline in its population since the 1960s, Gallipolis faces the same trials as other Appalachian towns in contemporary American life. From this quiet, tight-knit community, Moody was thrown into a loud, heterogenous, and opulent campus. 

Yet, even if unconventional, Moody’s path to Yale from small-town Ohio seems providential. In her junior year of high school, she read Hillbilly Elegy– a memoir written by J. D. Vance, a Yale Law school graduate from a small town in Ohio similar to Moody’s. The book, lauded for its raw depiction of the cultural and economic decay faced by the rural, white working class, became a near-instant best-seller.

Vita et Veritas

By Luke Brown, Dartmouth ’18

Yale students are seeking to change the moral, cultural, and political landscape surrounding abortion on their campus and beyond. 

Through Vita et Veritas, a pro-life conference in its seventh year, the student organizers from Choose Life at Yale (CLAY) aimed to provide a venue for thoughtful, productive, and nonpartisan discussion of the abortion issue and its broader implications for scholars, activists, and students. CLAY members “believe the right to life is fundamental, and we design our conference to help and inspire others to advocate for the lives of the unborn,” according to its website.

Christian Union Fall Conference Energizes Yale Students

Students involved with Christian Union’s ministry at Yale College displayed a penchant for prayer and a sensitivity to promptings of the Holy Spirit in the fall semester. 

“There is a corporate sense of expectation for God to move in more profound ways,” said Clay Cromer, ministry director of Christian Union Lux.

In Memoriam: John Aroutiounian 

By Kayla Bartsch, Yale ’20

Credit: Big Think

John Aroutiounian was remembered as a Christian who made an impact on campus.

The first time I met John Aroutiounian was at an alumni reunion for the Federalist Party, my debating society within the Yale Political Union. He gallivanted into our makeshift debate hall  wearing a black cloak, his signature horn-rimmed spectacles, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. On the debate floor, he commanded attention by his unmatched eloquence and exuberance. With a coy smile and the gargantuan lexicon of an accomplished polyglot, he ravaged the position of his opponents, nonchalantly weaving in historical anecdotes about the bygone Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia to accentuate his point. John, however, wreaked destruction in a manner so charismatic and so kind, that his opposition often found themselves conceding with a smile.

Christian Union at Yale Hosts Forum

by cassandra hsiao, yale ’21

On a rainy Friday evening in April, a hundred people gathered in Battell Chapel at Yale University to hear the answer to the pressing question: “Why suffering?”

Christians and skeptics alike have grappled with this question for centuries—how could a loving God allow for the existence of suffering? At a forum hosted by Christian Union, Vince Vitale and Michael Suderman of the Ravi Zacharias Institute presented some profound answers.

Vitale, educated at Princeton (’04) and Oxford, is the director of the Zacharias Institute. Along with Suderman, he has been traveling across the country, giving lectures at churches and college campuses alike.

Your Gift by June 30 Will Share Gospel and Change Lives

Q and A with Lisa Schultz

At Christian Union’s Nexus Student Conference in February, Schultz was a member of the law and government panel during the vocational breakout sessions.