[00:00:00] Chealsia: When I first became a Christian, I remember hearing others say that all you need is God. I even remember being asked in a sermon, if you lost all your friends, would you be content with God alone? At first, it seemed like the right answer was yes, but then I started to wonder, why did God look at Adam in the garden and say, it’s not good for man to be alone?

[00:00:28] Hung Lu: When we talk about our faith, sometimes I think we’ll talk about it more individualistically.

Like, this is my faith. This is my God. But when I look throughout scripture, it’s both /and.

For the introvert, like myself, like I need to be alone so that I have capacity to be with a group of people because I know I need them.

[00:00:52] Chealsia: That’s Hung Lu. He has more than 19 years of ministry experience and now provides care for missionaries on the margins. I talked to him about our God-given need for communal care.

Hung shares his own experiences and also helps you know how to form a community of healing and growth in your own life.

Welcome to the Created For podcast, a space where our everyday lives intersect with God’s redemptive story. I’m your host, Chealsia Smedley

Today, I get to introduce you to Hung Lu. Hung has been in full-time ministry with Cru for 19 years and currently serves as a spiritual care collaborator for staff on the margins. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife Jenny and three kids and is passionate about journeying with people to help them find hope and redemption in their stories.

I’m especially excited to talk to Hung today. Even though we haven’t interacted much, in our few interactions, I have always felt cared for, and I deeply respect him as he has been influential in the lives of people who have impacted me. And so, as we talk about spiritual care and practices in the context of community, I’m excited to learn from Hung.

So, Hung, it’s so great to have you here. Thank you for coming.

[00:02:10] Hung Lu: Thank you for having me. It’s so exciting to be here as well.

[00:02:13] Chealsia: Yeah, so I know I just introduced you, but is there anything that when people first meet you that you want them to know about you?

[00:02:21] Hung Lu: Yeah, so a couple things. I think one is that I love coffee. I’m a coffee snob. I have eight different ways to make my coffee, and the other part is that I think and dream in a different language.

[00:02:36] Chealsia: Oh, what language is that?

[00:02:38] Hung Lu: Uh, Vietnamese and Chinese.

[00:02:39] Chealsia: Okay. So, is that your background?

[00:02:42] Hung Lu: Mhm. So, my parents immigrated here from Vietnam, a little bit after the Vietnam War.

[00:02:47] Chealsia: Wow. And so your parents are Vietnamese, um, but also ethnically Chinese, or what’s the connection?

[00:02:54] Hung Lu: Yep. Yep. Mhm.

[00:02:56] Chealsia: Great, and so were those your first two languages then?

[00:02:59] Hung Lu: Yes. Very much so in our house. Mhm.

[00:03:01] Chealsia: Wow, I didn’t know that.

[00:03:03] Hung Lu: Yeah. Heh.

[00:03:03] Chealsia: That’s very cool. I’m curious with your work as a spiritual care collaborator for staff on the margins. Can you explain what that looks like?

[00:03:13] Hung Lu: Yeah, so I lead with Dominique Dawson, and our mission, in our role, is to resource, support, and shepherd historically marginalized staff to stay connected to Jesus, grow in their self-awareness, and establish healthy community.

So, our role is pretty new. So, this is my third year being in this role.

One of the things we do is we try to collaborate with different staff, care people to care, but even in the sense of, I think in the last three years for a lot of us, just walking with the Lord has been really hard, or even a lot of things we have learned about ourselves during the pandemic:

How to care for ourselves but even now, what does it look like to engage in communities? And I think being in this role is helping me see a lot of different things. I think people have experienced during that time, including loneliness. mental health.

[00:04:05] Chealsia: Yeah. Yeah, what a time to enter a role of spiritual care, like in the midst of the pandemic,

[00:04:13] Hung Lu: Yes.

[00:04:13] Chealsia: When everyone is like, like you said, isolated and lonely and like, how do I help people to walk with Jesus but then also engage in community? Like that part especially. When we aren’t able to interact with each other in the same ways.

And so, um, I would like to hear a little bit about, like, the community aspect, like how I know that when I approached you for this episode, I was thinking about talking about communal care. And that’s a word that, at first, I was like, did I make that up? Is that a real thing? And then kind of was doing some research and realized like, okay, like we have self-care, we have soul care like people know kind of those words.

But this idea of communal care has also been showing up in nonprofit and protest spaces. And so, could you describe a little bit more about communal care and why it’s important for us?

[00:05:07] Hung Lu: So when I think about communal care, I think with this generation, community is hard. I think there’s a trust factor. It’s hard to get people’s trust and for them to know that this person cares for them. I had trust issues growing up and even into my adult life.

But there was something about the pandemic that I think elevated that. That I had two choices. Either I stay in isolation, and it’s just me and my family. I don’t see anybody. Or, I actually know that I need people. 

But when I think about communal care, is a place where people are getting to know you but also know you. They’re walking with you, and they’re learning how to sit with you in the hard things. 

In my own experience during the pandemic, I had a small group of people, but God blessed me in that season with a group of people of color that we met together, once a month, on Zoom. All of us were in different places, and we journeyed together, I think, for about a year and a half during the pandemic. Like in that season, all of us came in hurt, broken, just a lot of things going on with the news, with different protests.

I think for me, experiencing Asian hate in my own city. Each person in that group cared for me in different ways. Whether it’s encouraging words, whether it’s, acts of giving, or acts of service. And sometimes we don’t know we need that. 

That communal care or that group of people changed my life, changed the way I looked at friendships, changed the way I know how to care for people—changed the way my thought process of how do I see people. And one of the things I think I’m realizing more and more it’s hard to make friends as an adult.

And I think that’s something I think for me in communal care, you don’t have to have all together. 

[00:07:12] Chealsia: Yeah. what I’m hearing you say is communal care is being with a group of people where it’s like, okay, I can be vulnerable; we’re going to be caring for one another. That even expresses a sense of acknowledging your need for other people and then being able to kind of in whatever way that looks like for you, whether that’s doing something, an act of service, or even just like learning each other like I think that even speaks volumes. And so, can you give an example of you said that this group changed you? Can you give us an example of how it changed you, or maybe is there a story that comes to mind?

[00:07:48] Hung Lu: Yeah. I think with everything that has happened, like from injustices that we see in the world to each of us experiencing hurt and brokenness in our jobs, in our families. I always felt like I could be myself, but two, I think how that they changed me is, is the things that they saw in me, in my hurt. That even changed the way I learned how to engage in people’s pain. 

And how to sit with people. So where I experienced racism while shopping at a grocery store, um, and I remember telling the group, and I just remember, just texts from the group and just how they cared. Like, we see you, we… Man, it’s not just in the sense that we’re sorry that this happened for you, but they were creating space to even talk about it.

And I felt like I could talk about it. And this whole group was all people of color, and the other part of it, why we came together to really learn about each other’s ethnic backgrounds. And so this group was made up of Black and Asian. And so there was a lot of history we learned together.

I think one fun thing that we did, well, I kind of fell asleep. But we, uh, but we watched a movie together. I watched about half the movie. But we watched, like a very old Cinderella movie, I think. 

[00:09:19] Chealsia: With Whitney Houston?

[00:09:21] Hung Lu: No, maybe it’s… No, Brandy. 

[00:09:23] Chealsia: Brandy and Whitney Houston, yeah, yeah 

yeah 

[00:09:25] Hung Lu: Yeah, and so I remember us all watching that on Zoom, and I think that was just fun. I think just seeing each other… It’s like we tried to make it work. We did a, a Christmas exchange. Even one year and we sent each other gifts, and I think about that group. They changed me as it’s like Hung, you, one, you have so much to offer people, but two, you have a place here. I wouldn’t say I was close to everyone, but I think all of us brought something out of each of us in a different way. Um, it is what I needed at that time, in that season, during the pandemic. I would never forget that time. 

[00:10:05] Chealsia: So what’s the difference between a communal care group like this and a small group or a Bible study?

[00:10:12] Hung Lu: I think communal care can happen in Bible study, but what I’ve seen in the intentionality and the space that is created to be my true self. I think in a small group of Bible study, some of that takes time, but even some of that just doesn’t happen.

With a communal care group, I think it’s a place where you can be yourself, and obviously, it takes time to get there. But I would say one of the big things with the communal care is that it’s a space where I can come in and not say something, and somebody knows something’s wrong. They’re not trying to fix me. They’re not trying to throw Bible passages at me. But they are sitting and listening. 

So, if you’ve ever taken Strength Finders, I always thought I had empathy. But empathy was the very last thing on there, on the Strength Finders list. But I think being part of this group, and then even taking the certification through The Allender Center on trauma narrative care, I grew in empathy.

There was a lot of skills that I learned during the communal care. 

There was just something about this group, and this season with where we are at made it just very easy to engage, like I didn’t have to have a lot of small talk to get there.

I think where small groups and Bible studies, sometimes it falls on the facilitator or the person leading to try to create that space. But I think where this group, we had two people who initiated it, but the group itself created that communal care together. And each person led differently; each person engaged differently.

[00:12:01] Chealsia: Hmm.

[00:12:02] Hung Lu: Whereas Bible study and small group, there’s always two people leading or one person leading, but sometimes they feel the responsibility to create that space, and that’s hard. 

[00:12:11] Chealsia: Yeah, we want to care for people well, we want to be able to walk alongside people, and I think that often, though, either you don’t know what to say. Or, like you, you mentioned kind of like throwing Bible verses. I know I’ve been in places where I felt that or like I’ve been worried to do that, and so what advice would you give someone who is listening and is thinking like, okay, how can I come alongside the people in my life currently better? 

[00:12:37] Hung Lu: One of the tips, and this is, I think, very simple as you’re asking someone how they are doing, do not be afraid to ask more questions. Sometimes, with how are you, sometimes people it’s like, oh, I’m good. And I think this is a skillset of like, oh, what has been good or man, this has been a hard week. Well, if you don’t mind sharing, like why it’s been a hard week?

And obviously, I think there has to be a sense of trust, but it’s also, I think, for the people I have cared for in my own self-care. I always have to ask myself. Do I have capacity right now? Not that I don’t care for them, but even what I’ve learned about myself is I can’t sit with everybody because sometimes I don’t have that capacity because there’s things going on in my own life or I don’t know what to say to that and, that’s okay. But I think a simple thing is how do I sit with a person? And to sit with a person is, it may be in silence.

And I say this a lot: it’s like, let’s not whip out a Bible verse right away.

If a person is crying and they’re not afraid of physical touch, what does it look like for me to put my hand on their shoulder and grieve with them? When I think about how Jesus engaged with people, people of different backgrounds, people of different parts of society, he didn’t just come in, and it’s like, oh, you’re sinning or you’re doing this. But he actually sat with people. And I think the other part is knowing how to ask clarifying questions. I’m going to make mistakes. 

[00:14:06] Chealsia: Right. 

[00:14:06] Hung Lu: I’m going to ask dumb questions. And if I do, I need to own up to that. And it’s like, Hey, I’m sorry. And I use this phrase quite a bit is that wasn’t my intent, but I know it impacted you in some way in how I asked that question.

And sometimes that part of me is like, I need to own up to that which I have had to do that a lot cause I’m learning.

[00:14:25] Chealsia: Yeah. I like that too of the impact, over intent, instead of saying, I didn’t mean to, 

[00:14:30] Hung Lu: Yup. 

[00:14:30] Chealsia: Recognizing and validating someone’s experience.

[00:14:34] Hung Lu: Um, So I would say, ask curious questions. So, part of me being in The Allender Center was one of the things I learned is how things affect your body. So some of my friends kind of teased me, and I was like, you always ask this body question, like how’s your.. 

[00:14:49] Chealsia: Heheh. 

[00:14:49] Hung Lu: body feeling as you’re telling me this? And they’re like, and they know I was part of Allender Center. It’s like, stop Allender Centering me, and you know, but it’s like, but it does play a role, and part of that is like, how do I help the person I’m trying to care for process that? Sometimes they may be ready, sometimes maybe not, and I have to be okay, and I always ask for permission.

If you’re willing to talk about it, I would love to hear more. And I would say when you say I want to hear more. And I’m still growing in this, is I’m giving them my full attention. I’m not looking around or have my phone out. Again, I’m guilty of that, and I’m still growing in that as I share this with you, of not just asking good questions but asking curious questions that helps the person to see. This person really wants to know. And I would say this is hard. Especially for a guy, I can speak for myself. It’s like we like to fix things but not fix it.

[00:15:45] Chealsia: Mhm.

[00:15:45] Hung Lu: Like don’t, oh, have you thought about this? Have you? I think as I get to know the person or the person I’m trying to care for, I may ask questions, it’s like, what would be helpful for you right now? Like, that’s a simple question. What would be helpful for you right now? It’s like, and not just giving my answers or giving my opinion. Because I think someone wants someone to care for them, not to try to fix them. 

[00:16:12] Chealsia: Yeah. 

[00:16:12] Hung Lu: And not to try to take away what they’re going through. 

[00:16:15] Chealsia: Yeah, I think there’s something really powerful about being able to sit in the dissonance with someone. So, with this conversation, we all know that we need community. Like, we want belonging, we want support, but it can be hard to find the kind of community that we’re talking about here. Do you have any advice for people who are wondering, okay, how do I find this? Like, where do I find this? And then, if it’s not around me, how do I start this?

[00:16:51] Hung Lu: So two things I think I have arrived in this is, and I don’t think there’s a clear-cut answer. I think one is how do you put yourself out there and introducing yourself both at church. But here’s the other part about communal care. There are some non-believers I know who don’t believe in Jesus but are part of communal care.

We care for each other in different ways of doing things for each other, or like they know I’m a Christian, they know what I believe in, but how we care for each other is we just ask how each other are. And I was like, I’m praying for you for this. And they appreciate that, even though they don’t believe. Sometimes, there’s like, hey, I know it’s been a hard week. Here is, … a couple of them have given me $25 Starbucks gift cards. 

Like, they just sent it to me. So I think one is putting yourself out there, and it’s hard. Making friends as an adult is really hard, and sometimes it just takes a lot of energy. Be gracious with yourself.

Finding community is going to be hard, and it’s going to take time. But when you do find it, you will know how much it means to you and how much you long for it. We have to be intentional. I can’t wait for somebody to reach out to me. Uh, a saying that somebody from my church said, that his mentor said to him, said, you know when you think about in church about a certain person that you want to become friends with, but you never reach out to them.

Or you think that people should reach out to you? His mentor said, what if that person or these people are waiting for you to reach out to them? Why are you waiting for them to reach out to you? I think it’s the other way around as well.

And with my friends that I have right now, how do I tell them that this is kind of what I need? Can we put a group together for this season? It, again, it’s being gracious with yourself, and it takes time. For me, as I’m doing this, I need other people in. It’s never you should, oh I should create this community, but then no one’s pouring back into me, no one’s caring for me, because you’re gonna get hurt, and you’re gonna get burnt out. You’re gonna go back in isolation.

Because I think people who go back in isolation, I would say, sometimes, there has been hurt. They have put themselves out there, they have been harmed, they have… been mistreated, and it’s hard. 

[00:19:13] Chealsia: Yeah, it is hard. And I think a lot of people have probably experienced that. It’s difficult to put yourself out there. Something that I did appreciate about what you said earlier was this helpful shift, the idea of like reaching out to a friend and saying like, hey, I’m recognizing that I need community around this or help around this and being willing to start from a place of vulnerability rather than saying,

I’m offering something that’s for you. Take this. Um, or just saying like, hey, can you help me gather some people around who might also feel the same way that I’m feeling like I think it’s just really helpful and a good shift as we think about communal care, not being like one person leading, like you said earlier about the Bible study potentially, but being more about the community members pulling together to help each other. 

[00:20:03] Hung Lu: Yeah, 

[00:20:04] Chealsia: How do we temper our expectations? Because I feel a tension of like, okay, I’m gonna tell my friend that I’m really struggling in this area, and then if they don’t respond or, you know, like, 

[00:20:16] Hung Lu: hmm. Mm hmm. 

[00:20:17] Chealsia: I want to start this group, but I don’t really know what this group looks like. 

[00:20:21] Hung Lu: Mm 

[00:20:21] Chealsia: How do we move forward? 

[00:20:24] Hung Lu: For our group, the two people that started the group just had mutual relationships with different people, and I was privileged. I was actually shocked when I got invited. And I was like, oh, cause some of these people I looked up to in different ways, and some people I just got to know more. And so it was just by invitation of, they knew the person’s story. They knew things about their life. It’s like this group may be something that you’re looking for, and I think as we talk about expectation, one thing our group did, if I remember correctly, is we talked about the things we valued. What do we hope for the group? And we always said, I always said, in this season. Because I know it’s like, it’s not going to be forever. Because I think, you know, some people go in different stages of life, different parts, and so I think talking about that, what are we valuing? Like, as this group comes together, and I think what I also loved about the group is it’s a different train of thought.

We all didn’t think the same. Some of us did. Some of us did not. And I think being okay with that, I, I, always make the joke, it’s like, I would be so boring if it’s just me with myself. Like everyone who thinks like me, it’s just I’d probably have fun, but it’d be a boring group. And so I think part of communal care is, I think, I would recommend is people who think differently what care looks like or what this group can mean to them because I think that’s how we grow. Sometimes, we don’t know what we need until someone else in the group may think differently or say something differently. It’s like, oh, you’re putting words into what I’ve been feeling.

[00:22:01] Chealsia: Yeah, so your group was Black people and Asian people who were like, hey, we’re going to come together, and we’re going to learn about each other’s stories and kind of share experiences. What are some other things that you would recommend someone maybe starting a group over or examples? 

[00:22:17] Hung Lu: Yeah, examples. I’ve known some Asian communities have come together to talk about mental health because all of them are struggling through it, and they’re reading a book about it. 

Another group would be a different type of family. So when we think of family, sometimes we think of a mom and a dad or just parents. But when I think about family, family can mean a lot of different things. It can be singles; it can be engaged. It can be widowed. But it’s a group of people that are trying to be there for each other.

The group I told you about, we were always there for each other in the hard things. And we celebrated the good things. It’s like… When this person did this or, uh, got this job, we celebrated. We were there. This group that I’m telling you about, I think of the word family a lot because of what we did. 

We all need community. We all need people, and I will say this: marriage doesn’t fix that. Sometimes we think marriage is like if I’m married, I have somebody, I’m good. No. In marriage, you continue to learn about your relationship. You continue to learn about your spouse. But you also both need community in different ways.

So don’t think marriage and you have kids that fixes things. It doesn’t. It makes things a little bit more complicated in how you find friends and hang out with people. But my wife needs community. I need community. We need community together, and we also need community separately. I think it’s both/and.

I don’t think it’s one or the other. 

[00:23:52] Chealsia: So I’m curious for you: is there something that has kind of helped this come alive for you? Um, maybe a spiritual practice? 

[00:24:00] Hung Lu: I would say a spiritual practice for me is this idea of spiritual formation. As we talk about spiritual formation, I think that’s something a lot of people don’t know what it is. 

So it’s like, what’s spiritual formation?

[00:24:12] Chealsia: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:12] Hung Lu: I think about that as we all are formed by something. Whether it’s social media, whether it’s our career, whether it’s family, whether it’s longings, and so I have a book, it’s called 100 Spiritual Disciplines.

One is prayer, engaging the word, your own care. It’s a book that I come back to a lot, both in discipleship but even in my own growth. But in this season I’m in right now, it’s a lot of spiritual breathing. And so it’s, I do this a lot every morning, uh, where I would put my hands on my knees, and I would sit quietly, and I would count backwards,

Like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then I would inhale, and then I would count again. I would hold it, count again, backwards, and then I would exhale. This helps center me as I’m engaging my day. And this is something I try to do a lot as I’m caring for people, and I just say a simple prayer.

I just normally just say, Lord, would you be with me? I know you see me. I know you are not distant, and I know that you care. Help me to go about my day. He is the Lord that sees, he’s the Lord that knows, he’s the Lord that’s not distant. And I started putting this spiritual practice in last year after I dropped my kids off at school. I would go try to sit in silence, even if it’s five minutes. And I try to do that at least two or three times a day, and that’s, that’s a spiritual practice I’ve done a lot in this season. That’s why I recommend that resource a lot. Cause there’s so many things you just learn. and it makes it very simple, and it gives you practical things to do.

[00:26:06] Chealsia: Yeah, and what I like about that, it sounds like the same thing that you are doing with other people, you’re doing with God first, the prayer of, God, I know you see me, you care, like, those are the same things that you want to impart, when you’re, in these groups.

[00:26:23] Hung Lu: Right. 

[00:26:23] Chealsia: Yeah, I think that’s really cool.

[00:26:26] Chealsia: Hung shared some things that were really encouraging to me as I pursue communal care in my own life, and I hope they were encouraging to you too. Know that it will be difficult, and there might be some serious bumps along the way, but let’s consider taking one small step together. It could be talking to that person at church that you wanted to befriend, sending a gift card to a co-worker, or a neighbor who’s been having a rough time. Or even reaching out to a friend that you already have and telling them about a need in your life and asking if they’d gather people with you. As you take these steps, remember that you were created for community and that God knows that you need other people, and he knows which people need you.

And as you pursue communal care, take with you the truths in Hung’s prayer. God is and will be with you. He sees you. He is close and not distant, and he cares.

Thanks for listening to the Created For podcast. For more ways to continue journeying with us, hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check out the show notes for any links we mentioned, and go to cru.org/createdfor for a guided reflection based on this episode.