OVERVIEW

This discipleship resource guides users to explore Epic’s vision statement, “Asian American movements mobilized to take their place in God’s redemptive mission”. The hope is that this would be an introduction and overview of ways to engage and understand the Asian American faith. This is created to be used sequentially as each resource helps build upon one another. However, as you become more familiar with the content, it can also be used individually.

Asian Americans: Starting with the big picture of Asian American history, this section helps students begin to familiarize themselves with the Asian American story and how they fit into it. This will help give language and stories to better communicate and understand this part of their identity.

God’s Redemptive Mission: This section guides students in understanding the meaning of this mission as Asian Americans. With that foundation, they are then led to engage in the four types of relationships that pertain to God’s redemptive mission: God, self, others, and creation.

Mobilized to Take Their Place: After building upon their identity as Asian Americans and how that engages with God and his redemptive mission, these sections walk students through understanding their place in this mission and how to actively engage with that.

HOW TO USE THE CONTENT

Prep

Before meeting with the student, read through the content ahead of time to get familiar. It’s recommended that you personally read through or skim over the 2-3 resources in each section before beginning in order to cast vision well for the student over the next few weeks.

Content

Each resource was written and created uniquely to best fit the topic and allow students to engage with content in creative ways. Therefore each one will look a little different.

To use this, you will read straight through the “Outcomes” and “Why” section first to cast vision. The rest of the content is made to be interactive online, so you can click through each section from top to bottom and then read through the content and discuss it as written together with your disciple(s).

If at any point, the content in this resource is new to your student, feel free to slow down and take time to provide more context before moving forward.

• Emotion Wheel Resource: Some of the content will ask students to engage in identifying their feelings and emotions. We understand that it can be difficult to communicate and have accurate language for, so we’ve included this emotion wheel as a helpful resource. Don’t be surprised if identifying feelings is challenging at first, but we encourage you to press into where you’re at alongside your students.
• Further Resources: These are some optional resources that your student can check out in order to dive deeper into the content in their free time.

Additional Resources

We hope to platform and make known resources and content written by and created by Asian Americans. Many of these resources will come from faith communities, but not all of them will. This will be continually updated with more resources as time goes on. If you have any suggestions to add, let us know in the feedback form.

Write Down Your Thoughts (optional)

As you go through this content with your student(s), we encourage you to have them write down their answers to a few of the questions or even a reflective summary of what they learned in each section.

As we continue to grow and mature in life, our place in God’s redemptive mission will also change. As we become more aware of our stories, our perspective in life changes and so does our understanding of who we are and what we bring. Our social location also changes as we journey through life and the needs of those around us changes. Even though God’s redemptive mission stays the same and we are continuously invited to participate with God, the ways we participate, our place, is dynamic. It is a journey we are all on in continually reflecting on what God is doing, what God is inviting us to engage with, and how we want to respond to that invitation.

Writing these thoughts down can be a helpful way to reflect on the content, as well as give them a place to look back on in a year or two as they continue to grow and learn more about themselves, God, and the world as Asian Americans. This is a discipleship resource that can be used multiple times throughout the years, and each time can evoke different responses and perspectives.