Charlottesville, VA
Tim Choi
My goal in life was to make it big: rich, powerful, and famous enough for Time Magazine to write my obituary. I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, but dreamed of getting to the big city to make my mark. My parents both attended Southern Seminary and served at different churches, so church was a big part of my upbringing. I experienced everything from a small, cozy ethnic church where I couldn’t understand what was going on to a 30,000-person megachurch with breathtaking programming. I even attended a Billy Graham crusade during his final tour, where my mom decided my sister and I would walk up for prayer—whether we liked it or not. Being a Christian was a big part of my identity growing up.
But that identity began to unravel toward the end of high school. The life goals I absorbed from movies and TV made Christianity seem irrelevant, and I had growing intellectual questions I couldn’t resolve. More than anything, Christian life simply didn’t seem compelling enough to stick with. I was more apologetic about church to my friends than proud of it. So when I left for college, I consciously chose to leave the church and start fresh. I made it official by putting my Bible on my bookshelf next to my childhood books before leaving.
To my surprise, it didn’t last long. On the day I arrived at UC Berkeley, I met some mentors from our church playing basketball, and it became a life-changing experience. I was drawn into a community of people trying to live out Christian life in every area. The next four years completely changed the trajectory of my life as I discovered how big the gospel really is and began to understand God’s plan for my life.
Since then, I’ve been involved in college ministry and church planting in SF, LA, Seattle, NYC, and now Virginia.
Lydia Choi
I come from San Francisco and was raised in a Christian family, so Christianity and the church were familiar to me from a young age. But it wasn't until my tumultuous middle school years that I began to understand how the gospel was personally relevant to me, and in 7th grade, I began my relationship with Jesus.
Middle and high school were challenging as I wrestled with what I genuinely believed, especially immersed in San Francisco culture. But at UC Berkeley, I gained a deeper understanding of what it meant to live out the gospel. Through close Christian community, I experienced the joy of Christian life, the thrill of ministry, and a vision for a life centered on something much bigger than myself.
I also came to appreciate the blessing of growing up in an Acts 2 church—surrounded by people committed to sharing the gospel and living it out together in close-knit community. I realized how much others needed this kind of life-changing, gospel-centered community, especially college students.
Since graduating, I've served in college ministry, reaching out to and mentoring students like myself. Along with my husband Tim, I've served in campus ministries at UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Washington, SFSU, Stony Brook, NYU, Columbia, and University of Virginia.