InterVarsity Christian Fellowship brought its national office to Madison in 1969; for many years it was located just a block off the UW campus in a former sorority house on Langdon Street. Today InterVarsity is located in a modern office building at University Research Park, and as of Wednesday has a new president.
Tom Lin, the first full InterVarsity president to be selected from within the organization, now heads the campus ministry with 150 local staff who serve almost 1,500 field staff located on 669 campuses across the country.
Pastors from a variety of churches in the Madison area attended the commissioning service at InterVarsity. Local InterVarsity staff attend many of those churches.
Lin, who is 43 years old, grew up in the Chicago area, the son of Taiwanese immigrants. His parents sacrificed to send him to Harvard University, and his decision to answer God’s call to campus ministry through InterVarsity was not an easy one for them to accept. But he was pleased that his father reacted positively to his appointment as president.
“He said it was an honor to be a part of something that is so important in the world of students,” Lin said. “And it is an honor to be able to love students and faculty every day. Everywhere I go I hear about the impact that InterVarsity had made.” He related that he had just returned from speaking in South Korea, where his Korean interpreter had said how he became a follower of Jesus through InterVarsity’s international student ministry as a student in the U.S.
In addition to the word honor, Lin also chose to focus on hope in his remarks. “In the midst of the challenges of a difficult environment, we have real hope,” he said. He related the hope that had encouraged him through difficult times of planting an InterVarsity chapter in Boston two decades ago, and later helping establish student ministry in Mongolia through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. “We are poised not only for growth but to be people of hope in a world that desperately needs it,” he said.
Tom Lin succeeds Jim Lundgren, who served as interim president for one year after Alec Hill stepped down due to health problems. For more information on InterVarsity’s campus ministry, go to www.intervarsity.org.