A Space of Belonging: The Navigators ASAM Network

“All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name” Psalm 86:9 (NIV).

A pastor’s daughter in the Chinese Christian church environment, Esther Chan grew up familiar with what it meant to follow Jesus.

Going to multiple services every Sunday — in English and Chinese — Esther was raised in a culture of serving and spiritual leadership. However, as she entered college and stepped away from home, she began to realize she was burnt out and going through the motions.

“I felt like I was treating faith as an extracurricular,” she remembers. “I would serve, but struggled with spiritual disciplines, and I was feeling discouraged. And then God put the word ‘discipleship’ on my mind as a freshman. I needed someone older in the faith to teach me.”

When Esther showed up at the University of California, Davis, she was immediately intrigued by The Navigators ministry on campus. The first week of class, Navigator students were passing out free t-shirts to anyone who would stop and interact with The Bridge to Life illustration.

“I left that conversation thinking, ‘Wow, this fellowship is serious about God and the gospel!’” she says. “I was so impressed. From this encounter, I joined a women’s Bible study, started going to Nav Nights, and attended fall retreat.”

As Esther got more involved, she started to be discipled by a Navigator named Juliana. “She was also Asian American, and she met with me every week for my first two years of college,” Esther says. “She holistically helped me in faith in innumerable ways.” Juliana taught Esther how to evangelize and share her faith with others, and soon, Esther gained a heart for reaching the lost and started discipling other students too.

ASAM: Helping Navigators Feel Seen and Heard

When Esther joined the community of The Navigators, it was the first time she had stepped into an environment that was culturally diverse. Up until that point, she had spent most of her life with Chinese Christians.

“It was an intentional step of courage for me,” she recalls. “But I knew Heaven isn’t going to just be Chinese people, so I needed to meet other brothers and sisters in Christ. I could see God through other people’s cultures, but it was really hard for me.”

After Esther’s freshman year, she spent her summer attending a Navigators Summer Training Program (STP). As she navigated new relationships outside her cultural norm, she felt like a fish out of water — all the other students were talking about shows she had never watched, jumping from one conversation to the next — and Esther scrambled to feel like she was fitting in. “I felt like there was nowhere for me to contribute,” she says. “It was mentally exhausting, and I was feeling so discouraged.”

One day that summer, Navigator David Sasaki came to visit. A fellow Asian American, David sat with Esther and another Asian American student from the STP, and he listened to them while they cried and shared their experiences. “He was such a comforting presence,” Esther remembers. “He encouraged us and was a listening ear to how hard the summer had been. It meant so much to me at that time.”

Esther’s experience as a student — of having a safe space to culturally relate and encourage and share experiences — is a small glimpse of the bigger picture that the Navigators Asian American (ASAM) Network is hoping to accomplish. ASAM, along with other cultural networks within The Navigators (LaVida, AFAM, and Native Nations), was created to be a distinct community for Asian American Navigators to lift each other up, experience cultural understanding, and advocate for each other within the larger Navigator family.

“We ask ourselves, what do our Asian American Navigator staff need?” James Tsang, the co-director for the ASAM Network, says. “How do we shepherd and care for and develop our Asian American staff? We wanted to create spaces for that nationally.”

A large focus of ASAM is mentorship: having veteran staff pouring into younger staff, and staff pouring into students. This past November, ASAM launched a new mentorship program called “GenerAsians,” where Asian American staff are paired up to walk alongside and support each other throughout the year.

“We’ve already had one mentee in the program say, ‘I’ve been praying someone would come alongside me and help me grow, and in particular, someone that would understand my cultural background,’” James shares. “That was so encouraging for us to hear. God is doing something, and we get to be a part of it.”

Mentorship That Multiplies

Now Esther is on staff with The Navigators, helping pioneer a college ministry at Sacramento State. Over the past two years on campus, she’s seen the Lord grow their budding ministry — from simply trying to meet students through playing spike ball to now hosting Nav Nights with 20 to 30 students each week.

Throughout her years of ministry, she has learned many lessons from other staff within ASAM: from how to fundraise within an Asian American context to seeing how the Lord moves within diverse cultural environments. Now, she is starting to pass along what she’s learned to the students she disciples.

For example, one of Esther’s students is a Nigerian international student named Seven. When Seven went to a Navigators fall retreat, she was surprised to realize that she was the only black woman in the room. When she confided feeling out of place to Esther, Esther first encouraged her, acknowledging that it’s hard to feel different than those around you, even when you are united in faith. But then, Esther challenged her: “If you want to see more black women in this room one day, let’s go seek them out when we get back on campus.” Now, Seven has gotten involved with the Nigerian Student Association on campus, and has started inviting them into her Navigator circles.

“I told her, maybe there’s no other Nigerian Christian on campus who is willing to break into this space, but you are walking so they can run,” Esther explains. “It turned a moment of isolation into a moment of empowerment. If I didn’t have ASAM to teach me some of that first — how to mentor people of color in minority spaces, even if they aren’t Asian American — I would have had nothing to pass on at that moment.”

For James, ASAM has become a family, providing spiritual parents and siblings who have pointed him to faith, mentored him, and encouraged him in his walk to make disciples. Through ASAM, he hopes that legacy will continue as Navigators help others “to know Christ, make Him known, and help others do the same^®” in every culture and nation.

“We are all about disciplemaking, but to ignore our cultural diversity would be a really big loss,” James says. “I appreciate that our leadership has rallied behind and been advocates for the networks, and I believe The Navigator organization will be blessed as a result — and that the Kingdom will be blessed beyond.”

Discipleship Tip:

Create intentional space to know people beyond the surface — including their cultural backgrounds, stories, and experiences. When people feel seen and understood, they’re more open to spiritual growth. Discipleship that listens well builds trust and multiplies impact.