Christopher M. The (pronounced ‘tay’) equips ATS member schools to improve and enhance their educational missions by gathering, analyzing, and disseminating insights from student data. As director of student research and initiative management, he also oversees the virtual infrastructure for ATS grant-funded initiatives and liaises with coordination program personnel for the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative of the Lilly Endowment Inc. He came to ATS in 2017, having served multivocational roles in student services (Fuller Theological Seminary, Azusa Pacific University) and student/young adult ministry at an Indonesian American congregation in the American Baptist tradition. Prior to 2022, he served the ATS Commission on Accrediting as director of commission information services.
A former English Ministry pastor at two Asian American churches in Southern California, The was raised in a Chinese-Indonesian immigrant congregation in the Reformed tradition and later ordained to ministry by a Chinese/Taiwanese church in the Pentecostal tradition. A selected participant in the 2014 Summit for Future Theological Educators of Color and Summit on Christian Leadership (Forum for Theological Exploration), he was named a 2016 fellow of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) and represents the Religious Liberty Council on the BJC board of directors. He has published refereed articles and contributed to book chapters on resourcing immigrant churches for civic engagement, leveraging evaluative principles for character formation in theological education, understanding the unique mentorship needs of doctoral students of color, and surveying the placement of diasporic Indonesian communities among world Christianities. His dissertation involved qualitative research on the congregational formation of Indonesian American emerging adults at two Los Angeles-area churches.
A co-editor and contributing author for the anthology Kristianitas-Kristianitas di Asia Tenggara (Christianities in Southeast Asia, 2022), The also serves on the editorial board for the SINTA-accredited Indonesian Journal of Theology. He holds BA (music) and MA (religion) degrees from Azusa Pacific University, and MDiv and PhD (theology) degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary.
