Ren Chinn ’25
Undergraduate Student
Words: Grace Milligan Admiraal ’20
Photos: Kayla Smith
Ren Chinn ’25
When Ren Chinn ’25 arrived on campus for her freshman year, she found the Wheaton community’s shared Christian identity refreshing. An Oregon native, she had just completed a gap year serving in the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps alongside people with differing backgrounds and perspectives. Throughout her time as a student, she’s grown eager to extend her community beyond campus. Or, in her words, “to pop the Wheaton bubble.”
Inspired by the spiritual formation initiative, “Life with God Together,” through the Chaplain’s Office, Chinn began considering how she could show hospitality to her neighbors, particularly the immigrant and refugee communities who live near Wheaton’s campus. This past spring, she received a grant from the Chaplain’s Office to begin a ministry called “Bread and Bible,” gathering friends to bake together and discuss hospitality in Scripture and other books on the topic. They then bring baked goods to refugee families nearby.
This servant-hearted disposition is nothing new for Chinn. During her freshman year, she served as a class chaplain. For her sophomore year, she joined the Student Evangelism Cabinet through the Office of Ministry and Evangelism. During her junior year, she worked as a resident assistant in Fischer Hall. In her role as an RA, she learned the importance of showing up for people by attending her residents’s sporting events and music concerts. It often required more effort from her, but Chinn believes hospitality requires sacrifice. “Let me go to your space rather than expect you to come to me,” she said.
Chinn also works as a writing consultant at the Writing Center, which director Dr. Alison Gibson has framed as a space grounded in welcoming the stranger. Although Chinn is a computer science major, she enjoys getting to join fellow students in the creative writing process and sees problem-solving as an overlap between the two disciplines.
As she reflects on her course work, she says that many of her classes— from Comedy & Tragedy to Race & Justice—have shaped her view of God both in the course content and in the care from her professors. “My classes developed the way I think about attention and how God pays attention to us and attends to us,” Chinn said. “That’s what encouraged me to pay attention and attend to other people.”