University of Pennsylvania: Nothing to fear, nothing to hide

When describing the typical University of Pennsylvania student, senior Euel Kebebew begins with some basic descriptors. “Professional. High-achieving. Driven. Intelligent. ” But he isn’t satisfied with his answer.

After a long pause, he adds, “We have this concept called ‘Penn Face.’”

Penn Face is a mask that students put on when they interact with others. It says, everything’s okay, everything’s figured out, I’m all set. No one seems insecure or anxious, but that’s just on the surface.

“The very successful person that you’re seeing is perhaps not in the state of mind you think,” Euel explains. “It’s very easy to be in a very constant state of worry because you don't realize that other people are wearing their Penn Face too.”

And this, Euel muses, might be part of the reason CCO ministry at Penn is so needed. It’s a place to dive below the surface—to ask the deeper questions of life. It’s a place to be humble and curious.

It’s a place where you can leave your Penn Face at the door.

The seeds of this ministry were planted in 2021, when CCO staff member Ryan McCormick and three students, Sid, Sydney, and Madeeha, asked a question. What if they were to partner with another Christian organization—the Veritas Forum—and bring deeper conversations about faith and meaning to Penn?

The students knew how important these conversations were, and how hard they were to have in a respectful and intelligent way. Ryan explains:

“Students at Penn are actually pretty good about talking about their faith with their friends, in that they’re okay identifying as a Christian, and a lot of their friends are curious about their religious beliefs. But they often feel scared. They think, ‘I'm going to say the wrong thing. They're going to ask me a question, and I’m not going to know how to answer it.’”

One of these students, Madeeha, had experienced this as someone new to Christianity. She was raised as a Muslim, and in high school her Christian friends tried to share the Gospel with her. At first, this was irritating.

“They were trying to explain the Trinity to me by saying that God is like an egg, with an eggshell, egg white, and egg yolk,” she remembers. “And I thought, ‘This terrible analogy is how you’re explaining your God to me?’”

Still, Madeeha continued in these friendships, and during a time of personal crisis, she encountered the power and love of Jesus. Raised to see God as utterly remote and transcendent, she was shocked to encounter the incarnate Christ. This changed everything!

And as Madeeha realized that her friends had been willing to engage in (sometimes awkward!) conversations so that she could receive this Good News, she wanted to do the same for others. But she knew that Penn students ask tough questions. She wanted to give a reason for the hope she had found.

When Madeeha, along with Ryan, Sid, and Sydney, discovered the Veritas Forum, they found a way forward. In 2021, they began to host public conversations between Christian and non-Christian scholars.

As they shaped these events, they considered the needs of their high-achieving peers—the students with Penn Face who struggle under the surface. For example, one forum was about The Pursuit of Happiness. Another was entitled Why All the Pain? Last year, How to Rest drew over 175 students, over half of whom were not Christians!

Madeeha says, “We created a place where we could ask questions about faith and where we can feel empowered to share Jesus with others.”

As the first generation of student leaders graduated, Ryan wanted to train up more students to be thoughtful Christian leaders at Penn. So he began the Veritas Fellows Program.

This year-long cohort equips students “to discuss the ‘big questions’ of life with their peers, helping them put their Christian faith in conversation with other worldviews on campus in a way that is both charitable and intellectually compelling.” Seminars, held every other week, are led by Christian scholars, many of whom are congregants from Ryan’s partner church, Resurrection Philadelphia.

Last year, ten fellows participated in the first cohort. This year there will be a mix of new and returning students, 18 in all, because, as Ryan says, “I considered starting over with a new group of students, but the returning students loved it so much that they said ‘Please let us do this again!’”

These are Christian students who don’t need to put on their Penn Face when they invite their friends to a forum or give reasons for the hope they’ve found. The tough questions they consider in college will prepare them for a lifetime of compelling Christian witness.

Investment in these students matters—and multiplies.