A Bridge Building Leader: Interview with Steven Teng

What does it mean to work alongside the purposes God has for you? For Executive Director of the Austin Center for Faith and Work, this looks like a lifetime of formation. In this interview, Steve Teng shares how coming from an immigrant family formed him into being a lifelong bridge builder. From equipping high-level professionals to empowering blue-collar entrepreneurs through Kingdom Capital Network, Teng finds true purpose (and fun!) in his work of sparking “holy provocation.” Read more about how Teng helps people understand how their purpose connects to God’s purposes in the world.

Where do you work and what is your current role in your organization? What do you enjoy most about your role?

My work is located in two organizations right now. First, I serve as the executive director of the Austin Center for Faith and Work. That’s the primary. Secondary is something called Kingdom Capital Network. These two are adjacent, but I’ll explain that in a moment.

At Austin Center for Faith and Work, we like to say that we help people work as God intended and in line with organizations like the De Pree Center and Fuller. Put simply, we help people understand that their daily work is not separate from their life with God and God’s purposes in the world. Our specialty is convening a hyper-local, diverse community of practice where we try and activate some of the fantastic ideas and resources that come in from, again, Fuller, Regent College, etc. We can dig into that together and live those ideas out in that community of practice here in Austin.

My favorite part about my role is that I get to stoke “holy provocation.” That might be the way I frame it. So whether it’s talking with a college student, an entry-level professional at one of Austin’s tech companies, or a pastor, I get to invite people to see all of their lives as God sees it: their work, their workplace, their coworkers, the situation they’re in, their church. And in some cases, I get to see this kind of turn their world upside down. Maybe it’s a deeper realization of the love of God or getting to highlight common grace. Or helping to expose the way God is already pleased and using something that, in many cases, feels so hopeless and devoid of God’s purposes. In other cases, I get to help catalyze creative restoration, entrepreneurship, and change.

The second part of my work is with Kingdom Capital Network, a faith and work organization for blue-collar, lower socioeconomic brothers and sisters. We say it’s a friends and family program for brothers and sisters who may not have friends and family in the context of work. This means we catalyze and prompt redemptive work in the margins by coming alongside entrepreneurs who are most proximate to marginalized communities and provide resources, things like accessible working capital, vision, training, and connections for leveraging their business to serve their communities. Unlikely friendships emerge from this work. It’s an accidental bridge-building and reconciliation strategy as we collaboratively serve communities where resources don’t tend to be readily available.

And with this, we empower entrepreneurs who are most adjacent and proximate to marginalized communities to be the Church—meaning, to serve and love their communities. That takes shape in offerings like getting accessible working capital at prime and nine months of formation where they learn about theology, vocational discipleship, purpose, and calling.

This part is such a privilege for me. With that holy provocation piece, saying, “Hey you, who is repairing HVAC well, God delights in it.” Or, “Hey you, who is offering jobs and expressing your culture through this food truck, God delights in it. And it has the potential for eternal impact.” Just the light that comes into people’s eyes whenever we communicate this and it lands is a massive privilege and wholly rewarding.

This part is such a privilege for me. With that holy provocation piece, saying, “Hey you, who is repairing HVAC well, God delights in it.” Or, “Hey you, who is offering jobs and expressing your culture through this food truck, God delights in it. And it has the potential for eternal impact.”

We also get to be in relationships at Kingdom Capital Network. One of the KPIs of that project is “unlikely friendships in the kingdom.” So witnessing folks from West Austin who are running Fortune 100 publicly traded companies having deep friendships with Venezuelan migrants in the context of business coaching. And our training isn’t one of a savior complex but instead asks them to come in with a posture of wondering, “What might the Lord have for you?” Even though they’re the expert, we ask them to be open-minded and ready to receive a friendship and receive from the Lord in this.

Your LinkedIn headline says that you’re a “bridge builder.” Can you flesh out what this means and why it’s important to who you are as a leader?

Being a bridge builder is very much tied to who I am. I was born in Taiwan and my family immigrated when I was six. In my family, all the kids learned English before my parents. I was one of three kids—the middle child and the most extroverted, so I found myself doing a lot of translation work. And, like it or not, that invited me into a lot of entrepreneurship.

I remember one time my mom thought a credit card bill was wrong, so she put it before me and wanted me to call the credit card company, get the administrator on the line, and have them correct the bill. I think I was seven or eight at the time. I was in a number of situations like that growing up—that was life growing up. There was a lot of translation work.

But God wastes nothing. So now, over the last 10 years or so, I’m helping people to collaborate and understand each other. That bridge builder piece has a lot to do with the faithful activity of helping find understanding between communities and parts of the body of Christ that don’t tend to understand one another or want to collaborate with others. I’m working to convene those spaces, foster understanding, and take baby steps towards collaboration to meet a need in the community.

Our theme for this quarter is “purpose.” How has your understanding of purpose influenced your work and/or career path?

In my understanding of purpose, the starting point is one of, if I can use this word, victory. Grace. Especially in contrast to a lot of the studies now. The data suggests that many professionals feel a lack of purpose in their career. So, to have a starting point where there is a Creator and that life is inherently filled with purpose is a competitive advantage—and a grace! That starting point of purpose has been an advantage for me since I’ve chosen to receive God’s grace.

Another implication is how this view of purpose repositions my understanding of work, life, and leadership to one of stewardship. Purpose isn’t found only in me—though certainly that’s integrated. Purpose has to do with understanding how my purpose is intertwined with God’s purposes in the world. Purpose is therefore something to be stewarded carefully. It’s something to be nurtured rather than grasped for.

Purpose isn’t found only in me—though certainly that’s integrated. Purpose has to do with understanding how my purpose is intertwined with God’s purposes in the world. Purpose is therefore something to be stewarded carefully. It’s something to be nurtured rather than grasped for.

How does your view of purpose shape and inform the way you lead others?

First, their purpose matters. The people we lead. Part of the implications of seeing the image of God in those we lead is that they too have a purpose, and that matters.

Leadership implies interaction, and recognizing that those we lead are image bearers has to be a variable. I don’t get the option where that’s not something I consider when I think about the call to love my neighbors. If my vocation or my sense of purpose matters, is intertwined, has effect, and has bearing on the decisions I’m making on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, season-to-season basis, then that ought to have bearing. If I’m stewarding the authority God’s given me while stewarding influence, formal or informal, that has to have bearing. That has to be something that’s considered.

Recognizing how other people’s sense of purpose matters is something that can differentiate Christian leadership. People are in various parts of their journey, but we ask how this can nurture their journey, their sense of purpose. And that gets factored into how we think about leadership, in formal and informal ways. Maybe it’s an employee I’m hiring for or someone who I’m collaborating with in the community for a common purpose. I get to factor in their purpose and think and pray about that as I work with them. It’s just more fun that way! It just makes work much more interesting and fascinating.

What is your biggest growth edge as a leader right now? What are you working on?

It’s been probably a four-year journey—that I’m still on—of recognizing and naming that I am not good at asking for and receiving help where I need it the most. I’m not talking about delegation or management things. It’s the core, the vulnerability that comes with asking for help.

Thinking about this question made me realize this also has to do with my story. In regards to what I shared earlier about my childhood and translation, even if it wasn’t baked into my wiring and nature, my nurture demanded that I read body language well. That kind of upbringing demanded that I kind of hold my own needs in, and made me slow to share those needs, slow to be vulnerable. The responsibility I had for my family’s welfare demanded that I hold a lot of that in.

And I’m learning that this short-circuits and limits how I want to show up in leadership and how I want to show up in the work world. It can lead me into not being as faithful to the Lord and limit other people’s ability to serve and give to me. It limits my understanding of all the ways God wants to give. Ironically, I talked about purpose as something that’s received in the life of faith. And man, this wholly has to do with ways I’m refusing to receive, even from the Lord in my relationship with him. It also shows up in places like struggling to fundraise. I have a very faithful, engaged board who go out of their way to help, but I think they would do far more if I stepped into vulnerability quite a bit more. And that’s a growth edge God’s inviting me in on and something that’s still in process.

For our first third leaders (ages 20–35), what is one piece of advice you would want to share with them? Consider this as something you would want to share with your younger self.

To whatever extent possible, nurture a passion and a vision for who you’re becoming. That first third of life is so much about learning through doing and activity and different versions of getting thrown into the deep end of the pool. And new experiences that really, as part of God’s kindness, unveil who we are and force us to know our own story.

I know there’s a limit to that. There’s a reason why in the first third of life those aren’t upfront, but go ahead and nurture that. Pray for that. Get just as passionate about who you want to be and the kind of character you want to have should God allow you to reach your third third. Rather than focusing on questions of legacy and impact—the questions that are so often at the forefront of our minds like, “What’s my legacy? What’s the significance? How do I steward my life for external impact?”—instead, nurture and foster a passion for who you are becoming.

And again, to whatever extent possible and alongside mentors and coaches, begin to weigh the cost of your decisions: what you choose to do, who you choose to align with, who you choose to do community with. Factor that in and consider, “What bearing does this have on who I’m becoming?” I certainly think you can make a clear argument from the Scriptures that that’s God’s priority. Our sanctification, our character, our conformity to the image of Christ, being transformed from one degree of glory to another. If that’s God’s main priority in the world, to align with him in that earlier on I think it makes it better.

Our sanctification, our character, our conformity to the image of Christ, being transformed from one degree of glory to another. If that’s God’s main priority in the world, to align with him in that earlier on I think it makes it better.

Top 5 resources that have shaped your leadership.

• Knowing God by J.I. Packer
• Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
• The Cost of Discipleship by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
• Conversing with Mark Labberton Podcast
• People. It really has been people who have shaped me. Going back again to my immigrant story, the pressures on my dad and the demands of work and survival meant there wasn’t a lot of fathering in my story and upbringing. And in my life, God sent fathers to deposit something and mothers to give me something along the way.