At Greek IV, we desire to be a witnessing community, not a community of witnesses. However in the Greek System it can be rare to interact with people outside your fraternity or sorority. I was inspired by an event I attended with some friends involved in a different ministry. They intentionally invited their friends who were seeking Jesus to an event and prayed specifically for opportunities to talk about Jesus throughout the evening. I thought, we could do this in Greek IV! We could have meaningful spiritual conversations in a relaxed setting among a community of friends.

During Happy Hour (our weekly prayer meeting) a few weeks ago, as we were praying towards our Greek IV vision of seeing our Greek system renewed, the thought popped in my head to plan a similar outreach dinner with friends from Greek IV. I presented the idea to the group right when we finished praying and things kind of took off from there.

The goal of the event was to create a comfortable atmosphere for spiritual conversations to take place. We wanted to make it a place where our friends who are seeking Jesus could feel free to ask questions. We also wanted House Ministry Leaders to be excited about evangelism and reaching out to individuals in their houses.

So I sent an email to all the House Ministry Leaders who were at the Happy Hour when we talked about it, encouraging them to set aside their Saturday evening and pray for 1 or 2 people they could personally invite to the dinner who might be searching for Jesus, or would benefit by getting better connected to the Greek IV community. As with anything, about half of the people we invited couldn’t come, but we had 7 non-christians come! We all ate dinner together and then left the night open for whatever people wanted to do. Some people played cards, some people roasted marshmallows around the fire pit and others just hung out and talked. There seemed to be just the right amount of Greek IVers there to keep conversations going and to make sure that all our guests felt welcomed.

I brought my plege kid, *Jose because I know that he really wants to investigate Jesus right now. While we were driving to dinner, I mentioned that it would be a great chance for him to ask people about their faith journeys, so that’s what he did. He was able to hear several people’s testimonies and help start some great conversations around the campfire.

I also brought my other plegde kid, *Andy, along with 2 of his friends from another school. We’ve had some spiritual conversations in the past and he has come to our seeker discussion group at the house. Although we didn’t have any deep conversations that night, he told me afterward that he really enjoyed the evening and the people he met.

We intentionally invited a few people from fraternities and sororities new to Greek IV. They were able to talk with a few Greek IV leaders for a while and I think they really enjoyed getting better connected to the Greek IV community.

One House Ministry Leader, Ric brought a friend from his fraternity who seemed to be really engaged with the conversation around the fire pit about a broad range of spiritual topics. As we were driving home, he said something to Ric about wanting to get more involved in the house Bible study.

It was an awesome night. We were encouraged by what God did that night and know God is doing more than what we see. We are planning to have another dinner event like this before the school year ends. I pray that this is something God will continue to use to inspire us to be reaching out to our brothers and sisters as a witnessing community.

The Greek IV story was shared by Ryan Mercer Author Website: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/GreekInterVarsity Author Email: Contact Author Author Bio: Ryan is currently a Junior in FIJI and is involved with Greek InterVarsity at the University of Illinois. More Stories by Ryan Mercer

This post is tagged Greek Life, The Greek System Renewed