Throughout the year, a constant battle that we have continued to face is getting students to personally invite their friends to events. We always have posters, facebook groups, Chapter Announcements and emails publicizing our different events; however, personally asking their friends to join them for an event has just proved to be a little difficult. The constant fear of being rejected has kept our students from asking their friends to come to events.

Even though we struggle with personal invitations, God has continued to grow our chapter. This year we actually have ten graduating seniors! At the beginning of the semester one of the Kappa Alpha Theta Seniors, Kathleen and I were looking at the calendar for a night that we could celebrate the growth of our chapter and the seniors. Due to busyness, we actually had to have the event in mid March.  We wanted to have something special, since these seniors helped us found Greek InervVarsity at Georgia. So we planned a night of good food and a speaker to talk about life after college.

As a surprise to all the seniors, including Kathleen, I also planned an additional thank you to the students, where I highlighted how they had each grown in their relationship with the Lord and their contributions to Greek InterVarsity. The surprise included a special present for Greek InterVarsity!

The night before the event, while I was buying the groceries, I get a text from Kathleen that says she’s invited an additional 11 students from different houses, because she thinks that they need to hear about life after college from a Christian perspective. In the middle of the grocer store, I started trying to calculate, how much additional food I needed to buy, where was I going to get more presents, and could I randomly thank women and men who had never met for their contribution to Greek InterVarsity? In a moment of panic put back my groceries and ran home.

As I’m sharing my tale of woe to my roommate, she asks, “Haven’t you been praying that God would help teach the students how to be invitational?” God had answered my prayers; Kathleen had seen a need for her friends to know about Jesus and how to handle life after college in a way that honored him. She wasn’t worried about the details or how things would work out because she trusted that if the Lord wanted them there, then he would make sure there was enough food. Kathleen was teaching me that to be truly invitational, was trust that the Lord would provide for all those that we had invited.

Our party was a success! Not all the pieces came together, there weren’t enough senior gifts, we ran out of side dish, and the Chocolate Molten Lava Cake erupted before we served it, creating a chocolate mess! However, it was great night, because we got to meet two new friends and as a community God gave us the opportunity to love one another and extend that love to our new friends.

The Greek IV story was shared by Paula Frances Gay Author Website: http://greekiv.org Author Email: Contact Author Author Bio: PF is currently serving as a campus staff with Greek InterVarsity at the University of Georgia. More Stories by Paula Frances Gay

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This post is tagged Chapter Growth, Hospitality, Prayer