At the beginning of my freshman year if you would have asked me, “Are you a Christian?” I would have quickly responded, “Yeah, of course.” After all, I grew up attending church, believed in God, Jesus, and on top of that, I was a pretty stand-up guy when I compared myself to almost all of my peers. Looking back now though, it’s clear my earliest sentiments toward God and his Church were merely ones of duty and reluctance. My family attended church because my mother insisted it was the “right thing to do”.
Once I reached high school, where church attendance was optional, I opted not to attend. As my thoughts towards God continued to evolve they took the form of mere acknowledgment (i.e., I acknowledged that He existed) and superficial respect (i.e., I accepted that He was God and I was not). Although my thoughts of God weren’t marked with a particular aversion to Him, they lacked anything beyond a surface level interest. My view of God and my relationship to Him remained largely unchanged until my senior year of college.
During the time between freshman move-in and the beginning of my senior year at IU, Will had become one of my closest friends. We took the same classes, played intramurals together, launched potatoes at the fraternity across the street together (not an endorsement), and served on the fraternity leadership board together. In the midst of walking through college together, I’d come to cherish Will’s steadfast yet humble commitment as a friend. I knew that there was something very different about Will. Although we shared a similar academic load, extracurricular involvement, and intended career path, his life and his pursuits were very different than mine.
The uniqueness of Will’s pursuits became abundantly clear to me when he returned to IU after spending junior year studying abroad. When he left for London he was the Treasurer of our Fraternity, the VP of the honor society, on the Greek InterVarsity (GIV) leadership team, co-captain of the club soccer team, and held a hand full of other prominent positions on campus. When Will returned to IU to start senior year he didn’t reclaim all those positions of prominence; he chose to pass on them. Instead, he chose to devote himself to two things: academics and sharing the gospel with our fraternity through a weekly Bible study. Will invited me to join for the first study, and even though my schedule was filled with commitments, I accepted.
Now, I’d attended a few Bible studies in the past so it wasn’t monumental that I accepted that first invitation. What was monumental, however, was that I kept coming back…every week! This was the first time that anyone had ever taken the time to walk through the Bible with me. Soon, the weekly study wasn’t enough; I needed to be diving deeper into the Bible. So Will invited me to start meeting with him two mornings a week before class to study the book of Mark.
About the same time I started attending the Mark study, I was invited to join GIV for their fall “Greek Getaway.” We spent one of the first weekends of the fall semester at a lake house in Northern Indiana just, well, getting away. That weekend I was surprised by the warmth and hospitality extended to me, basically a stranger, by the GIV community. After that weekend, I became a regular attendee at GIV’s weekly large group gatherings and I found myself spending more and more time with that community. To my surprise, these Greek students who identified themselves with Jesus, before anything else, started to become my primary community. I started to develop relationships within GIV of a depth that I rarely experienced anywhere else.
The year-long period of Scripture study, Mark-centered discipleship with my dear friend Will, and life shared with the GIV community brought me to a distinct point on February 10, 2004 where I made a resolute decision to place my trust for salvation and life on the accomplished work of Jesus Christ, alone. The gospel had melted me. As I’d been informed, but would only later come to experience, my faith journey and dive into the depths of the gospel was just beginning.
Since that point of consciously responding to God’s effectual call my senior year at IU, my life has followed a path that I never expected. After graduation I accepted a finance position with a firm in New York City. Once in New York, I found myself surrounded by a fellowship of godly people at my church and at home, Will being one of them. As I came off the initial spiritual high of my conversion experience, I began to wrestle with the realities of living my faith daily in my new environment. However, as I continued attending and building relationships in my church, I began to experience community in a local church for the first time in my life. God began to plant in me the seed of a future in vocational ministry as opposed to the one in business for which I had spent my undergraduate years preparing
Currently God is preparing me to serve as a pastor. As I come to more deeply understand and experience God’s love for me through Jesus, this same Jesus I was introduced to at the Phi Gamma Delta Bible study, I’m further compelled to leverage every ounce of my life for His purposes and the praise of His glory.
It didn’t make much sense to me at the time why Will would give up all those prominent positions on campus just to lead a Bible study. God’s intent in it is astoundingly clear to me now. I’m overwhelmed with thanksgiving that Will answered God’s call to give up the temporal to devote himself to the eternal. My life has been forever changed as a result. Will, thanks for inviting me.
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The Greek IV story was shared by Ryan Taylor Author Website: http://apostlesnyc.com Author Email: Contact Author Author Bio: Ryan was a member of Phi Gamma Delta at Indiana University where he graduated in 2004. He is now on staff with Apostles Church NYC and resides in Manhattan. More Stories by rtaylor |
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