The first weeks were comprised of just students who had been attending Greek IV and there was time for relationships to build on something deeper than a just a Tuesday night Large Group meeting. As the weeks went on, new faces began to show up as we each wanted to invite our friends who may or may not be willing to make the step of coming to a meeting during the year. The fact of the matter was that when you experience a community like the one we have been building, you want others to come experience it too, and that’s what happened this summer.

Friends who had never come to a Large Group meeting or to their house bible study came and enjoyed the company of a group of friends dedicated to the pursuit of God. Whether we all realized it then or not, many of the values of community that a few of us had been reading in the book had never found a better place for application. I learned more and more as the summer went on about how to create space for God to work through hospitality. Offering for someone to come into your home, enjoy a meal that they did not have to worry about paying for, and spend time with people who cared to meet and get to know them was such an impactful experience that generally if you came once, you’d want to keep coming. It caused people to want to know why this group was getting together, which opened the door for an explanation about our ministry and what we are about. These summer hang outs were whetting the appetites of our friends to come be a part of us, to share in our vision, and to get involved with this ministry.

The most beautiful part is that this was not because of anything we did or planned, but because a community of believers pursuing Christ together is something so foreign, contagious, and desirable that it drew people in through Him. He moved in hearts and relationships, built up community, and prepared for Himself hands that He wants to use. All this has led to momentum going into the busy school year instead of coming off of a summer lull, which has all of us that were involved very excited.

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1. Summer Conversations
2. Encouaging community during Rush
3. Letting go of the jar

I’ll never forget Andy Dalton talking about leaving a legacy at Greek Conference 2009. It was then I knew that our bible study needed to be 100% God-focused and God-dependent, and it needed to continue after I left the house. That was before my senior year of college. The summer in between junior and senior year I prayed that God would draw Christians to our house during fall rush, or even that girls would potentially hear about the bible study and Greek IV while rushing. I was also on our leadership team for Greek IV and I made note of the freshman that came to Greek IV events. After rush, a few of the girls I had seen at Greek IV’s events joined my house.

That fall multiple girls began coming to my bible study as well. God was answering my prayers. A senior even messaged me on Facebook saying that she had been too scared the year before to approach me about the Theta Bible study (TBS as I affectionately called it,) but she was going to begin coming to the study and she was going to bring other seniors. I began relying on God even more for direction in my study and for praying for the Thetas that were coming. By the end of the school year Thetas were always reppin’ at Greek IV on Wednesday nights. Only two other Thetas were able to come to Chapter Focus Week during the beginning of the summer but one of them made the decision to follow Christ, while the other learned how to lead a bible study.

Since I am going back to Illinois for my masters program, I will be able to continue coming to our bible study at the house. I am excited to see God’s legacy and the bible study I felt called to lead my junior year-continue on. I can’t wait for the younger girls to influence other young girls in Theta. Through some Greek IV connections I also was offered to be the assistant to the house mom of Sigma Kappa at U of I. Although this is not my sorority house, the offer came after I was praying that God would lead me to who I was to live with in grad school.

Through Greek IV leaders and friends, I was emailed that the house mom was looking for a Christian grad student to live in and help her since she is moving out. I accepted and I’m excited to see what God will do through me in that sorority house as well. I’m planning on helping the Sigma Kappa Greek IV’ers lead their bible study as well. The more I rely on God and trust Him, the more shocked I am in what He can truly do in the Greek system if we let Him take hold of it. Lives transformed, the Greek system renewed, and world changers developed-God can do it all.

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1. Starting with a Senior
2. Stepping out in Madison
3. Never Again…

My story began in fall of 2006 when I came to the University of Oregon. I knew I wanted to be in a sorority, because I was a “homebody” and needed a support system away from my family. I went through recruitment and joined Pi Beta Phi sorority, which I still stand by as one of the best decisions of my life. Filled with both friendships and hardships, ups and downs, challenges and one of-a- kind experiences, Pi Phi gave me the home away from home that I was looking for. Then during my junior year, I joined Intervarsity and saw a whole new type of community that I could be a part of. I made a lot of great friends and challenged the way that I saw Jesus and how He taught and loved those around Him.

One day my IV staff worker Joel introduced me to Bethanee, a Greek IV staff worker from Willamette. During our first conversation, Bethanee brought up the possibility of starting a bible study in my house. My first reaction was skepticism, because spiritual conversations are a taboo in Greek life during recruitment, which ends up carrying on through the rest of the year. However, God showed his power through the people He brought together in community as Christians and Greeks. I’ve also had opportunities such as Greek Conference in SoCal, where I was inspired by other Greek IV stories, and girls prayer group with our InterVarsity chapter, where I received courage and acceptance through the whole process of establishing the bible study. God has shown me amazing support from both Christians and non-Christians, both Greeks and non-Greeks.

God hardly ever shows us the path ahead of time that he is going to place us on, but it is amazing to look back and see where he’s taken me during my four years at the U of O. Placing me in Pi Phi allowed me to build a foundation with the women of the chapter and solidify my leadership within the house. Then He gave me the opportunity to lead them in a whole new way and build on my Greek foundation with His love. He gave me the courage and the means to start a Greek ministry on campus and shine His light brightly in traditionally dark places. I am so grateful for the opportunities and experiences I’ve had, because they’ve not only changed our campus and Greek system, they’ve shaped me into who I am as well. As I look into the future of Greek InterVarsity at Oregon, I am extremely optimistic. I see it growing into a powerful organization on campus and impacting every chapter, both fraternities and sororities, to empower Greek men and women on our campus to change the world.

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1. Connecting with Greek IV after Graduation
2. Going Greek changed my life.
3. Building Blocks for Next Year

As a freshman at Willamette University I was excited to get involved in as many different places as I could. I hadn’t really done that in high school and in college I wanted to make up for lost time. I joined InterVarsity right away and got involved in Bible studies and leading worship. I had filled my time with all kinds of activities and wasn’t really looking for more. Greek life wasn’t even on my radar, because we have delayed recruitment. I honestly didn’t know much about the Greek system. I don’t even remember having conversations with friends about it. I knew about the Greek houses. I had been to the fraternities with friends, but I still didn’t know what it was about.

Right before Recruitment, I was at an InterVarsity gathering and this guy, Cooper, a sophomore in Sigma Chi, asked me if I was going to rush. I was honest and told him I hadn’t really considered it. And he said to me words that changed my life, “The Greek system really needs Christians and I think you’d do a great job.” I was flattered that Cooper thought I’d make a great Greek. I was also flattered that he would entrust the Greek system to me as a Christian and that he saw it as a place that Christians should go. Just as Jesus sent his disciples into surrounding communities, Cooper believed that Christians should go Greek! To make a long story short, I took Cooper’s advice and I joined Delta Gamma.

My favorite part of Greek life was living with a diverse group of women whom I would otherwise never meet. They are my sisters all over the world and I miss them. My life is forever changed, not just because I’m a Delta Gamma, but also because I am now on staff with Greek InterVarsity. In the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to see God start Greek ministries on two campuses in Oregon. God is at work in the Greek system out here and I’m excited to be a part of it. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without being Greek!

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1. A Changed Life!
2. Building the foundation in Eugene
3. Connecting with Greek IV after Graduation

All year long we’ve been praying for underclassmen to step up and lead in Greek Ministry at DePauw. We are graduating a senior class that simply ‘gets’ Greek Ministry. Many of them participate in the Interfraternal Bible study, which seeks to reach any Greek men on campus who are looking to connect with God in a deeper way. One of the seniors just updated me on what has been happening the past weeks. Here is his story:

“In the past two or three weeks, we have had about 4 or 5 totally new guys (underclassman) showing up and they are really excited about the Bible Study. They have been saying that it is exactly what they had been looking for. And, this week we had 16 guys attend (which is the most we have ever had) But the best part about it is that for the first time all year, there have been more underclassmen than seniors attending for the past two weeks. This sudden rise in interest from the underclassmen really has made me excited about what the Bible Study and Greek IV will be able to accomplish next year.”

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1. A Graduate Leading on Campus
2. A Student’s Prayer Answered
3. God is Raising up New House Ministries

At the beginning of the Spring 2010 semester, my fraternity brother Johnny came to the Servant Leadership Retreat a few days before classes started up. Johnny had become a Christian in October when we had attended Greek Conference in SoCal. He was my first fraternity brother to give over his life to Christ. It was a privilege to be able to see God do such a life changing work, but it wasn’t until the leaders retreat that I saw an incredible change in his heart.

I invited him to the retreat the day of because I thought he wouldn’t want to come, but another one of the leaders said I should at least ask him. I did and he was ecstatic to come. So, clearly I was wrong. We stayed overnight at a cabin and started manuscript study the next morning. Throughout the day, I saw Johnny catch onto the vision that our staff leader, Alyssa Humphries, was giving us for the coming semester. She was saying how in Ephesians 3:20, that God can do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine. At that, I started to see Johnny’s heart catch fire for Christ. He was excited to see what God was going to do in our fraternity and in our Greek System.

Towards the end of the night, we wrote a covenant that had some pretty challenging things on it, one of them being not drinking if you were underage and getting drunk. Johnny had a hard time with this, but later after we had all left he called one of the other leaders and me to tell us how he was struggling with this but wanted to follow the passion that Christ had put in his heart. After praying with him over the phone, Johnny made the commitment to God that he would not drink this semester.

To this day, has held to the covenant and has followed the conviction that God placed in his life. Now, he is on our Servant Leadership Team for Fall 2010. It has truly been a blessing to see God work in his heart and see him develop his as a Christian leader in our fraternity and in Greek IV.

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1. New Life

When I became a Christian and started living out my life for Christ, I was very excited to share it with everyone I knew, including some of my professors. I am pursuing a minor in philosophy and have gotten very close to one of my professors. The first semester of my junior year I was in Ethical Theory with this professor. As a new Christian I was still young and immature in my understanding of what it meant to live a Christian life, so I sought the answers in philosophy. I wondered, what is my ethical theory? This professor provided many readings on different ethical/moral theories including Christian ones. We read a paper written by a Christian philosopher who said that if you are a Christian, then your ethical/moral theory is to obey God. It clicked for me, but also made me realize that my professor was open to and respected Christianity. This revelation was very interesting to me because my professor is an atheist and a well known one in the philosophical community. He has written books on why we do not need God to live a moral life or to have moral values in life, but he also loves C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga, and even has some knowledge of Scripture – go figure.

For some reason, I opened up to him once after class and shared my faith with him. I told him about how Christ had renewed my life, how I was being sanctified daily, and how much of a struggle that was. He listened openly and even offered encouraging remarks. I guess God put it in my heart to continue talking to him, because every week I would have an hour long conversation with him. It started off as just getting to know each other or discussing philosophy, but started heading in a different direction as time progressed. This semester I have another philosophy class, Philosophy of Religion with this professor and I continue to see him and talk with him weekly. God has worked a lot in my life in one semester. I am more bold with my faith and talk about it openly and am not ashamed. Paul says in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (ESV).

We have a duty to fulfill the great commission left to us by Christ, boasting in nothing but the cross, and sharing life with everyone who will accept it. This class should be called Philosophy of Christianity and is probably the closest thing I can get to a theology course as an undergraduate. We talk about the Judeo-Christian God and Christian thought. About a month ago, I started directing our conversations to faith and started challenging my professor. A month, ago I asked him if he was worried. And he asked, worried about what, to which I replied, “What I believe has serious consequences for what you believe.” It was funny because it wasn’t uncomfortable and we spoke about condemnation for a while.

Three weeks ago I asked him why he was teaching a class on Christianity, why he respected and loved C.S. Lewis so much, and why he was so open and respectful towards Christianity. I asked him if he was searching for anything to which he told me that he wanted to keep his options open and make sure he had all the evidence available to him. Two weeks ago, being in a bad mood, I unloaded on my professor. I told him how I was having a bad day, how I hadn’t read my Bible yet today, how I needed the word to fill me daily, how I needed Jesus to give my life meaning, how the answers to all his questions are found in Scripture. I told him that my problem with atheists is that they have these questions and make these arguments, but don’t read the word of God, which contains all the answers. I told him to read the Bible.

He opened up to me and told me that he’s been trying to make a connection to God, but has not felt anything. At that moment I saw my professor for who he was. He’s this really calm and intelligent guy who seems to have it all together, but he is lost and broken. He needs Jesus and I was really moved to pity and compassion for my friend. I told him that I believe that Jesus died for my sins out of the abundant love that God has for us, and I told him that Jesus died for his sins and that grace is open to him. I told him to read the Bible. He asked me where to start, to which I said Romans. I told him to e-mail with any questions that he has about Romans and that I would read through it with him. God put this man in my heart, and I care about my professor. He’s my friend and I want to see God save him through Christ. We must be bold with our faith.

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2. He Accepted the Invitation
3. Invite Week: Investigating the Invitation

“No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
Ephesians 2: 8-10 (The Message)

I went on the Boston Urban Plunge 2010 with Ephesians 2 in mind. God calls us to do good works—not because we need to do good to be saved, but because he has plans for us that involve doing the “right thing” and helping others. Having been on service-oriented Spring Break trips for the past two years, I envisioned that BUP would be more of the same, just with Bible study added in. I thought that I would go on BUP as a senior leader in Greek IV ready to answer questions or guide discussions from underclassmen.

I went into BUP this Spring Break underestimating God.

From day one, it was evident that I would not be in my by-now comfortable position as a leader in the group. When we were asked to buy groceries to feed all 23 of us for the week, rather than stepping up and organizing the shopping expedition, I found myself stressed out by the process and overwhelmed by the task. I withdrew from the group, knowing that despite my age, I had never actually been responsible for shopping for a week’s worth of groceries or cooking for other people before. That should have been wake-up call number one that BUP was not going to be the Spring Break I envisioned. Though I didn’t see God’s hands pointing me in a new direction quite yet, grocery shopping did make me realize that I live in a world where I am not responsible for putting food on the table or even for picking it up from the store. My sorority house even has a chef, a luxury I haven’t appreciated enough. I’ve lived a privileged life, and through BUP I entered into a community (Dorchester) where most don’t get the luxuries that my family was blessed to afford.

Potential wake-up call number two also occurred on the first day, while we played a game called “Star Power.” The game illustrates through three rounds of complicated point-trading that once a person is stuck in the cycle of poverty, it is nearly impossible to advance economically. Divided into three classes, the BUP-ers soon took on the rolls that befit their class, with the uppermost cooperating to protect their status, the middles competing against each other to advance, and the lowest coming to terms with their lot in life. Though I had played the game before, a new realization hit me this time, since I was in the lowest class from beginning to end. Even within the limits of the game, the members of the lowest class felt helpless to impact our destinies. The poor in Star Power (and it is not too much of a stretch to apply this to reality) lacked freedom to change their status. Even when given the opportunity to ask the rich to make laws for the benefit of the poor—because in this game, if not in real life, the rich make the rules—we did not think radically enough to actually affect meaningful change, and we remained poor despite handouts and other rules that drew attention to our plight.

Each successive day brought a new challenge to my vision of how my senior year Spring Break would be. We heard a talk about race on day two, and during the discussion I sat and listened to new facts in the same story I heard virtually ever year in school: racism is real, it is wrong, and white people throughout our history are to blame for many of America’s current racial problems. This was not new news to me, so while I felt bad that things are the way they are, I didn’t feel much more than that. After this discussion ended, however, things changed. A fellow BUP-er who happens to be biracial approached myself and another white girl on the trip and asked “Doesn’t that make you mad?” I replied honestly, saying that I get mad that things exist the way they do and that I wish certain ethnicities were not victims of personal or systemic racism. However, this BUP-er was not just asking another mundane question. What she meant, as she went on to explain, is that white people are always blamed for current problems during discussions of race such as the one we just sat through. This question, phrased in a way that I had never heard before, initiated my descent into what I like to call The Tension.

I have a feeling that many people live in The Tension every day. Though I cannot read their minds or share their experience with them, I cannot deny that women and men of minority ethnic status must struggle with issues of who to blame, accept, exclude, embrace, learn from, teach, and interact with every day of their lives. To a white girl who grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC, which were not all-white but were mostly all-middle class, The Tension was a strange and unpleasant place to be. I wanted to leave, to go back to just feeling bad that injustices often happen to be drawn down racial lines, but I found that I was unable to. The Tension held me, and day by day at BUP I grew sicker at heart. In The Tension, my thoughts moved beyond “who caused this?” to “what can solve this?” There is already a multitude of outreach and educational programs going on in Boston alone. While each program can present success stories, the system that produces more criminals than college graduates among blacks and Latinos in Boston remains intact. What would work? Was it hopeless? Would good people continue to strive against an unmovable wall, ultimately succumbing to the knowledge that they did a little bit to make lives of a few people better, but that it was not enough? Why had I decided to do BUP at all, if in the end my efforts don’t create change?

Once again, as I later learned, I underestimated God.

In the midst of The Tension, Caroline, one of the Greek IV staff, led Bible study. After reading and discussing Luke 13: 10-17, Caroline led us to this concluding challenge and question: Look through God’s eyes as we serve people this week. Is there something stopping you from healing or seeking God’s children? Why, yes, as a matter of fact, there was something stopping me from seeking God’s children in those that we served this week. I was stuck in The Tension! When I went to the Cambridge Community Center to help with the After School Program on the next four days of BUP, I couldn’t help but feel judged—did the employees at CCC think that I was just another white person of privilege descending to help the poor for kicks during Spring Break? Did the kids that I interacted with think that I looked strange, or that I was mean just because of my skin color? Would I be able to befriend anyone here, or would people hold back from getting to know me because my people, “white” people, are the reason that black people have suffered so much racial prejudice and economic injustice in America?

I had a lot of questions when I was in The Tension, and these questions just kept coming, with no answer in sight. Caroline could see that this was distracting me from getting to the heart of her challenge to us. After Bible study, she sat and talked and prayed with me, and she told me something that jolted me awake out of my fog of questions: There is an answer to the “who is to blame” and “what is the solution” questions that had started my spin into confusion. Humanity is to blame; starting with the fall from grace in Eden, we continue to hurt each other and we remain ultimately a broken people. Jesus is the solution; God tried for many generations to create laws or institutions that would bring his broken people back into relationship with him, and ultimately He had to send His own son to die for us as a sacrifice. Through Jesus we are set free of the history of our personal sins—so why would we dare think Him incapable of setting us free from the corporate, institutional sins that led us to the way things are today? As we prayed, I felt a release from the weight that burdened me since we started discussing racial injustice. Of course! Why didn’t that occur to me in the first place? Jesus sought out people who were different than the majority population to be a part of his ministry, often bringing up issues of race and ability. Why should I have tried to take up the burden of fixing a system that had been broken since the dawn of history, when Jesus already did that for us? The relief that this last question brought was soon met by my own stubborn memory, which brought to mind Ephesians 2 again. Just because Jesus is the solution does not mean that I don’t have a role to play in God’s plan. There is work for me to do, and I had better be doing it. I am not called to merely follow laws set before me and stand as an example for others. Jesus calls us to do more.

Later in BUP, Aaron, the other Greek IV staff worker, reaffirmed what my mind had told me. There is not an easy way to achieve racial reconciliation. Though we are already forgiven for our faults and failures through our faith in Jesus Christ, we are called to be more than believers. Just as Jesus sought to fish all men, we are meant to intentionally love those who are different than ourselves. This love is intentional in that it is not easy, nor is it passive. Jesus did not merely tell people he loved them—had he done that, I doubt his ministry would have gotten beyond Nazareth. Instead, Jesus acted out of love for all those that he considered his sheep. He healed the blind and he made clean the impure. His love was not just a statement or a feeling, it was also an action. Likewise we are meant to act out our love for others.

This active love is a difficult thing for me to do, because while I feel bad that others are less blessed than I am and I serve them through various volunteer opportunities, I have missed God’s call to combine the feeling and the action into love rather than pity. Being pitied will not get the children of CCC to college. But, dedicating my time to them and being a consistent, active person on their life journey will show them love that words would not adequately express. Through that love, barriers of race, economics, and education will break down. Knowing that this breaking down of inequalities is possible, that through the love Jesus shows us we find the ability to enact change in the world, is life altering. Since I was raised by parents who emphasized integrity of mind and deed, and as an MIT-trained engineer, I cannot go back to a broken system when the solution is before me. I cannot go back to merely feeling bad in discussions of race. Regardless of who started the world’s problems, I know that Jesus will finish them, and until He comes again, I can and will actively love those around me and seek out those different than me. To adapt a well known Robert Frost verse, I choose the love less traveled by, and that will make all the difference.

God woke me up during BUP, and I do not plan to fall back asleep for a long, long time.

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After a jam-packed weekend of seminars, breakout sessions, speakers and a lot of fun, I could tell something was different about my sister. During the final night’s general session, the main speaker asked for students to place a marble into a jar if they had accepted Christ that weekend. I was sitting near my sister and when I saw her stand up to go place her own marble into the jar, my heart jumped for joy. I was so happy she had made the best and most important decision in the world! I could not have been happier to see my little sister surrender her life to Christ. That moment was one of the best in my life: knowing that I will see my little sister in heaven with me, and Jesus.

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1. Encore!

After attending Greek Conference in Indianapolis back in February, I made a vow to share the word of God with people in my house. That started with having individual conversations with people about God. It didn’t always feel natural, but I have had a handful of great conversations with people about their religious backgrounds and beliefs. Then, I decided to make an announcement during my chapter meeting about wanting to have a time where brothers in the house could come together and talk about religion or any other topic they had on their mind.

I picked Wednesday night during our dinner time to have the discussion. Amazingly, 16 guys showed up. We started by all sharing our religious backgrounds and upbringings. Then, we moved to current beliefs or questions that we have. The discussion flowed form there and we had an hour discussion about religion. A lot of people posed difficult questions, questions I didn’t have answers to. Even though I didn’t have the answers, we had a really great dialogue between all of us.

I know this discussion doesn’t resemble the typical house bible study, but I feel like I need to take baby steps and my house needs to take baby steps before I feel comfortable incorporating scripture. I will keep praying for God to work through me in my house and I appreciate any prayers from people reading this. If you are reading this and are in a similar situation as I was, I would love to talk to you. I still have a lot of work to do, but I feel great about where my house is right now and I think this Spring will be a great opportunity for me to continue sharing the word of God.

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