The hope is that through this unique atmosphere, some of the typical barriers that hind Greeks from encountering and experiencing God can be removed. This year was slightly different than last year because the speaker not only fielded questions, but also presented the message of Jesus  and asked if there was anyone who would like to receive Christ’s message and follow Him. Before I share the conclusion of this invitation, I have to back up a bit.

Matt  is a member of Phi Delta Theta and has been a leader within the Greek InterVarsity chapter for a little over a year.  Matt has a huge heart and desire to see his brothers in his house to experience God.  As you might  know, starting a House Ministry is not always easy and can even be somewhat risky.  When Matt started extending invitations for a house bible study to his brothers he was met with hesitation and skepticism. Outwardly,  it seemed there was no spiritual interest in his house. However, it is here that Matt’s story takes an unexpected turn.  In preparing for Pub Theology Matt was encouraged to invite some of his brothers to check out the event, with the thought being “who wouldn’t want to hear a great band and ask about some of life’s biggest questions”.  One brother responded to Matt’s invitation and decided to attended the event.

Now, back to the invitation.  After discussing some insightful questions and having some productive discussions, the speaker explained why the types of questions we’ve been talking about are so important.  They are important because the hope is that these questions will point us to the truth – that God does exist and that He came in the flesh in the person of Jesus.  After presenting the Good News that Jesus is offering, the speaker asked any who wanted to follow Jesus to indicate their intent by standing up.  Eight people stood.  Among them, was Matt’s Phi Delt brother.  Wow.

Stories like this are why I work for Greek InterVarsity and why this ministry is so important. One never knows who God is pursuing or who is merely waiting for someone to ask them to “come and see”.  Matt has been extremely encouraged through this experience and through having his brother tell him that he should start a Bible study in his chapter.  No place is outside God’s grace and nothing is irredeemable.  May this story encourage you as much as it did Matt.

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.

We have interviews in our fraternity where our new members have sit downs with the actives and have a nice little interview session with them. I was having a phenomenal interview with one of the new members named Robby. We ended up talking for a solid hour and a half – way longer than any of the other interviews. After exchanging personal question after personal question, I definitely noticed how selfless and big his heart was. Before the very end of our interview, I ended up asking him about his spiritual background.

Robby told me that he prays every now and then but doesn’t really know what higher being he believes in. I thought that was interesting he’s not really sure who he prays to, but he prays for guidance and even says he receives it every now and then. I then asked what his thoughts were on Christianity and Jesus Christ. He said he didn’t know a lot and wanted to know about him. I then asked him if he wanted hear me talk about it because it was going to be for a while (especially since we’ve already been talking for such a long time) and he said, “yes.”

First thing I did was rip out a page in his notebook and draw him the four circles diagram! After going through it, he said that it makes so much sense and then he started asking me some questions about common misconceptions. I explained how Christianity isn’t all about ‘religion’, ‘laws’ or ‘rules’ but about an intimate relationship with God. I explained how sin isn’t necessarily bad acts towards others but it is merely the absence of good; just how darkness is the absence of light.

He continued to reaffirm how much it makes sense and then I shared with him my very first testimony when I was unsure about accepting Christ and I told him how I experienced the Holy Spirit. After I said that and him saying how much it makes sense, I asked him, “Is this something that you want in your life?” Thinking that he’d say no since that’s how most of my conversations went and he said, “Yes, I want that.”

I FREAKED out.  I asked him twice just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and he still said, “yes.”
I started thinking, “Oh my gosh, training didn’t help me with this part!” After that, I explained to him how to accept Jesus in his life with prayer and told him what kind of prayer to pray and he was very nervous about it so I ended up having him repeat the same prayer that I had prayed at an event earlier.
After the prayer, Robby said, “Man, I feel really, really relieved.”

I bought him a bible and wrote, “October 26th is a day that the angels rejoiced for you in Heaven” and told him to start reading Matthew. He’s coming to the bible study tomorrow!!!!

I just wanted to share my story of letting Jesus into my life. A couple months ago I got an email from the bible study leader in my house, about an opportunity to learn about God. It turns out that it was Greek IV. The leader sent me an email, and asked if we could meet up. I thought, “Hey, why not it’s not going to kill me. And it might be pretty cool.” I ended up talking with one of the leaders, Tyler Riffe and I found that I really liked talking about God. We started going more in depth in the following weeks, getting into studying the book of John, and I started to pour my whole heart into the sessions.

Basically, this semester has been the most stressful time of my life to date. Whether, it has been dealing with becoming suspended from the athletic program, dealing with family issues, and relationship stuff, it’s been pretty rough. But on November 10th, my whole life changed. After having one of the worst nights of my life, I met up with Tyler and we dove into chapter 3 of John. It was the first time that The Word, the bible, really spoke to me. I was able to internalize a lot of what was going on around me and the only thing that kept me going was knowing that God has a plan for all of us. If I didn’t have this Bible Study this day my life to this day would be completely different. Anyways, I’m getting on a tangent.

Tyler knew I was at a turning point and finally posed a question to me. He asked me where I was at with Jesus. I drew it out on a piece of paper to visualize it not only for Tyler, but for me as well. I started with the bridge diagram. With people on one side of the cliff, God on the other, and Jesus on the cross connecting us to God. Jesus died so that we could be close to God. So, I told him when I started with him going through these Bible studies I was living only for the moment. I was living for my own satisfaction, and stuff all around me was all crashing down. I didn’t know why. However, each day I met with Tyler I could feel myself that much closer to God.

So, Tyler posed another question to me. Are you going to let Jesus into your life? I sat there and knew that I was at the biggest turning point in my life. Before I even verbally responded, I just felt this rush of emotion and energy in my heart. I let Jesus into my heart, and everything else since that point has not mattered. It was and forever will be the best day of my life. I’m excited to see how much I can grow, and help other people grow through my experience. To anyone who reads this, please know that God has a plan no matter how dark it seems. There are always strong arms around us through Christ.

Since then we have been meeting weekly for a GIG (Greeks investigating God). Last week I invited her to become a Christian after she told me she was beginning to understand God, starting to pray, and even seeing God answer her prayers. Alex was not sure about completely submitting her life to God because, “most Christians I know do it half-way and I don’t want to do that. If I am going to become a Christian I want to do it 100% and I still don’t know how.” Alex is continuing her journey but I know that she is going to become a Christian, and I even invited her to do it again this week. God is working in her life–pray with me that he would continue to reveal himself to her in ways that she cannot deny!

To make a long story short (at least for now), Jimmy came to Greek IV that very night and joyfully shared his new commitment of faith in Christ with other Greeks… and we celebrated with him.

It is much more fun hearing him tell it … read his side of the story:  http://greekintervarsity.org/2009/11/invite-week-accepted/

And if you want to read about Jimmy and I got started on this journey read an earlier story:  http://greekintervarsity.org/2009/10/a-seeking-sigma-chi/

For National Invitation Week, we wanted to do something bold. Our students have been asked to lead GIGs; but throughout the semester, I’ve noticed that students have been reluctant to ask their friends if they want to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. When we began to talk about why, many of the students admitted that they didn’t want to ostracize their friends or alienate themselves from their house. The more we talked the more I started to understand a deeper issue that exists among the Christian community here at UGA.

In the south, specifically in a small Georgia town, everybody is Christian. When somebody asks you what religion you are, they are questioning which Christian Church you attend. It’s rare that you will find somebody that doesn’t know who Jesus is; following him is therefore socially acceptable. When people here say they lead a bible study, even their non-believing friends applaud their belief. It’s almost become cool. As we’ve tried to be in the world, to relate to our friends, we have blended in too well. It seems as Christians we have begun to live for our brothers and sister’s praise and adoration, instead of finding our worth in the Lord’s eyes. As National Invitation Week approached us, I tried to think of ways that we could be bold for Christ, but also do something that made us rely on the LORD and not on other’s opinions.

It’s pretty cool to lead bible study for non-believers; however, it’s really not cool to ask somebody how much they are willing to pay for sex, especially if you are the one person in your house currently not sleeping with anybody. We decided as a chapter, in order to step out in faith, we were going to host the Sex Bed proxe station, and use the questions about how much you are willing to pay for sex to lead into an opportunity to raise awareness about child sex slavery and ultimately share the gospel with strangers.

While this has been hard for many students, those who have chosen to join us in this endeavor have had the opportunity to see God reward their faithfulness. One of the students even said that he now saw every opportunity to share his faith with his friends. Another woman got the chance to share the gospel with one of her sisters that she has been looking for an opportunity to share Christ with.

All the students who have taken part so far have experienced both challenging conversations and also personal growth. It’s easy to do cool things for God, but when we are willing to get out of the boat and follow Jesus when it’s hard, we learn to trust in his faithfulness, and not our own strength. This week Greek InterVarsity at UGA has had the opportunity to experience Christ’s strength made perfect in our weakness.

Read what happens with Jimmy from his perspective… http://greekintervarsity.org/2009/11/invite-week-accepted/

And  from my perspective… http://greekintervarsity.org/2009/11/a-recieved-invitation/

That day I shared this Good News with John…

God created the world and everything in it… and all this brokenness and pain that we see and experience in our world, well it wasn’t meant to be this way. He loved us and created everything to be good and created us to be in intimate relationship with God. But he also gave us the ability to choose, and we chose to turn our backs on Him and make our selves the center of our lives, this is what the Bible calls sin. This sin is the cause of that pain and brokenness. Because God is perfect and Holy and Just… our relationship with God is broken… as is our relationship with the world and the people in it. BUT thankfully, God loved us enough to not let it stay this way. He loved us so much that He sent His own Son, to experience our pain… and died on the cross to save us from our sins… and restore our relationship with God. This bridged the gap that divided us and God and it is by putting our faith in Jesus Christ that we can have eternal peace with God as a result. And even now, our lives can be changed by allowing Jesus to be the center of our lives… where He belongs. God has extended this gift to us… all of us… no matter what we’ve done or where we’ve been… and all we have to do is receive it.

John 3:16-18, Romans 6:23, Romans 3:23-24

Fraternities are random. Each night that I crash in one comes with its own blessings and challenges. Each night is different. Who I meet, the conversations I have, the challenges and questions I face, and the excitement that follows. Sometimes I hang out with just my House Ministry Leader (HML), and others I hang out with him and his non-Christian brothers and friends. And of course, each night I am bound to get only a few hours of sleep.

I have a whole load of stories that I could share from each of these nights… but for now, I will share just one. I was crashing Delta Tau Delta one particular night and the Delt HML and I hung out for a while, getting to go beyond the typical “coffee shop” conversations. Soon however, his room was invaded by 4 of his fraternity brothers, all coming in from campus, and each excited to put their academic worries behind them and play a few hours of the video game “Super Smash Brothers”. As they took turns playing and shouting at each other and laughing, I soaked it in. This time was priceless. I got to support my student leader who is doing ministry in a challenging place… from HIS turf. I noticed that his brothers know him, love him, and trust him… and each “Super Smash Brothers” hour is another hour of friendship built with him. Not only that, but his brothers got to know me apart from my “Greek IV Staff role”. For me personally, I got to see and experience our ministry from the front lines and be refreshed in the challenges and the beauty of what God is doing in houses. This time was priceless… for everyone in the room.

Nobody shared the Gospel that night. Nobody came to faith in Jesus for the first time that night. But it is times like those that are what God uses to build relationships of trust, respect, and love. And when the Good News of Jesus Christ is finally shared and discussed… faith barriers are down so that maybe, just maybe, they might finally “hear” it for the first time.

During Fall Rush I first met Dusty and he told me he was starting a ministry for Greek students.  I was hooked. I didn’t know Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I joined ATO but as I came to know him as my Lord and Savior I could see that he wanted you use me in the Greek system to bring people back to him. However, I was young in my walk and not to confident in what I was doing. I tried to be a Christian in the Greek setting (I knew it was possible but wasn’t succeeding too well) but was struggling with being busy and feeling all alone. Then along came Dusty and Greek IV and seeing that I was not the only one at Clemson that felt this way was an encouragement to me. This has given me the motivation to be more serious about my faith and my Greek friends. 1 Thessalonians 2: 11-12 says “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”

I feel that this has been what Greek IV has been about so far: gathering a strong core group of students who proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior and comforting and encouraging each other in our trials, tribulations, and struggles of trying to bring Light into a dark place. We are now taking steps into urging one another into living lives worthy of God: Bible studies are popping up in new chapters and our attendance is growing. We are also planning some outreach events such as a guy’s camping weekend to get more males involved and a tailgate. Greek IV is growing fast at Clemson University, but we aren’t there yet. It is our hope that you will continue to support us and encourage when you can.

Update: Michael (far left in the picture) graduated from Clemson in May 2007. He is now in his second year of grad school at Clemson, where he remains active in volunteering with Greek IV, Greek Conference and staying in touch with some of his younger fraternity brothers.