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.

She began her ministry spending an entire year trying to pioneer on a large scale among all the sororities and fraternities on campus. Despite Lindsey’s passion for caring for Greek men and women and her desire to see cultural and spiritual change among them, she found herself busy, frustrated, and not seeing much fruit. So we stepped back, spoke with people who have gone before us in Greek ministry, and decided to start small with house ministry among the Zetas. We also started talking about Greek ministry with other Greek students who had been involved in the regular undergrad chapter. Since we had seen some conflict in the chapter because of prejudice towards Greek culture, ministry within the Greek system was an attractive idea.

One year later, Lindsay is ready to graduate and, unfortunately has not seen a new leader come up behind her in her own house. However, her desire to see ministry begin in the Greek system has rubbed off on others and has resulted in two fraternities with budding leaders, one of them having just started a GIG in the last two weeks with nine men interested and attending, albeit inconsistently so far. I thank God for sending Lindsey to Clarion and for calling her into the Greek community. Because of her obedience, we are seeing leaders developed in a couple different houses and partnership develop between the Greeks and the undergrad chapter (as well as reconciliation between them). I also, and especially, thank God for helping us to recognize where He’s already been at work and for inviting us to step out in faith and start serving and leading, growing in relationship with Him as we do so.

IU’s weekly gathering commonly had between 10 and 20 students from six different houses. At the first meeting of this semester we were expecting about this many students. In fact we only set up about 20 chairs so the room would feel filled no matter what happened. In all honesty the Leadership Team and myself had done minimal extra recruitment for this event because we wanted it to be a gathering of our core members. We intended to present to them a vision that would compel them to take action in their houses thus multiplying my and the Leadership Teams impact. As the clock struck 8:30 I looked around the room and was stunned to see flocks of Greeks. I say flocks because we all know that Greeks travel in packs. We actually had to set up 20 more chairs to get everyone a seat and even then we were busting at the seams. When it was all said and done we had 43 Greeks come to our small call out meeting!

There were 11 houses represented! At the start of this year I wasn’t very sure whether our chapter was poised to grow or poised to stagnate. Clearly that question has been answered. In my limited experience in ministry I have found that God has a surprising way of moving. Often He acts unexpectedly allowing us to know what was clearly God breathed. I know that this growth may be an anomaly, but for now I rejoice that God has acted. I rejoice that He is far better at this work than I am, and I rejoice because the word is out, God wants to know Greeks.

On our first day, we looked at vision. We asked God to give us a theme to work towards our vision throughout the year. God gave all of us the idea of being a more unified movement, as we continue to reach out to the Greek System. It was amazing to watch the students listen to God, and than to begin planning the year on a vision that they owned and that God had given them!

Throughout camp, the leaders grew closer together, and more unified as they thought about their mission to the Greek System at UGA.

While they were growing more unified with each other, they were also developing cross ethnic relationships with students from other campuses; specifically the schools from Georgia! They were able and willing to enter into relationships with people who were different, which helped them to be unified with the big body of Christ that is trying to reach campuses across the southeast, and students of every nation!

Our leadership team also had a small conflict during camp. When we came together to deal with the conflict, God grew our team together, bonding us with more than just a shared mission, but with a deep love and trust for one another!

At the end of camp, we anointed each of the student leaders to go back to campus. As I put the oil on each of their foreheads, I got excited about their generation. The past two years, have been me leading the students towards a vision God had given me, but that night I realized that God was giving them the reins and the vision! They we’re becoming world changers ready and excited to impact UGA’s Greek System!