Friday, March 29, 2013

TKE's and Greeks


The population at SFA is largely people who don’t know Christ, but have some experience with Church. The toughest by far of that population to reach are the students in the Greek system. The Greek system at SFA is your stereotypical frat life that is portrayed in movies; lots of partying, sex, and full of people who are searching for meaning and acceptance in all the wrong places. In most cases it takes multiple years to build up enough trust for a fraternity or sorority to let us in, and for us to have an impact. We’ve seen in the past couple years a good relationship forming with one fraternity on campus, the Theta Chi’s, and now we have had another door open up for the TKE’s.

Our relationship with the TKE’s began a couple years ago after we had the opportunity to console a couple of fraternity brothers after the death of one of their members. We had been playing football with them for weeks, and they seemed to like us enough to share that with us. From there we slowly earned their trust, until this semester when we were able to grab lunch with their president. What we ask the fraternities to do is to let us have 10 minutes at their chapter meeting to do a short talk on the life of a man in college. We wrap it up by offering ourselves as spiritual resources for them, and offer to meet with each guy one on one. A week after pitching this idea to the TKE president, I was standing in front of 30 TKE’s in their meeting having a great conversation with them that would turn into an opportunity to follow up with, at this point, 10 of them.

At the follow up appointments I have had the chance to get to know them, field some spiritual questions, and share the Gospel. A few of them are believers in Christ, and a few of them are openly searching for the answer to who God is and how He relates to them. All of them have said how hard college is and how their lifestyle is likely displeasing to the Lord. They ask such great questions about the “point of life”, “why life is so hard”, and “why they do the things they do”.  I love having this opportunity to share with them about the love of God who seeks to forgive them, and who desires to know them personally through a relationship with Jesus. I pray that the Lord would continue to allow me to invest in their lives, and that Jesus would make an impact in the TKE house at SFA.

This past month we had Fall Retreat! We love Fall Retreat for two reasons. For one, it’s where we met each other for the first time 7 years ago, and for two, it’s always cool to see what the Lord does in the lives of students when they take just a few days to invest in Him. Our students learned a lot about how great Jesus is, and were challenged to what a life looks like that is dependent on the leading of the Holy Spirit. One girl who came who isn’t a Christian said at the end, “For the first time ever I am interested in opening a Bible and seeing what it has to say.” So we gave her, her first Bible.

Thanks for enabling us to be a part of what God is doing at SFA!

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