Recruiting for the Field
Testimony at InterVarsity Staff Conference 08by Nick Johnson
As my wife and I have sought out how to learn to reach the Greek system – myself specifically at Emory and my wife across the Southeast – we’ve noticed a few things.
The first is that there are a lot of glimpses of the Kingdom in the Greek system. From community to leadership development to academic excellence to philanthropy, you can see glimpses of Kingdom values. Secondly, we’ve noticed that since there is such a high value on success. We found it difficult to convince Greeks that it’s more valuable for them to spend one of their summers on a Global Project than to get another internship.
But our desire is to see Greek students understand the fullness and the call of the Kingdom. We want these students, many of whom have access to various forms of wealth, to be a part of changing the world.
We began thinking how we might do that. “Is there some way that we can tap into Greeks’ interest in philanthropy and provide an alternative Spring Break? What if we could also use this to introduce non-Christians to Jesus and his purposes in the world?”
God’s answer to this time of prayer and time of thinking was to develop a Spring break trip to Haiti, with the intention of bringing Christians and non-Christians together to do service work and to hear about God’s heart for justice.
We were connected in the process with a Haitian fraternity that was started by an InterVarsity alumnus. It is just outside Port-au-Prince in a village. Over the course of this trip, our students were able to engage with 30 members of this fraternity to dig trenches and lay down pipe and bring running water to 25 families. In the process, they were able to learn more about poverty, creative solutions to overcome it and to hear how the gospel responds, both to the situation and to their own lives.
Just some clarification about this Haitian fraternity; it isn’t your typical American social fraternity. Actually, when this alumnus went to Haiti, he wanted to help build community in this poverty-stricken village. He himself, an [NPHC ?] Greek here, started a fraternity in this village. Its mission is to serve the community around them, advance the Kingdom of God, and to provide jobs and food to a poverty-stricken village through a four-stage micro-business plan. It’s really an awesome thing and I could go on talking about it for quite a while.
But I’m actually here to talk about a student who went on the trip. Three of the seven students who came on this trip were not following Jesus. I want to tell you about one of them and about what God did in his life. His name is Jim Chung and he’s a Phi Delta Theta. He grew up with a father who is a pastor, but his faith was never real in his life.
Like me and many others, when you enter the Greek system, you get lured away through the enticement of fun parties and lots of alcohol and abundant opportunities to hook up without any kind of commitment, and just careless living.
Even though he was friends with Greek IV members, any attempts that I made to get together with him over the first two years was met only with unreturned phone calls and cancelled appointments. But during his junior year, God began tugging at this heart and he started asking some spiritual questions. In the midst of this, another member of Greek IV told him about Haiti. His parents – who I think were the only parents who were excited about their kid going to Haiti – encouraged him to go. And so he was really excited.
During his time in Haiti, Jim struggled with the poverty he saw and the extent to which the gospel calls us to respond to the hurting world. One of the tensions that affected him most, as well as all of us, was this: Every time we sat down to a meal, as we were fed a feast, we were surrounded around the perimeters by children whom we knew didn’t eat that day. They were telling us they were hungry and we knew that we couldn’t feed them.
But a drastic change began to happen in his life. Through that experience, through living with other Greeks who were following Jesus, through spending time in group study of Jesus’ life through the book of Mark, seeing Jesus bring hope many of the Haitians in the village and developing friendships with others in his fraternity, God did a miracle in his life.
Upon returning to the States, Jim said, “I’ve always felt like something was missing in my life. But now my life finally has peace and purpose. I know that I want to live my life for God and helping the poor.” Later he said, “Hey, Nick, ya’ know, man, if you ever want to go serve on the weekends, getting wasted at parties just isn’t that enticing anymore. I want to spend my time on the weekend helping others.” Not much later, he was the first to sign up one Saturday to go work with kids in one of the projects in Atlanta.
His desire to connect with God was evidenced as we continued to meet and look at Scripture and how it applies to all areas of life. Jim also works part time as an EMT. Later in that semester, he began to have conversations with his co-workers about his faith. He was amazed at how easy it was to have spiritual discussions.
Then in his senior year, when it’s typical at Emory for most Greek seniors to kind of take a step back and let the younger guys run the fraternity, he remained active as the philanthropy chair because he wanted to engage his fraternity in seeking justice for the world’s poor.
He’s returning this year to Haiti – praise God – and he’s bringing a sorority woman from Kappa Alpha Theta who’s only nominally Christian. He’s also trying to convince some of his fraternity brothers to come with him. Unfortunately most of his senior brothers are going on a cruise and they’re heavily recruiting him to go. But he withstood that temptation. He is really trying to get them to come because he wants them to experience what he did. And so we are praying for that, if you would too.
But through this trip, through God’s working in Jim’s life, my wife and I have been encouraged to see that God is calling out his sons and daughters in the Greek system. It’s our hope that we’ll continue to see other Greeks like Jim Chung be transformed and developed into world changers as they experience Jesus both in the Greek system and in Haiti. Praise Jesus.
Nick Johnson is a Greek InterVarsity staff worker at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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