Tom Lin

Last month, one recurring theme was InterVarsity’s evangelistic calling on university campuses. After spending several days with Regional Directors across the country and then several days with our Regional New Staff Training cohort, I was struck by the evangelistic opportunities and challenges in our postmodern, post-Christian cultural context. We also recognized the need to better understand this student generation. Check out the 4-minute video clip (my previous post below) made by Kansas State students entitled “A Vision for Students“.

I do want to say that we have been seeing evangelistic fruit recently. We saw at least a half dozen conversions in February alone! In my role, I have the privilege of hearing these stories. Here’s one from a student at William Penn College in Iowa:

“After a long conversation with a friend, I decided to take a sabbatical and figure out who I was again, because during the past five months of being unhappy, I’ve just been a blur in a world of individuals; I’d lost my identity: with myself, my friends, and my family. Who was I?… During this time alone, I suddenly had an epiphany type situation. I realized I was missing something in my life. Faith… Hope… Love… Rarely did I ever pray. I never grew up in a religious family. After a few days of learning about the story of Jesus Christ, I started to feel so much happier and even cleaner inside. For the first time in five months I felt alive. But it was time to officially accept this. I wanted to be saved, I wanted JESUS and GOD to consume me, rather than all of the terrible things that I’d experienced. So one night after learning the basic gist of Jesus, I prayed. I prayed like I had never prayed before. I felt like the Lord was sitting right in front of me, nodding, accepting me. But most importantly, I was accepting Him… I was so overwhelmed in prayer, that I broke down… overwhelmed with emotions. I was happy because I believed, but sad because I wish I would have sooner. Knowing that Jesus died for me and conquered sin and death, gave me hope… Knowing that He loves everyone so much and still forgives us, was actually an amazing feeling. I thought, “WHY WOULDN’T I WANT THAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP IN MY LIFE?”