Beer Pong, Fraternity, & Jesus

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[This post is part of the “Non Conventional Places A.P.E. Giftings Show Up” series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

A few Thursdays ago as I was prayer walking the Greek system with a student who is helping me to launch Greek InterVarsity on campus at USC. While on the walk, we decided to stop into his fraternity and say hi.

Some of the guys were playing beer pong and invited me back later to play with them at their party late that night. I don’t drink with students, but I did want to play beer pong and incarnate my self into this world of theirs for the purpose of building relationship and hopefully a great spiritual conversation. I also wanted to model for Alex what evangelism looks like. He lives in that house and has the opportunity for ministry every day.

We went back that night and had a blast! The party was bumping and they had 3 tables set up and people were going at it! My biggest takeaway in the first hour was that I surprised the heck out of them with how good I was at this game!

As I was leaving the night, I walked passed one of the guys that was my partner that night. He asked me what year I was and of course I said, “I am not a student, I am friends with Alex and I am a Christian minister on campus”. Like it always happens, he was very surprised and it was a little AWKWARD! But I simply asked him in that moment, “Are you curious about Jesus at all?” (Remember I spent some time with him that night having fun and building trust). He actually responded that he was curious.

So I sat down on that fraternity porch. It was loud, crazy and with many around we talked about his journey with faith and his soul entering college until 12am that night. He told me that he was looking for away to get back with God, and I told him, “I bet you didn’t expect God to send you a minister as a beer pong partner tonight?!”

He laughed and said,

“Ya man, this is messing with me.”

Jesus disrupts people’s view of God

What I love about being in a fraternity setting like this is the opportunity to disrupt a student’s view of God. This guy had no view of God that consisted of Him being in the house, playing pong and talking with fraternity members about the spiritual life into the wee hours of the night.

This one act and conversation that Alex and I had shattered his preconceived notion of who Jesus was and is.

Most fraternity guys think,

“God hates me, he hates my house, he hates Greek culture and he is just waiting to smite it. God would never be in this place.”

Some of the things they believe are true. Greek Culture can be very sinful and dark and Godless. But Jesus loves these people, wants to rescue them and He definitely is in their houses and trying to reach them.

When Alex and I show up to play pong and talk, it manifests this reality that Jesus is near.

This fraternity guy was messed with and I left him my email and said, “balls in your court, call me if you want”. Well, just this week he called me and told me he is very interested in Jesus and he will be checking out InterVarsity when rush is done! He wanted me to know that he didn’t forget our conversation and that it is still messing with him 🙂

Where is a place that God is calling you to incarnate into? Where is a place or who is a person that needs a disruption and God may be calling you to reframe how they see him?

*If you’d like to partner with us by praying for Greek Ministry as it launches in LA, join our team.

[This post is part of the “Non Conventional Places A.P.E. Giftings Show Up” series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

About Beau Crosetto

Beau is the author of "Beyond Awkward: when talking about Jesus is outside your comfort zone". He is called by God is to raise up and release people that want to start new ministries (apostolic) as well as people that want to share their faith (evangelists). He currently is the Director of Louisiana for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Beau is married to Kristina and they have three kids: Noah (12), Sophia (10) and Wesley (8).

11 comments

  1. Quick missional question…. When you are incarnationally ministering to Greeks over beer pong do you choose bozo or diamond for your re-rack? Just kidding, but seriously awesome post!

  2. I love to hear stories of incarnational living, especially when it is both controversial and effective! Jesus did it often (and was at times called a drunkard for it)…

    My Sr. yr of college I finally gained the chance to have spiritual conversations with some class mates when I decided to take them up on going to a sports bar… it was awesome to see the doors open that way… I lost a potential donor while doing FD when I shared this story, and I have no regrets still… God did work…

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