The best sober dance party you have ever been to! Greek Conference!
This is a guest post by Ross Haymond. He is a third year fraternity student at Purdue University and he is part of the Greek InterVaristy movement there. He is a leader of leaders and his job is to help get new ministry started in fraternities and sororities on campus. He has been growing in his apostolic leadership and really come alive to the idea of planting and spurring that on in multiplicative ways. I asked him to write me up some of his thoughts from last weekends Greek Conference and how he is seeing God move in his leaders!
This past weekend I was able to attend Greek conference in Indianapolis. This is where over 700 Greek students came together to learn more about Jesus and dive into seeing exactly how being Greek and Christian can come together and be a witnessing community back at their campuses. This was my second conference I have attended and believe that this one had a way bigger impact on my than the first one.
Since the Greek conference that was held in 2012 I have grown immensely and stepped into some new roles within the Greek IV chapter at Purdue University. Since joining the leadership team I have been able to see students coming to Christ and share my experiences and stories with Greek students in a variety of environments.
So this weekend entering Greek conference 2013 I was approaching in a totally different way. This time I was really paying attention to what God was doing in the students and realizing that many leadership qualities can be found in a ton of different places. I am going to give a little taste of some of the leadership qualities I was able to see in other students this weekend.
One of the best highlights from this weekend has got to be the fact that I did not get any sleep. Now I know this might not sound normal but it was the reasoning behind not getting any sleep was what I was so excited about. I was fortunate enough to stay the weekend in the Purdue campus suite, a place where any student from Purdue can come and grab some food and meet other student from the same campus. Now this environment was ideal for late night spiritual conversations and that is exactly what happened and I loved being able to live in it.
Freshmen Dreaming About Expansion
One distinct conversation I remember having was with four freshman (three sorority members and one guy from a fraternity). First we were just talking about how the weekend was going then I posed the question of
“What are you going to do back on campus to really make a difference for Jesus?”
And the answers I got from this were amazing. I was hearing freshman brainstorm ways to start new things in their houses and be more intentional with their brothers and sisters. I was hearing two girls tell a story about how they invited their sponto (spontaneous date function) dates to church, and then when the fraternity guys came they brought their friends or another girl say “I think I can get every single one of my pledge sisters to come to this conference next year”.
This to me was so amazing to be a part of. I distinctly remember being very intentional about trying to get freshman involved in Greek IV at the beginning of the year, and here I was sitting in a room full of answered prayers. One of the coolest parts about this conversation I was partaking in was the fact that I can remember praying for each and every house that was sitting in this room.
One of the houses: Tri Delta was so uplifting because before this year we had no contacts in this house and during our exec planning for the school year I was always bringing up how to reach the Tri Delts and so since I was feeling really motivated toward this house we just started praying for them. And by the grace of God I was sitting in a room with two freshman Tri Delts who were talking about inviting their sisters to Greek IV and to church and about what they were going to do when they lived in the house next semester.
Students talking about mission back on campus
And let me tell you I couldn’t help but just sit back and smile. Another story I was able to experience after this conference was one the freshman I meet with to have a “potential leaders study” come back and today sit down with me and just explode with ideas on how to better his house bible study and also ideas to better the Greek ministry at Purdue.
This weekend I came back so excited for the ministry at Purdue and the Greek systems across the country, not only because of what I experienced and learned but what I witnessed. I was seeing freshman with all of these ideas for recruiting and starting new things to further Gods work and to think that these 18 year olds are already thinking like this, the possibilities are endless and potential for campus is limitless.
I cannot wait to see these young leaders grow and am so eager to help develop them but also learn from them as the younger generation begins to shape my campus. I feel that God is doing some great work in these young individuals and to think that there are students like these all over campuses in the U.S. motivates me even more to continue to disciple these young student, and do my own thing; but ultimately all of us are doing God’s work and the fruits of our labor truly goes directly to him. God is good and anything can be accomplished through him.
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This is great, Ross! It’s inspiring to hear a third year college student talk about freshmen as “the younger generation who will shape the campus!” I love your multiplicative mindset!