University of Louisville

Black Students Take the Lead

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 16:16:32 +0000

Gordon Govier

Black Students Take the Lead

Kimberly Blackford was a student leader at the University of Louisville. She was president of her sorority, diversity chair for the Student Activities Board, and active in a variety of other organizations. But it took a long time for her to get involved in ��ñ��.

Her third year on campus she came to a turning point in her Christian life. “I was tired of living with guilt, one foot in the world and one foot in the church,” Kimberly said. “At a Wednesday night church service I decided to surrender my life fully to Jesus and live for him.”

A short time later she was invited to a Christian conference for Black students. “We all came back to campus [from the conference] eager to help other students find out about Jesus,” she said. “We set a goal of knocking on every dorm door on campus to share Jesus, and we did it.”

Tyren Edwards, ��ñ��’s campus staff member at the University of Louisville, joined the evangelism campaign and was paired with Kimberly. “I was looking for a mentor because I was really hungry for God,” Kimberly said. “I saw her as someone who could help me grow in my relationship with him.”

Tyren mentored Kimberly for a-year-and-a-half, and then invited Kimberly to go to ��ñ��’s regional Chapter Camp in Georgia, though Kimberly hadn’t been very involved in the ��ñ�� chapter. And even though she hardly knew anyone, Kimberly went.

At Chapter Camp Kimberly became better acquainted with other ��ñ�� students and staff members and went through small group leaders training. “It was a great experience,” she said.

The following semester, she led a small group Bible study on the Louisville campus. Tyren, who was leaving staff work to raise her family, invited Kimberly to take her place on ��ñ�� staff at Louisville. Kimberly hesitated; she had been considering ministry at a church instead.

“Throughout that year the Lord worked in my heart to see more of a vision for campus, particularly working with Black students,” she recalled. “I realized that Black students were not going to cross cultures the way that I did to be a part of a predominantly White undergraduate group.”

As she talked with other ��ñ�� staff, particularly Black Campus Ministries (BCM) staff, Kimberly realized that she wanted to be involved on the front lines of campus ministry, “dealing with people in their day-to-day stuff,” as she put it.

Today, after 14 years as an ��ñ�� staff member, Kimberly is BCM coordinator for ��ñ��’s Southeast region. She helps plan an annual BCM regional conference called Remix, which drew about 175 students and staff this past February.

Kimberly is pleased about what’s happening in the Southeast region with Black Campus Ministries. Black student involvement has grown by 56 percent. At their region’s Chapter Camp this spring, for the first time, the majority of students were Black. “We haven’t heard of this happening at any ��ñ�� Chapter Camp before,” she said.

“We praise God for what we are seeing,” Kimberly said. “BCM staff and White staff working with Black students are doing good, solid campus ministry with Black students.” Southeast Regional Director John Criswell agreed. “Though I can easily point to a team effort in this kind of result, it’s clearly a move of God as well,” he said. “We’re very eager to see where this will take us in the days ahead.”

The Remix conference, begun in 2011, has given ��ñ�� a stronger presence with Black students. “They come to Remix and encounter the Lord, and as we talk about what it means to be both Black and Christian, they also find that ��ñ�� is a ministry they can trust,” Kimberly said. At Remix, students build relationships with people on other campuses, and they hear from Black staff leaders that they need to keep investing in their spiritual growth. Those two incentives help bring them to Chapter Camp at the end of the year.

Campus ministries abound in the southeastern U.S., which is known as the Bible Belt. But relatively few campuses have ministries that are reaching students of color. For several years ��ñ��’s Southeast region Black staff have wanted to see Black students taking the lead in driving the mission on campus. “Seeing that happen is an answer to prayer,” Kimberly said.

She also believes it’s a result of deeply invested and gifted colleagues. “They know how to be relevant to Black students,” she said. “Black staff in the Southeast have worked hard to be creative and thoughtful in our outreach to Black students, and to speak to the culture. We have a burden to see black students follow Jesus with their whole lives and be leaders who shape what’s happening on campuses and in our communities.”

On some campuses in the Southeast, veteran White staff work with chapters made up of large numbers of Black students. “They’ve also done what it takes to build credibility with Black students,” Kimberly said. “They have good relationships with the students they work with. They also give space to let Black students take the lead with other Black students.”

As the cry “Black Lives Matter” ripples across the country, Kimberly believes the keys to successful ministry to Black students include making Jesus relevant to the issues they face, and giving students safe places to ask questions and find community. She believes that even without events that bring to light social and systemic issues that still affect the Black community today, students want to hear about Jesus. “No matter what the climate is, there’s a need for the gospel. Students want to respond to the gospel, but it’s got to be relevant, in a way that they can hear it,” she said.

��ñ�� is committed to presenting the gospel in a manner that is relevant to students, so that they can hear it.

News Keywords

University of Louisville

southeast region

Black Campus Ministry

Whole Heart for God's Mission

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:20:04 +0000

News

Amy Hauptman

Whole Heart for God's Mission

David Sutherland served in President Clinton’s administration, helped start in his house what has become a 1,000-member church, and moved his family to Asia for the sake of God’s global mission — all because of what God did in David’s life in college.

What Matters Most

“My debate experience in high school and college inspired me to figure out what things are ultimately important, so that we can invest our lives in those things the most,” noted David. “But ��ñ�� and Urbana showed me that God invites us to invest our whole lives in the things that matter most to Him.”

When David and his brother began attending the University of Louisville, they were focused on winning the national debate championships. They dedicated over 100 hours every week to practicing for debate competitions; and during their freshmen year, they won second place in the national championships.

By David’s sophomore year, he had met an ��ñ�� chapter planter who invited David to join the new 20 member ��ñ�� chapter at Louisville. While David and his brother attended Intervarsity meetings, they declined any invitations to join the student leadership team, because of how much time they were investing in debate.

Transformation at Camp

Then one week this same ��ñ�� staff worker invited David and his brother to go to an ��ñ�� camp designed for ��ñ�� student leaders. For some reason, David and his brother couldn’t come up with an excuse not to go.

“At this camp, we met students from other campuses and realized that their schools had multiple ministries available to students,” said David. “While at the University of Louisville, the only other campus ministry had moved to another campus entirely. At Louisville, there wasn’t any other campus ministry except ��ñ��.”

God began tugging on the hearts of David and his brother. While they had devoted so much of their time and energy towards debate competition during their freshmen year, they both realized that making an eternal affect on people’s lives was far more important than any debate championship.

“During that camp, God showed me that He was the most important thing,” stated David. “So my brother and I went back to the Louisville campus determined to focus on deepening our relationship with God and partnering with this ��ñ�� chapter planter, by investing a significant amount of our time investing in others on campus.”

David and his brother also drastically cut back how much time they invested into debate because they felt compelled to invest in people.

“Ironically, what happened at the National Championship felt very much like a spiritual experience,” remarked David. “Somehow, we won; it was as if God was saying to us ‘If you put me first in your life, I can take care of you.’”

While David and his brother were ecstatic that they won, David remembers this experience taught him that living a life dedicated to God’s purposes was ultimately the best thing he could do with his life after graduation.

Fighting Global Poverty

As a result of debate (and debating countless topics and issues), one of the issues that David became most passionate about was global poverty. Then as David attended Urbana 85, he saw a bigger picture of God’s global mission to reach the entire world with his grace and truth. So after graduation and getting married, David and his wife decided that they would give their lives to God’s global mission and that they would work to alleviate global poverty.

When David studied to be a lawyer, he began looking for ways to go overseas and serve with missions. He soon found out that one of the few lawyers that can work overseas were international tax lawyers. So he and wife began praying, and sensed God directing them to Asia. As they actively looked and investigated different cities to live in Asia, David was offered a position to work in Asia with Morgan Stanley (today he serves as their CFO).

After moving to Asia, David and his wife investigated what ministries were already serving local communities. They wanted to find a local ministry that focused on evangelism, poverty issues, was run by indigenous people, and was accessible to family and friends.

They found a ministry called International Care Ministries (ICM) and began seek out opportunities to partner with ICM, using their job skills and experience. Today ICM is now one of the largest ministries in the Philippines. It operates through local churches and targets the poorer churches- people who are living off of 50 cents a day. As a result, these poor churches are seeing a 61% increase in household income, 22% reduction in illnesses, and these churches have doubled in size.

While David and his wife work tirelessly to build up local indigenous ministries in Asia, they know it is not by the power of their own hands that people come to faith, but rather by the power of God and the movement of the Holy Spirit. They’ve seen the kingdom of God grow like a mustard seed- from their house to the Philippines.

May we all follow David and his wife’s example and invest our whole lives in the one thing that matters-giving our lives to God’s global mission, using our gifts and talents to building up God’s kingdom wherever we are, and shining our light in the dark places of our world!

News Keywords

University of Louisville

��ñ�� alumni

Transformed by Greek Conference

AD-16225 — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:29:08 +0000

News

John Evanko

Transformed by Greek Conference

I arrived at the University of Louisville in the Fall of 2008, eager to see what the college life had to offer. Although I grew up going to church and lived what I thought was a good life, I had never considered what knowing Jesus Christ really meant. Through a dorm Bible study and some Christian organizations on campus, I came to learn that my basically good life was actually full of sin that had kept me from having a right relationship with God. But the good news was that Jesus’ death on the cross was the perfect sacrifice for my sin, and through faith in Christ I could now have a right relationship with God.

During my first semester of college, I came to believe in that message, and it changed my life. The next semester, I decided to pledge Sigma Chi. Throughout the following year, I got to know my fraternity brothers and much of the rest of the Greek system. They were great people, having a general knowledge about God, but many did not know they were missing out on a real relationship with God. In so many ways, they were exactly like I used to be. In light of this, God broke my heart for my brothers.

My sophomore year, my ��ñ�� staff told me about Greek ��ñ�� and Greek Conference. For months I tried to get my brothers and other Greeks on campus to come with me to check out Greek Conference. When February rolled around, I was still the only one registered from Louisville, so I packed my bags and headed to Indianapolis alone. While there, I had a phenomenal weekend of meeting other Greek Christians and hearing tons of encouraging stories.

I headed back to Louisville excited about improving Greek ministry. However, it was hard to get moving on all these great ideas when I seemed to be the only one who cared about them. I prayed for God to raise up Christian leaders to help out with the ministry. The next year, Fall 2010, God answered my prayers. A girl in Kappa Delta, Robin, approached me about the Greek Bible study she heard I was involved in. Fresh off a year of spiritual growth capped off by a trip mission trip to Africa, Robin was eager to share her newfound faith with her sisters and the rest of the Greek system.

Although we had no Greek ��ñ�� chapter at U of L, Robin was excited about the possibilities of ministry in her sorority and the rest of the Greek community. We talked about how we could reach all Greeks with the gospel message, while still being faithful within our own houses. We knew getting students to Greek Conference would be key in launching Greek-wide ministry on campus.

Later that year, when Greek Conference rolled around, I didn’t go alone this time. Eight other Greeks from Louisville attended, largely because of Robin’s recruiting efforts. In addition, my sister, who attends Western Kentucky University, recruited ten students to attend from her school, where no students had ever attended GC! God had taken two campuses with virtually no ministry and sparked movements on both of them!

Today, God continues to move in amazing ways in Louisville’s Greek community. Last year’s semi-fruitful all Greek Bible study has turned into two amazing house Bible studies in KD and Sigma Chi, where students can open up and discuss big questions with their fraternity brothers and sorority sisters. Non-Christians have been hungry to pursue a true relationship with God, while leaders in other organizations have stepped up and are eager to start Bible studies in their houses! We continue to pray for our Greek system and can’t wait to see God move even more at U of L.

For more stories about Greek ��ñ��'s ministry to fraternity and sorority students, check out the Greek ��ñ�� website.

News Keywords

University of Louisville

Kentucky

Greek ��ñ��