Friend to the Outcasts

Here's a story of Campus Renewal in Knoxville, Tennessee. It still touches my heart, though it can get get buried in the daily tasks. Meet the Pikes...

Pike's at UT...A Fraternity Finding Jesus at the CHOP

   For 100+ shattered and uprooted Pi Kappa Alpha (Pikes) fraternity brothers, the last place they could have imagined a fraternity meeting was at the UT CHOP. Last year it became an unlikely “beacon of hope” for the outcast fraternity.

   As quickly as news stories around the world told of sordid deeds worthy of official expulsion from the UT campus, CHOP opened its doors for these displaced frat brothers to meet and pray every night. One of them described it as, “The first and the last place we rejects would have to ask to be allowed to meet & pray. They embraced us with loving arms and two full plates of chocolate chip cookies.”
As word spread that the fraternity had found our "four walls with couches," more and more Pike’s showed up each week for prayer and Bible study. Soon the room overflowed with 30-40 young men. “Guys who had been given up on and kicked to the curb were shown a new kind of love at the CHOP - Jesus' love,” notes Pikes chaplain Colin Skinner. “We found common ground to meet, pray, fellowship and be Pikes again, but now immersed in the Lord as we gathered in His name and learned about his son Jesus Christ. Some of these same guys before ‘the incident’ didn’t even know his name. The CHOP is our home and our Bible study with the Pike’s continues to grow.”

Again, this is why I do what I do.

One Cry Citywide Gathering

One Cry Citywide Gathering was really, really impressive. I did a small snapshot on my monthly newsletter, but one of my staff members wrote up a wonderfully summary of this amazing evening!




 Thanks so much to all of you who prayed, and also to those of you who attended Friday night's One Cry citywide university prayer meeting at Calvary Baptist.  It was a wonderful night of worship and prayer, with over four hundred students from all over the NYC area.  We not only had students from a wide variety of colleges, but also from vocational and art schools, graduate students, recent alumni, an NYC chaplain, the head of a divinity school, and many others.  It was a nice mix of young people together with a range of older adults in ministry.

    David Epstein, the pastor of Calvary Baptist, opened the night in prayer.  The sanctuary was full right from the beginning, and once the students settled in to the sessions of worship and prayer, the presence of the Lord in the house was powerful.  Akpene Torku and two students emceed the evening, keeping the time moving well.  Camille San Pablo and the One Cry worship band did a great job of leading all of us in lifting our voices and hands to honor God.  Jeremy Story cast the vision for repentance, unity, and revival on the campuses and in the city.  Ruth Zhou of Youth Evangelism Fellowship, Eric Bennett of The King's College, and others did a great job of opening the prayer sessions on humbling ourselves, seeking God until we find Him, and then turning from our own wicked ways so that God can heal us as well as our campuses and our city.  Many lives were touched during those prayer sessions as students testified afterwards.

    Before the final prayer session, I spoke briefly from Isaiah 55, "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat.  Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price..."  The Gospel is not about working hard to make ourselves good enough for heaven.  So many of these young people have worked very hard to gain acceptance to their universities, but the Gospel is not about work.  It is rather about receiving the free gift of grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  About twenty seven students responded to the invitation to receive that free gift of forgiveness, and prayed together with me.

    I spoke again briefly near the end of the night on catching and holding onto the vision of just how important Christian unity is.  Jesus is coming back for one church, one people, not a collection of groups or denominations.  We are members of one another and we need one another so that the Lord's full purposes will be accomplished on the campuses and in the city.  Once again, it was difficult to get students to leave the sanctuary as they wanted to continue praying, singing, worshipping God, and talking long after the time ended.  To me one of the greatest blessings was standing on the street outside of Calvary Baptist afterwards and still seeing students singing the praises of God as they exited the building and walked away down 57th Street, something you don't see very often in New York!

    Many people came up afterwards to say how blessed they had been by the time.  One young lady who did not want to be there and did not want to pray told another person afterwards that now she did want to become a Christian, that she had never experienced a time like this before.  Other students testified to receiving healing, being filled with the Spirit, or receiving new freedom during the evening.  God moved in response to the prayers of many, so please keep praying with us for these students as they return to their campuses refreshed and with new vision.  God bless you all!