Beer Pong, Fraternity, & Jesus

[A few Thursdays ago,] 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 that night. I don’t drink with students, but I did want to play beer pong and incarnate myself 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 bumpin’! They had three 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 a way 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 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 saying, “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.

Reflection questions

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 re-frame how they see him?