Eye-opening evangelism training

Plenty of students who are not following Jesus have followed friends and fliers to the InterVarsity groups at the UR. Students who are uncertain about Jesus commit to University of Richmond’s Umoja gospel choir to experience the community among black students. Underclassmen in fraternities and sororities attend Rho Iota (Greek IV) studies in their chapter in order to get to know upperclassmen. IV students have found new members through school papers, dinners in collaboration with Multicultural student groups, and upperclassmen looking for something new. These non-Christian students participate in small groups, worship, and retreats. But are they being invited to truly participate in the Kingdom of God?

We worry that students are hanging around Christian friends and Christian groups without being invited to share in the life of Christ. In response to this observation, staff planned a Saturday morning focused on evangelism with an hour on the Biblical foundation for evangelism and another hour divided between spiritual conversations and inviting someone to follow Jesus. However, as we studied the scripture passage with the 20 participating students, we realized how rarely Christian students on campus were having forthright conversations about the Gospel. After an hour and a half of students marveling over how important it was to invite others to “be reconciled to God,” we spent a few minutes encouraging them to have conversations that move from general content, to abstract content, to spiritual content, to Gospel content.

Our Saturday morning conversation on evangelism at UR revealed to us as staff that students are more curious and more in need of encouragement in the area of evangelism than we imagined. Our tentative Saturday morning response now seems it could comprise several weeks of conversations; “when does this happen again?” students have asked.

As we hope to see IV attendees become Jesus followers, we realize it may be insufficient to respond, “wait until the Good News track at Rockbridge!” Though we have yet to organize another Saturday morning conversation, our tentative start opened our eyes that when it comes to evangelism it is not only the nonChristians who are in need!

Goodwyn Heard- University of Richmond, Greek staff