During my time as a student with ENC, I was itching to go on an outreach to another college campus. I landed on the curious choice of Abilene Christian University. I gathered a group of students who wanted to go on an outreach with me. At first, people thought it was a funny idea to try to reach an already Christian university, but something was compelling me to go there.
Upon arrival, we joined up with the ENC chapter that already exists at ACU. After a quick debrief, we paired up in twos and hit the campus.
There are two students from the trip I want to highlight: Stephen and Nate.
Nate was nervous to evangelize, as it was his first time doing anything like that. As soon as we left the debrief with the ENC team, Nate and I partnered up and the first person I saw I started a conversation with. She was extremely excited to hear about ENC and what we are about. After our conversation Nate looked at me and said,
“Wait, it’s that simple?”
“Yeah, it just takes some initial guts.”
Nate stepping out in faith to share the Gospel
Our next conversation had a very different response. I noticed a girl that looked extremely sad and distraught. We approached her and Nate started a conversation with her. We quickly found out she was struggling with feelings of worthlessness and didn’t really know if God loved her. We explained the Gospel and what it means to be a child of Christ. We prayed for her and she seemed so genuinely grateful; it seemed like real spiritual healing was happening in her heart. It immediately made the whole trip worth it, and it was just our second conversation! Nate learned the ropes quickly and had an amazing time navigating Gospel conversations.
The next student is Stephen.
Halfway into the drive I learned that Stephen hadn’t slept in 36 hours because of his graveyard shift at his work. We prayed, and I encouraged him to rely on the Holy Spirit, for He is made strong when we are weak.
My man Stephen proceeded to pursue each conversation with so much intention and direction, I knew that he was being supported by the Holy Spirit! We had a good time at ACU but felt a conviction to visit a different nearby campus called Hardin-Simmons University, so we headed that way. We got on campus and didn’t see a single soul, so Stephen suggested that we pray. After walking around for a while praying, we saw a student and started a conversation. By the end of the conversation he expressed a hunger for God, so we led him through the sinner’s prayer and got him connected to the church! We thought it was time to wrap it up and head back to Midland, but Stephen thought maybe there was one more divine conversation waiting to happen. We were sitting in the car and saw a student walking kinda far off, Stephen looked at me and said “yeah let’s go.”
So to make sure we got into a conversation with him I did a full sprint towards him and yelled out something—I can’t remember what I said, haha.
He turned around in shock, but quickly gratitude filled his face as he expressed that he was having trouble connecting with God. By this time Stephen caught up with us, and really pressed into this student on how a relationship with Jesus is supposed to look. By the end of the conversation this student gave us a huge hug and thanked us for coming up to him and talking. After connecting him with the local church we both knew that conversation was special and we were grateful that we listened to the Holy Spirit and stayed a little longer instead of going home.
On the drive home the entire team of people passed out from exhaustion, but Stephen, still on fire with the Holy Spirit stayed awake to help keep me awake as I was driving.
After gathering all the positive stories from the team, I quickly realized that evangelizing an already Christian University was just as impactful as any other college campus. Christians that lost their focus were brought to rededication and many students that weren’t actually religious attended that school, and we were able to provide Gospel conversions with them too! Overall I was truly grateful that God blessed me with the ability to lead and go on such an impactful trip!
If you want to be part of what God is doing on college campuses, get connected here or partner with us to share in reaching students across the country.