[ZNPaaneah]

I was asked the following questions about my post:

Campus work, gospel work, what is the difference? Shouldn’t campus work be the gospel? What was being done at University of Houston that wasn’t being done at Rice University? Conversely, what was being done at Rice University that wasn’t being done at University of Houston? How did EM and KR factor in to these two schools?

I think these are great questions and would love to discuss this, I hope you will find this interesting as well.

This is a description of what we did, which I consider the work of the Gospel:

The first week that I was on campus after coming into the LRC I went to a class with my former roommate while sharing with him about the gospel and decided to join up in the class. It was a class on religion, we were each asked to visit a church and share with the class about it. I brought in a bunch of stuff about the LRC and was sharing it when this other brother kept hogging everything, so I kept telling him “hey, pass that on, let other people see it” etc. This brother turned out to be the first brother added after I had come in (though it was DC that helped greatly). He was MB. Then MB began praying for his roommate he soon joined us as well. The four of us would eat lunch together and MB’s roommate would provoke a conversation with someone else sitting at the table and then sit back and watch us preach. It was like a kickoff in a football game. I would respond and share something that I had enjoyed in the last 24 hours (since the last time we had had lunch together). Usually it was from one of my geology classes where I would relate some aspect of the creation as a testimony of God. While I was speaking MB would be totally focused in, he would then pull out one of these cheap paperback NT, turn to some verses and begin to share with this contact verses from the NT that were showing how what I had shared was Biblical, and the gospel, etc. He had never heard a word of it until that moment. Then DC would step in and pray and it would always be the same, he would lead this person to call on the Lord, because whoever shall call shall be saved, and then we would all pray. It seemed we would be praying with people on campus every day, and we had a schedule so that we ate at a different cafeteria every day. This is how we met DR, who was a premed student. I also met another brother that worked in the computer room, he wasn’t a student, and JF (the brother of James F would also meet with us). This was a kind of organic preaching of the gospel, we learned to trust each other and challenge each other. As I came to trust that MB would tie everything to the Bible I would do that less and just share the analogy, and MB’s roommate would try to be even more provocative when he kicked off the discussion. Everyone became wary of us, kind of like what Paul said “we were well known yet as unknown”. Then the headmaster of one of the colleges asked to come to a meeting. I brought him and he then wrote a story for “The Texas Monthly” (I think that was the name, it is a large journal in Texas). It was as though they had hired Balaam to curse the church and the Lord had turned his curse to blessing, saints were reading what he wrote in the meeting and laughing and rejoicing.

Our gospel was prevailing and so Campus Crusade (a christian group on the campus that I met with from time to time) began distributing the “God Men” and telling people we were a cult. We heard this from one of the brothers, he came to us privately (kind of like Nicodemus). I asked him why he was supporting us and he said that we preach the gospel, we only use the Bible, he said that everyone should preach like us. During our conversation he let it slip that he knew me from when I was a freshman. I was shocked that he could recognize me and asked him what he thought, he said “we give God the glory”.

So we decided to step up our game and put out the truth to counter the rumors. I began to post a column in the monthly paper, it cost us $50 a month, and it was a great experience for me. We also began to distribute gospel tracts. To our great surprise the one that had the biggest punch was one written by BM entitled “Will death solve your problems?” That really hit me seeing people sneak these tracts away and try and read them secretly, the tract is asking if suicide will solve your problems. I had never even considered suicide but it was clear that this tract was hitting a nerve among many.

Then we got news that the different colleges had had meetings with everyone telling them not to talk with us. You have to realize that students at Rice may appear like wimps and geeks on a basketball court or a boxing ring, but having an open discussion, that is their turf. They pride themselves in being smarter than Christians, to be told to avoid us went against their ego. So we played on that, once we were sitting at a table, I leaned over and asked a student sitting nearby what his major was, he said “electrical engineer”, I said “We have the gospel for the electrical engineers, give us 5 minutes and you will receive the Lord” and sure enough he prayed with us after 5 minutes. Once I was sitting at a table at the center of a cafeteria, every table was packed, many students were standing and holding their plates as they ate, yet at my table there were 9 empty seats! Everyone in that dorm was scared of me, it was unbelievable.

So it became clear we would have to adapt, so we came up with a plan where we would eat lunch quickly, and then in the last 20 minutes distribute gospel tracts to the entire cafeteria. It was like a commando raid. We started with the easiest dorms first, but eventually we came to my college which I knew would be the toughest. As we were sitting there eating it was as though a bee hive had been attacked and the entire atmosphere was becoming furious. The two other brothers with me looked very nervous, so I divided the cafeteria in half, I gave them one half and I took the half with all the football players. I went to the star player first and said “Hey big man, do you want to know why God made you so big?” and put down the tract “The Purpose of Man”. After that it was easy to pass out tracts to everyone else. For the rest of lunch he never touched the tract, he was one of the last people to leave, he got up, took his tray back, and then on the way out his hand landed on the table, when he lifted it up the tract was gone.

There was an intense atmosphere on that campus, event he BMOC was terrified to have people see him take one of our tracts. The headmaster of my college then told my parents that I had wasted my four years there. That was a very hurtful comment, but I took it to the Lord and prayed about it. At first the Lord showed me things that I could have done better. Then he showed me how much impact our gospel had. I would walk down the sidewalk and he would point out how people would hide their eyes and he would say “remember 2 years ago, at this college?” and I would go, oh, yeah, we talked to him about the gospel. “Well, whenever he sees you he is convicted”. It was as though everyone on that campus was convicted. Then the April fool’s issue of the paper came out and at least half of that paper was about us. They even put together a column made to look like ours that fooled the brother working in the computer room. The gospel was the central focus of the entire campus. And then sitting in class I heard students laughing about the wife of my headmaster, the one who had spoken evilly about me to my parents, the story was exceedingly humiliating, the headmaster was forced to leave the campus and it probably cost him his marriage as well. I tried to say something to the Lord about how this was too severe and He wouldn’t hear it. From that point on I always have felt that vengeance is the Lord’s, He will repay, and much worse than I ever would.

We would also drive from campus to meetings. Usually there would be 4 or 5 of us in the car. We had a pole with a clothespin attached to it. As we would drive we would attach a tract to the pole and pass it to others in other cars. It was hilarious. By the time we got to the meeting we were in stitches. We had a blast. But there was work as well, DC would meet us 3-4 times a week for lunch. He worked as a salesman and I doubted any of his clients were near our campus. He would then follow up at night visiting those that prayed with us at lunch. I worked on that monthly article. The brothers would usually come to the Friday meeting and then to the Young People’s meeting on Saturday night. They would come Sunday morning about 50% of the time, rarely come to a Lord’s table meeting and never come to a prayer meeting. MB took his studies very seriously he had one of the three highest GPA’s on campus.

By Contrast at UH

The saints all lived in corporate living across the street from the campus. They were driven to every meeting by a brother named Ken who ran the Brother’s house. But apart from meetings there was no gospel preaching on the campus. What they would do to preach the gospel would be schedule a Bible study, cajole brothers to pass out invitations which entailed someone pinning an invitation to a bulletin board when no one was looking. Then they would have a Bible study with about 10 saints from the LRC. So there was a lot of work, no gospel. You had to plan these Bible studies, you had to prepare a message, you had to make an outline, you had to run a brother’s house, you had to drive them to the meetings. You had to prepare for the Young people’s meetings. That is the campus work.

KR and EM

KR went to Rice Grad school. He thought he was going to come in and “help us”, (his words). He scheduled a Bible study on Hebrews (regurgitated Life Study). For thirty minutes we all sat there and listened to him. We never went back. When we preached the gospel we all functioned, we challenged each other, it was unpredictable, it was fresh, it was new, there was no regurgitated message, it was sandlot ball. I would throw something that I enjoyed of the Lord at MB as hard as I could. He had never heard what I shared before, the gospel contact realized that this was all new, and MB would catch it and have his little NT out in minutes flipping to verses. We didn’t have the slightest interest in listening to another message. From that point on KR lost all interest in the gospel at Rice. If he could be in charge he was interested, but when he learned no one was in charge, we were all just brothers laboring together and he was welcome to join us, he was not interested. He married and ran a sister’s house next to the brother’s house by UH. EM also married at that time, they both had little kids, and they were both close friends. In retrospect this may have been one of the two strikes against me, that I had not tried to drum up support for KR’s bible studies.