My freshman year of college is a tale of two stories.  

The first half of the year is a story of the struggle to figure out who I would be.  

The second half is the story of who I would become.

In my family my sisters and I were the first generation to go to college.   Our family didn’t have a generational story of ancestors who knew how to navigate the college years, so we pretty much had to figure it out as we journeyed along.

My parents were financially and emotionally supportive of me, so from that perspective there was always a safety net to figure life out.

What to study?

Whether to join a fraternity?

Where to live?

Getting a part time job to offset expenses.

All part of the puzzle of leaving home and putting the pieces together.  

It was the fall of 1982 in Knoxville at the University of TN.   I registered to be a business major because “Why not?”.  At the tender age of 18 I had no clue what life would hold for me and what path to walk.

I moved into a freshman dorm, made friends, found the cafeteria and started attending classes.   Pretty soon I was overwhelmed with a sense of what I had gotten into.  

I may have been eating in the cafeteria, but freshman courses were eating my lunch.  Leaving my table bare and looking like an army had marched through it.

Economics was ok.  Freshman Chemistry was not my thing, while Statistics and back then Intro to Computer Science were eating me alive.

Lost and directionless by Christmas I returned home for the holidays wondering how I would survive Spiritually?   

I was a new Christian for only two years or so and trying to figure out how to stay a believer in a secular, party environment was a challenge.  Alcohol, exploring fraternity parties and girl watching were medication that soothed the transition, but didn’t provide any real sustenance for the soul.  I struggled to find a connection to a local church that first semester.

So on a Sunday in December in Johnson City Tennessee I accepted an invite to attend a small church that I’d never been to with a friend.  At the end of the Christmas service as I was leaving the church I mentioned to someone in the hallway that if I didn’t find a mentor my young faith was at risk.   Would I even be a Christian when the undergraduate years were over?

The response from the older believer was “when you get back to university call Mack” and he gave me his phone number.   So in January of 1983 I called Mack and he agreed to meet me.  

He was on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship whose mission is to train college kids to do Evangelism, Discipleship and Missions.  Three foundational tenets that in many ways became the framework of my life.  Mack was originally from Owensboro, Kentucky.  Coincidentally I had spent my elementary years in Owensboro and some of my family still lived there.  So we had a natural connection from the start.

Frankly, Mack changed my life.  He came alongside me and taught me how to grow in my faith.  My high school leader Danny had led me to Christ and set the early foundation.  It was Mack who took me to the next stage in my faith from young believer to stable faith in Christ with a firm foundation.  

Mack wasn’t stodgy or boring.  He was full of adventure.  Sails full ahead filled with the Spirit.  At 20 years old being shown that life could be lived to the full in Christ and be enjoyed was a message I needed to see.

He invited college kids to celebrate life and life in Christ.  We went hiking, and snow skiing in Aspen, Colorado and scuba diving in an old quarry outside Knoxville, and beach trips for evangelism.  

He showed me how to mentor and disciple followers of Christ as an integrated way of life. He taught me how to lead Manuscript Bible Studies and how to organize prayer meetings.  

So one tough weeknight that winter the pressure of exams was bearing down on me.  So I called Mack and told him I was worried about my studies and my journey at school.  He told me “I’ll be right over”.    Within an hour he pulled up to my dorm and offered me a study break.  

Mack had red hair and drove a brand new Honda Prelude.   He was about 15 years older than me and had just gotten the Prelude and was eager to test it out.  That car was a blast to ride around in and he knew exactly what I needed. A ride with the sunroof open in a new car with a faithful new friend was just the medicine I needed.  Male bonding time: Safe refuge to talk about life.

He said let’s take a ride in the Prelude and have some fun.  We talked about the struggles of being a freshman.  We talked about new friends, fraternities, studies, girls and of course food.  Mack shared his life with me.  The decisions he made on his journey that enabled him to do what he did which was mentoring and discipling college kids for Christ.

He became the mentor and friend I sorely needed.  Constantly pointing me to Jesus and living it out in front of me.  Here was a man who followed Jesus as a way of life.  It wasn’t a side gig for him.  It was the focus and journey of his life.  He demonstrated before me what it meant to follow the way of the Master.

He faced life on life’s terms and didn’t shy away from hard things.  In fact, he showed me that the journey could be savored.  That following Christ’s call on his life to give up everything was worth the journey.  Not so much for material gain, but for the rewards that would come in the next life.  To store up Treasure in Heaven.

Mack knew his purpose in life and has remained faithful to that calling over the years.   To call men to follow Jesus and to teach them the Way of the Cross once they had decided to follow the Master.

The marketplace of ideas at University is a battle to win the hearts and souls of those who would adhere to those ideas: liberal thinking, atheist or agnostic ways of living, secular, Godless paths.

There stood Mack in that marketplace preaching Christ to all who would follow.  He showed lots of us how to stand and fight for Christ.  How to win souls in that difficult marketplace for Jesus.

As stated above, he taught us how to reach out to our fellow students and explain Jesus to them and once on board how to teach them the Scriptures in Small Groups.  And once they were strong enough to invite them to seek the paths God had for them when their college years were over.  To be mission minded professionals at home or overseas.

All that sounds great theologically speaking.  The truth is Mack loved me well.  He showed many of us what true friendship looked like.  He showed us how to “Be in Christ”.  He prepared us to go into the World and follow after the Master.

It was Mack’s influence that planted the seed in me to want to live and work overseas.  It didn’t take me long to realize being a Business major was not the path for me.  One day sitting in freshman Western Civilization I was captivated by the professor as he taught us World History.  It was then and there that I decided to change my major to History.

I didn’t want to study History just so that I could teach it.  No, via Mack’s coaching, I was interested in reaching out to International Students with the Gospel and to do it well I felt like understanding their historical background gave me a reference from which to start conversations and friendships that could and would lead students to Christ.

Mack showed me that people of all Nations needed Jesus.  It was the starting point of my journey.   From there I have lived and worked extensively in Europe where learning a second language was crucial to sharing the Gospel with students from Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  Later that model would find its way to Latin and South America.

God used Mack to shore up my faith, gird my loins, and prepare me for the journey of a lifetime.  Years later he would visit me in Austria.  True to form he took me snow skiing and encouraged me along the path of faith for where I was at that moment in my life.

Mack went on to plant churches in Dubai, Urbil, and places I’ll probably never know about.  He became a published author and National Speaker.  And through it all he never took his eyes off of the end goal.  To love well, invest in people and store up Treasure in Heaven.