Student Stories
Student's Voice | Testimonies | Staff
David Williamson - LSA, Junior
UCO? I marveled. UCO is still around? From what I had heard, my family had had a lot of experience with UCO; both of my parents, both of my Dad's brothers and his three sisters (not to mention most of their spouses) were all, in some way, involved in UCO (or the precursor to UCO). Now I was going to UM, and with all my family history in UCO and with all of them encouraging me to get involved, there was really only one option for me: to avoid UCO at all costs! I was determined to do this, and I even left the country for a year as part of my attempt; but alas, UCO got the better of me.
To be quite honest, I liked UCO from the beginning, but deciding what Christian group to spend my college years with wasn't easy-especially at U of M, where there are a lot of options. I checked out many different groups and churches that ranged from traditional, to contemporary, to charismatic, and even to "cotton-candy" Christianity (as my friend Josh Birk so accurately puts it), but I ended up sticking with UCO.
UCO stuck out in three areas: its sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, its intentional ecumenism, and its caring, genuine people. I was particularly impressed with maturity and focus of the people. The Lord quickly began confirming my choice by deepening relationships and clarifying my purpose in UCO. It wasn't perfectly easy to make the transition into a new organization after being comfortable with the structure and form of my high-school groups, but the Lord reassured me that it wasn't structure that was important, but Him.
Throughout the year, the Lord has been speaking to UCO about evangelism, and I'm quite excited by the way He's working. Besides some successful STEAK nights which targeted college men, there are about ten of us young 'UCOers' who are responding to this call by living together in the dorms this coming year. I've heard that in the past UCO has had a real grace for dorm evangelism and I look forward to seeing how God will move through us.
Alex Kilpatrick - LSA, Sophomore
The beginning of my college career was not a time
of deep spiritual growth. Now, I didn’t
fall away from my faith, but I wasn’t really going anywhere: my faith was
stagnant. On top of that, I didn’t really like the church I was attending at
the time; so it was an all-around bad experience.
A couple months into the
semester, I was starting to get really frustrated. I felt like I was one of the
only Christians on campus. Shy as I am, I wasn’t one to just go out in search
of friends or Christian groups on campus (although that probably would have
been a good idea). Thankfully, God had a plan for me, and I started to become
friends with some of the guys at the end of my hallway. Before long, one of them
told me about this group called UCO; soon thereafter, I attended my first
prayer meeting.
This first prayer meeting was
a pretty weird experience for me. I grew up going to a small Catholic church
way out in the country; so the whole charismatic style of worship was very
foreign to me. The main thing that I did take away from that prayer meeting,
though, was how nice the people were. I didn’t really know any of them, but
they immediately made me feel right at home. After break I came back and
started attending UCO on a regular basis, and I slowly became accustomed to the
way they worshipped. I had never really prayed out loud before I attended UCO,
but when I really opened up and started to sing and pray out loud at the prayer
meetings, I found out that it had a huge impact on my prayer life in
general.
I quickly realized that this
UCO was a good thing and so started to become more involved. This year I joined
a men’s group, which has been a great way to grow deeper in my faith along with
my brothers in Christ. This summer I plan on living with a bunch of my UCO
brothers in summer household.
All in all, the thing that struck me the most about UCO was the amazing amount of love that we have for all people (and their various traditions). I am so blessed that God has made me a part of this amazing organization, and I’m excited to see in what ways the Lord is going to work among us in the next few years.
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