It’s an overcast Friday afternoon, as Brad Woodlief arrives with his
family to check in at the Island Colony Resort at Myrtle Beach, S.C. But unlike
most families who rush out to enjoy the beach, Woodlief patiently sets up a
table in the hotel lobby. Indemnity forms, cash drawer, nametags, room lists
and keys, this isn’t your usual Myrtle Beach getaway. Over the next few hours,
Woodlief greets 50 college students, collecting cash, allocating rooms and
explaining the weekend’s happenings. Most Myrtle Beach vacationers would curse
the grey sky and imminent rain upon the arrival of carloads of college
students, but Woodleif just smiles, laughs and jokes. Brad Woodlief, 35, is the
co-director of East Carolina University Cru, formally Campus Crusade for Christ,
and this weekend is ECU Cru’s Fall Conference.
ECU Cru is a member of Campus Crusade for Christ International, an
interdenominational Christian student movement that aims to provide a spiritual
resource to college students worldwide. Member
groups are staffed by college educated, passionate, God-fearing men and women
like Brad Woodlief, who strive to see lives changed. “Seeing a student or a
person who was once living one direction, sinful and destructive, change and
then see God work in that person’s life,” Woodlief said, is the most rewarding
part of his job – a job that demands seven days a week of dedication.
Woodlief says he can “give [himself] time off, but not days off.” Each
morning he wakes beside his wife of 12 years, Michelle, in their humble house
in Greenville, N.C., before meeting with his co-director, Craig Morrisett, and
part-time staff worker, Becca Hartman. “It’s different each day,” he said, “but
we will meet and plan the week or plan the vision or the goal for what needs to
be done.” In the lead up to Fall Conference there was a lot of planning and
paperwork, Woodlief, stressing, “I hate the administrative part.”
The rest of the school day sees him on campus, eating lunch and
meeting with students. Students involved in the leadership of Cru are mentored
and encouraged, while others he meets with have responded to welcome cards at weekly
Cru meetings. Still others are completely unknown. Each week Woodlief said he
from parents concerned for their children. “I get phone calls all the time,
probably two a week; email or phone call,” he said. “They tell me, ‘My
daughter, she’s raised in a church but she’s in the party scene right now and
I’m concerned.’” Woodlief’s heart breaks; the party culture at ECU is one he knows
all too well.
Graduating in May 1999 with a Bachelor of Nursing degree, after switching
majors in order to pursue his now-wife, Woodlief said he spent three years
drinking and partying. “In my home town, it’s the reputation: you come to ECU
to party and so I was doing that.” But in his junior year, everything changed. Woodlief’s
roommate, Deiter, was the worship leader at Cru. “He would invite me and invite
me and invite me. I never wanted to go and I never went.” But Deiter persisted.
Over the course of fall semester, Deiter shared his faith with his
roommate. And one night sitting alone on his bed in Jones Hall, only days
before his 21st birthday, Woodlief said he realised, “If I dive into
this Christian thing, I can’t live this life anymore.” Being churched in a
small tobacco town, Oxford, N.C., a town he labels “very moralistic,” Woodlief
finally grasped that it wasn’t enough to believe Jesus was real, and so that
cold fall night, Woodlief professes, “I gave my life to the Lord.” From that
night on, he nervously started attending weekly Monday night Bible studies and
Thursday night meetings. In reflection, Woodlief recalls, “I saw all these
students who were just happy. And I’m like, ‘they’re having fun, but they
weren’t drinking.’ And that was just so weird for me, I couldn’t figure it
out.”
In the months following, Woodlief said his whole life changed. His
girlfriend and now wife became a Christian, he spent his summer in the Soviet
Republic of Belarus doing mission work and
he realised his nursing career was going to be short lived.
In Belarus, Woodlief recalls handing books out to the local people.
“If I said ‘read this book about Jesus,’ they said ‘Okay’ and by the next day
they had read the whole book.” He remembers the Belarusians being so different
to Americans. Here, he says, he’s lucky if students read the title of a book he
gives them. But it was that summer abroad, overcoming language barriers to
build relationships with students, that transformed his future. “It was that
summer that I said, ‘Man, I could do this full time. I want to give back to Cru
for what it’s done in my life.’”
After marrying his wife in September 1999, Woodlief and his wife
Michelle, turned their backs on a potential combined $150 000 annual income and
headed to Daytona Beach, Fla., for Cru staff training. Woodlief used his four
years of college for little more than eight months of nursing in order to fund
the next year and half he spent travelling to raise support. He started at ECU
Cru in May 2001 on a summer mission, before officially starting the job a mere
week before America was rocked by the terror attacks on Sept. 11.
Although he is employed by Cru, there is no central fund for staff
salaries, so 10 years and two children later, Woodlief still spends his summers
raising support. “I’ve got churches, I’ve got people that I’ve never even met
and I’ve got alumni now,” he recalls. He says the support he recieves is unexpected
and “crazy”, albeit frustrating with the economic downturn. “One guy dropped
like two thousand bucks and I’d never ever met him!”
A second account for Cru’s everyday operation is funded by approximately
$7 000 raised at the football booths at Pirate home games. The staff, students
and their families all chip in to keep the movement alive.
Ashley Kirk, a fourth year English education major at ECU, says she
was saved by the work of Cru on campus. “The staff, like Brad and Michelle, are
such an encouragement to me and my friends on campus,” she explains. “The way
they devote their lives to changing the lives of students is an encouragment
and example. It’s like having adoptive parents on campus. Their kids all get
involved, they all dress up and come to football games and we fundraise all
together.”
Almost 12 years since his first week at ECU Cru, Woodlief leads
Monday night ‘impact groups’ and faciliates Thursday night meetings. On
weekends it’s tailgating with students and then on Sundays, student-staff
planning meetings. “[Cru headquarters] say, ‘Brad, do whatever it takes to
reach East Carolina with the gospel or to bring God to East Carolina.’ And so I
do.”
Robert Tant, a fifth year senior at ECU, is thankful for Cru staff.
“Brad and Craig are like the skeleton of Cru. They are the support. They make
things happen. They organise rooms, speakers, hotels, everything. Then us
students, we fill in the flesh. We make it look the way we want.”
Woodlief says it’s a spiritual legacy to have students like Tant
involved in Cru. “After 10 years, you see generations come through. It’s
baffling when people know people. But it’s awesome to see spiritual legacies
passed down.” From one dorm-mate sharing the faith with another, who shares it
with another, lives are changed.
One life changed that ensures Woodlief can remain on campus is ECU
IT specialist James Orr. A once student, graduate and now teaching instructor, all
in Woodlief’s time at ECU, Orr is Cru’s faculty representative. Orr signs off
room reservations and oversees on-campus events, effectively giving Cru a seal
of approval. “When Brad asked if I would consider taking on this role, it was
something I was happy to do because Cru played such a big role in my life and
faith journery while in college,” Orr explains.
Although student and staff numbers have dropped since Orr’s time at
Cru, “I think the
biggest encouragement [to Brad] would just be seeing students’ lives changed,”
Orr says. “Just in my circle of friends, there are countless people whose lives
were changed through [the staff’s] involvement in Cru.”
When Woodlief started, there were nine
staff members and almost 500 students meeting weekly in Wright Auditorium.
Today, it is Woodlief and his co-director, Craig Morrisett and their wives, and
weekly meetings see about 100 students. But Woodlief is not discouraged. In the
future, “I definitely won’t move schools,” he says. “I could see myself moving
somewhere into church work, but mainly because I’m 35 and the age gap to
college students is only going to get bigger.”
After hearing a student at Fall Conference
say his peers are either “drunk, high or don’t care” about the gospel, Woodlief stresses
his biggest hope for students in Cru is to “gain a vision and passion for the
lost.” Only half joking, Woodlief delights in saying how awesome it would be
for ECU to lose its party school reputation in favor of “the school that had
crazy amounts of students come to Christ.”
