Tilled in Prayer, Bearing Great Fruit: Greek InterVarsity Revival at Purdue

“The vision of Greek InterVarsity is to see a Bible study in every sorority or fraternity on campus,” says Lauren McDonough, InterVarsity staff at Purdue University and Regional Greek InterVarsity Coordinator. “For the first time in my professional career, I actually think that we could accomplish that.” 

On the Purdue campus, every Panhellenic sorority has a Bible study and so do over half of the fraternities. Fueled by spiritual hunger and steady discipleship, Greek InterVarsity at Purdue is training and sending students to their houses to love and witness to their friends, until “every Greek is one friend away from Jesus.”

Historic Roots

As one of the three founding campuses of Greek InterVarsity, Purdue has a long history of ministry among Greek life students. 

In 1993 several InterVarsity staff noticed that Greek students weren’t reached on their campuses. After realizing these students had different needs, they began asking questions that led to the main strategy for Greek InterVarsity –– What if we trained Greek students to reach their brothers and sisters instead of trying to get them out of their houses and to our InterVarsity events? What if we sent them into the mission field they already live in? 

“By sending Greek students back in, not only are you reaching more students than you could ever reach before, but if you have one Bible study leader, you instantly have 100 students that might say yes to coming downstairs to check out who this Jesus guy is,” says Ross Haymond, Director of Philanthropy for Greek InterVarsity and current volunteer at Purdue.

For 30 years, God moved through this effective ministry strategy. But he had even more in store for the Greek community at Purdue. 

In 2023, around the same time as the Asbury revival, a group of Purdue Greek InterVarsity students had powerful Holy Spirit encounters at InterVarsity’s national Greek Conference that led them to form a house church where students regularly met to pray and intercede for Greek life for hours. Lauren points to this time as the foundation for an outpouring of spiritual hunger and growth today, from 200 students in 2023 to nearly 600 in 2026. 

“There is a legacy of years of faithful staff work, of students praying and seeking God for the Greek system on this campus,” she said. “The breakthrough we're seeing today is a result of that legacy. The ground has been tilled in prayer over and over, and today we're seeing the fruit rise out of that.”

Jude and Ryan: Called & Eager

The spiritual hunger among students at Purdue is so prevalent that many have sought out staff directly to help them start Bibles studies in their fraternity and sorority houses. 

Jude, a mechanical engineering major, grew up attending Catholic schools. But when he began college at Purdue, he struggled to attend mass regularly on Sundays without friends to hold him accountable.

After freshman year, Jude decided to dive into his faith. He soon felt called to start a Bible study and asked his Sigma Nu fraternity brother Ryan to co-lead.

Neither Jude nor Ryan knew how to lead Bible study, so they found the Greek InterVarsity staff at an activities fair. The staff trained them and gave them everything they needed, including Greek InterVarsity’s Bible Study in a Box.

Ryan and Jude invited their entire fraternity to Bible study right way. “[We] spoke at chapter and campaigned for this,” Jude said. “I looked down at my phone halfway through chapter and got the notification that 35 guys had joined our group chat...That was near instant!”

Of the 60 brothers living in the Sigma Nu house, 45 are now in that group chat with more joining every week. And these men aren’t just coming to Bible study to receive; they often are eager to lead. 

“Students who are already following Jesus are spiritually hungry, but there’s an intensity to it,” said Laura Sapp, another InterVarsity staff at Purdue and Indiana Area Director. “There’s a commitment to it. They’re all in.”

Ava: Changing the Culture of an Entire Sorority House

Ava, a member of Delta Gamma, came to college eager to pursue her faith. She sought out Greek InterVarsity because she longed to be poured into. 

Immediately, Ava joined a discipleship group for freshman girls and soon jumped into leadership. Her house already had an established Bible study, but she saw potential for them to go deeper into Scripture.

When her and her friend Livvy became leaders of the group, they prayed and asked God to give them goals. One goal they received was for the Bible study to fill their current meeting space at the Delta Gamma house. 

At their very first Bible study, this goal was achieved. So many women attended that they had to move to a larger area of the house. Since then, the Bible study has continued to grow and is even shaping the culture of the entire sorority. 

“My freshman year, we definitely weren’t the Christian house,” Ava said. “Now that I’ve seen discipleship and Bible study flourish in our house, it’s apparent that the girls we seek out during recruitment reflect what our house has been growing in, which is our faith.” 

Nathan: Accidental Chaplain, Leader, and Missionary

Nathan’s story is different from Ava, Jude, and Ryan’s. While he always considered himself a Christian, he didn’t understand what being a Christian meant to him when he started college. 

“At the end of the day, I believed I was forgiven,” he said. “But I never really understood why people took faith so seriously.”

Nathan ran for a leadership position in Sigma Chi at the end of his freshman year but didn’t receive the position he wanted. Still hoping to lead, however, he chose to run for the remaining position: chaplain. 

This made Nathan decide that it would be worthwhile to study Scripture. As he did, he realized God's Word had a lot to say about how he was living his life. He wasn’t ready to give up his lifestyle yet though, but he figured the least he could do as part of his chaplain role was start a Bible study for his fraternity.

Soon after, a friend connected Nathan with Lauren, who informed him of the dozens of other Greek students at Purdue who were being trained to lead Bible studies in their houses. One night as Nathan joined them for dinner, the other student leaders shared openly about their struggles with sin and how they wanted to make sacrifices to represent Jesus to their houses. 

God used this to move and convict Nathan. He decided that night that he too would begin leading by example and made Jesus Lord of his life.

Now a junior, Nathan is discipled weekly by InterVarsity staff, continues to grow in his faith, and leads his fraternity brothers sacrificially. In addition to leading Bible studies and serving as chaplain, he took on the role of service coordinator for Greek InterVarsity at Purdue, inspiring students from every house to love their community in tangible ways and build relationships with local organizations. He also planned multiple mission trips for him and his fraternity brothers.

“The Bible is true, God is real, [and] the purpose of my life is to worship and uplift him,” Nathan said. “It’s an easy decision to make and a hard one to live, but I don’t know what my time could be better spent doing.”

Stewarding the Harvest & Creating Whole-Life Disciples 

At the end of the 2024-2025 school year, over 560 Purdue students were regularly involved in Greek InterVarsity, with a larger reach of 1,000 students who attend events. With numbers like that, it seems like this is a revival of spiritual hunger. But that’s not where Greek InterVarsity wants things to end. Instead, they remain focused on stewarding this hunger through strong discipleship structures, a cornerstone of the ministry, knowing that discipleship will take students from spiritually hungry to Spirit-led leaders and whole-life disciples.

“Now, senior year, I’m being prepared for the future and my life after this,” Ava said. “Because of discipleship over the last few years, I have the tools to lead further in my career.”

Greek InterVarsity wants this move of God to continue and to spread, as we're already seeing Greek ministry exploding in other parts of the state, like at Indiana University, and across the country. 

“A dream of mine is not only that we would raise up staff for Purdue, but that Purdue would actually bless the entire [Greek InterVarsity] movement,” Lauren said. “I ask myself, How could what is happening now actually impact the greater movement forever?"

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To support Greek InterVarsity's work of reaching all fraternity and sorority students with the good news of Jesus, go here. And please join us in praying for our national Greek Conference, happening February 6-8 in Indianapolis and Los Angeles.