Joshua and Stephen McIntyre knew all about InterVarsity when they enrolled at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill . Their dad, Mike McIntyre, was chapter president as a UNC senior in 1977-78 and talked with them frequently about how InterVarsity had shaped his life and his career a generation earlier on the same campus.
Joshua, now a senior in journalism, and Stephen, a junior in political science, both hold chapter leadership positions at UNC.
Mike McIntyre was already a Christian and focused on politics when he arrived at UNC during the time of Watergate. InterVarsity showed him how to integrate his Christian faith and his politics.
“I knew in my heart that I had a calling in public service, politics and government, and law,” he says. “I knew that that was a mission field because not a lot of my friends, or other Christians, were involved in those areas.” Through InterVarsity, he says, he was encouraged to develop as a whole person “and to let my faith impact whatever career I was being called to.”
Mike McIntyre stayed active in InterVarsity through law school and began his law practice upon graduation. Since 1996 he has been putting his InterVarsity leadership training to work serving the citizens of North Carolina ’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. Congress. His congressional website notes that “a recent leadership survey by the Wilmington Star-News found that Congressman McIntyre is the area’s ‘most powerful and effective leader.’“
In May 2006, Congressman McIntyre was recognized by the Center for Christian Statesmanship for his service to his constituents, his country, and his Savior. Congressman McIntyre, a Democrat, received the Distinguished Christian Statesman of the Year for “his character, leadership, integrity, and faithfulness in public service.”
Mike McIntyre is also a lay leader in the First Presbyterian Church of Lumberton, North Carolina, where he makes his home with his wife Dee and his sons Joshua and Stephen.
