“Well, I’m going to go to the basketball game for a while, hopefully. Then eat dinner, then do homework, then to improv, and then…,” Eli Creasy trailed off as I sat next to him at a baseball game.
“Good luck,” I said as he grabbed his backpack and took off.
Sophomore Eli Creasy is an art major at Union. He is also on the improv team and a member of the leadership support team for Life Groups. With such a busy schedule, I wondered how he ever made time to also be a Life Group leader alongside Audrey Gatlin, another sophomore here at Union, last semester.
The goal of Life Groups is to make the first semester of college easier to transition into for freshman.
“We want to make the transition from high school [and] home life a lot easier, be it through spending time together in our dorms or going out in Jackson,” Creasy said.
But Life Groups prove to serve as more than a place to sit in Cobo for incoming freshman.
“One of our goals is discipleship, so [we] are mentors in a way. We really want to stress the importance of the friendships we build. We want them to know we are equals, not above them, it’s a give and take. We want them to feel comfortable enough to come meet with us about their problems,” Creasy said.
“What made you want to become a leader for a bunch of people you don’t even know?” I asked.
Personally, I’m an introvert. If you become my friend and you make it on my Snapchat followers list, sure, we can talk about your problems. But having never met you, I’m not sure I could casually get dinner and hang out. But this isn’t the way it is with Life Group leaders.
“It was my own experience when I was a freshman with my Life Group leaders, Rachel and Luke. My leaders were outstanding at doing exactly what we had hoped to do with our Life Group, making me feel welcome and being my friend,” Creasy said. He went on to talk about how helpful it was that his previous Life Group leaders helped him mingle with already established friend groups, so there was a sense of belonging.
Hospitality is one of the most significant qualities of Life Group leaders. Considering we are in the state of Tennessee, I figured this is pretty common, but the LG leaders take it to a whole new level.
“Hospitality. That’s something I wish I had more of,” I said. “How do you practice hospitality?”
“Often times, it would start with Audrey and me getting prepared. It would depend on the event. Movie nights, dinner in my room. Around Christmas time, we made hot chocolate and read Christmas books, that was fun. We had a picnic and threw a frisbee around. We went to church as a Life Group, which is really fulfilling,” Creasy said.
Apparently spaghetti nights are also a trend. Creasy mentioned that they ate spaghetti, but when I visited with sophomores Abigail Johnson and Riley Boggs, Life Group leader partners, they said they did the same thing.
“I think everyone had a spaghetti night,” Johnson said. “With cold tap water. We were very hospitable. We got gluten-free noodles.”
As an avid gluten-less eater, I was thrilled to hear this.
Johnson also mentioned they had a bonfire in the Union woods one night. I remembered her talking about the experience once and it sounded very intimate and like a really cool Christian/Indie experience. “That was sick,” Boggs said.
“The main thing we did was try to have events but our schedules were all over the place and people had to study,” Johnson said. “So we just ate together in Cobo and hung out when we could. Just inserting them into our everyday lives and inserting ourselves into theirs,” she said when I asked her about how events were planned.
“It wasn’t all peaches and rainbows at first,” Johnson said. “We did have events that nobody showed up to and that was hard for a while. But that wasn’t what worked for us and we had to move toward something different.”
According to Johnson and Boggs, being “flexible,” as Boggs put it, was imperative to having people show up.
I asked her how successful it was overall for them as LG leaders and the freshman. “I think it was beneficial for the ones who invested into it,” Johnson said. “Some kids had nothing to do with it, and that was fine because they were getting involved in other places. But for the ones who were invested in us too, we are good friends with them now. I went to Nashville with a few of them last weekend.”
This is exactly the kind of success story that Life Group leaders want to have, and they’re really not uncommon. I asked about the other aspects of being “hospitable,” not just being welcoming but being open and available on many levels.
“They came to us for pretty much everything because they didn’t know who to go to,” Boggs said. “So I feel like it [Life Group] really accomplished its goals.”
