You can imagine my surprise when, while reading Collin Hansen’s new book Young, Restless, Reformed, I saw the name of the campus ministry where I used to work!

Joel [Brooks, founder/director of University Christian Fellowship at Samford] embraced Calvinism during his freshman year at Georgia. It turns out that not even the Wesley Foundation is safe from Calvinism. He joined the Wesley Foundation because that Methodist group was much more conservative than the Baptist equivalent. But Calvinists had infiltrated the Wesleyan ranks. Joel picked fights with them at first, and they obliged with spirited debates. But one Calvinist shocked him by refusing to argue. He told Joel to spend a couple of weeks reading the Bible first. Joel took four weeks studying the relevant passages.

“He never even had to talk with me,” Joel said. “It was like I saw Scripture through a different lens.”

A great anecdote for the next time I get asked about coming from the Wesley Foundation to RTS.