Pence enlivens ONU students at chapel

BOURBONNAIS – Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence connected with Olivet Nazarene University students in spiritual and practical ways when he spoke on Thursday morning at chapel service.

Pence, also a former Indiana governor, spoke to the student body for approximately 38 minutes in a nearly-full Hawkins Centennial Chapel at ONU in Bourbonnais.

“I thought that he spoke from a Christian standpoint, and obviously it’s what we believe here,” said Kate Worthy, an ONU student from Oak Lawn. “... I just think he has a really positive outlook on everything, so I think that was great.”

Giovanna Zavala, an ONU student from Kankakee, agreed.

“I really appreciate his Christian faith,” Zavala said.

Pence, 65, said in his opening that he’s “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican in that order, and I am honored to be at Olivet.”

Pence said he had a traditional religious upbringing while growing up in Columbus, Ind., but that he had strayed from his faith when he was in high school. He reconnected while attending Hanover College, a Presbyterian-based school in southern Indiana.

“I didn’t think there’s anything wrong with [religion],” he said. “I thought some people needed it as a crutch, and I wasn’t going to put it down for it, but I didn’t need it. But by the time I went off to that little college in the Ohio River Valley, I knew there was something missing in my life.”

While at Hanover, he met some students who referred to themselves “just as Christians.”

“They just started talking to me about having a personal relationship with God, which was a foreign idea to me,“ Pence said. ”... I heard about the gospel, the state of the world. I hadn’t thought about a personal relationship with God, and I was intrigued by it."

Pence then started attending a fellowship service with students on campus and had conversations with them about God.

One of his friends, John, wore a “very cool” cross around his neck, and he kept bothering him about how to order one of those crosses from a catalog where his friend got it. Pence kept bothering his friend about getting the cross because he was now a Christian – he thought.

“John looked at me and he said words that I’ll never forget,” Pence said. “He turned to me and he said, ‘You gotta wear it in your heart before you wear it around your neck.‘”

Pence said it was one of those moments when somebody pulled the mask down.

“He knew I was a phony, and he knew I was posing,” he said.

A few weeks later he attended a Christian music festival back in 1978 with some friends in the early days of contemporary Christian music. On a rainy Saturday night, an invitation came to walk down to a volunteer pastor.

“I prayed to receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior,” Pence said. “It changed my life.”

He kept the “fire” that eventually led him into world politics and public service. He told the ONU students you don’t have to choose between Christ and politics.

“But you do have to make choices along the way,” Pence said.

First foray into politics

While first running as a Republican for U.S. Congress in 1988 at the age of 29, he learned the hard way when he felt he had to run a negative campaign, attacking his opponent. He lost not once, but twice doing it that way.

“I got caught up in that,” he said.

Pence thought he needed to set his faith to the side to be in politics, and the doors closed at first. Ten years later the doors reopened. He prayed with his wife, Karen, about how to get through.

“We said, this time, we’re going to run in such a way that honors God and forms the debate,” he said. “And we were blessed.”

With a second chance, Pence was elected to Congress in Indiana’s 2nd Congressional district in 2001 and served six terms. He was on a roll.

Pence was elected as Indiana’s governor in 2012 and was sworn in as the state’s 50th governor in 2013. He served his four-year term before being handpicked to be U.S. vice president in 2016.

“You can imagine what an extraordinary privilege it was for me to be vice president of the United States,” he said. “But all of it for me goes back to those days, that decision for Christ.”

Today, Pence said he’s not a perfect Christian, and his wife, Karen, will attest to that.

“I’m a growing Christian, but I’m growing since that time in a way that I hope, has been trying to live out that faith in real ways,” he said.

Hits home

That story resonated with ONU student Nathaniel Wisener, of Ohio. He said the speech was “powerful.”

“I really enjoyed how he focused very intently on his faith being the background of the foundation for everything that he accomplished,” Wisener said.

“He even took time to specify that when he, quote, unquote, abandoned his faith and his devotion to what that faith meant in the public world, everything went wrong for him, and when he returned to it, blessing came back,” Wisener said.

In closing, Pence told the students they can show people their faith in subtle, but sure ways.

“And I promise you, you step forward as men and women of integrity in any profession, especially in public life or public service in any capacity, you honor God in that, He’ll take you places you could never imagine,” he said. “And I know what I’m talking about. The world needs leaders that are guided by something greater than ambition, by humility and courage and a servant’s heart.”