MU Rise UP brings Christian denominations together

In a campus first, the different Christian denominations on campus joined together for MU Rise Up, a mid-week worship service.

The idea came from Cru student Jack Victory, a sophomore biology premed major, and two of his friends. The three decided to come together with Cru, BCM, Young Life and Ratio Christi, to name just a few of the organizations that planned the service. Victory said the idea was to come together as one body of Christ.

“That’s our main goal, like in the Bible it tells us that we should be of one accord, of one body,” Victory said. “That’s not like, really evident around Marshall’s campus, so we wanted to obey God’s word, and that’s how we felt we were doing that.”

Planning for this service began in November of 2016 and the event was scheduled for Easter week.

“That’s why the event was named MU Rise Up,” Victory said. “We wanted to use this event to praise Christ and how he rose from the grave.”

The worship service was filled with songs of praise led by a combined worship band from the different groups and testimonials. Testimonials are stories of an individual’s personal walk with Christ. Different students from each ministry stepped forward to share their stories, including two video conferences of international students who accepted Christ and one of a missionary serving in East Asia.

A short sermon was conducted by Pastor Steve Willis from First Baptist Church of Kenova.

About 400 people attended the service, including Taylor Stephenson from Inside Out who graduated from Marshall in December.

“It’s such a good idea, whoever thought of it, because a lot of times we can get bogged down in the kind of denomination thing,” Stephenson said. “It’s important to remember we are all the body of Christ, we’re all serving Jesus Christ.”

Other students agreed with this thought, that the different denominations need to come together.

“I feel like I usually see a lot of pettiness between the denominations, but as it says in the Bible, we are all one in Jesus Christ,” Kyle Mosley, a junior from Cru, said. “It doesn’t say we are divided by our denomination, by whether we’re Methodist, Baptist, Catholic or what.”

Many students who attended the service expressed interest in coming to more interdenominational services on campus.

“I just hope it happens every year,” Abbey Jackson, a junior from Chi Alpha, said. “It’s just so awesome when everybody can come together for the same reason.”

Victory said he and the leadership team hope to continue planning more Rise Up events for future semesters.

Karenann Flouhouse can be contacted at [email protected].