Jace Bowling

contingent staff

I was born in Wuhan, China where I lived in an orphanage until I was adopted and moved to London, KY at 5 years old. Throughout my childhood, I went to church routinely with my family and grew up culturally a Christian. However, my whole idea of Christianity until college was to be a good person and God would accept me because of how good I thought I was. My identity, hope, and purpose in life was to be a morally good person or at least "better" than the person I compared myself to. Jesus was never significant to me. 

However, my identity, hope, and purpose in life started to crumble as I began to feel the weight of my sin for the first time in the back half of highschool. During that time, God was starting to reveal my sin, and I was in despair. I lived in constant shame and guilt realizing that I truly was not a "good" person. To cope, I tried harder and harder to be good but was only left in despair as I felt more and more sinful. 

But God, in His gracious character did not leave me in despair, but revealed Himself to me. When I got to EKU, I started to hang around with staff and students from Campus Outreach where I started to not only hear the Gospel, but see it lived out among my peers. In the fall of my freshman year, I read Ephesians 2:8-9 for the first time with a staff member where a flip switched in my brain and I finally understood the Gospel. That it wasn't anything that I did or could do to make God accept and love me, but rather by God's grace through faith. 

Campus Outreach has had an eternal impact on my life and the lives of those around me. I have seen my best friends from highschool come to know the Lord as they saw how the Lord had changed me and also through their experience in Campus Outreach at EKU. My time in college was full of meaningful community and the first real taste of the Kingdom of God. The Lord has given me a heart for college students to walk with Jesus in college, but also for a lifetime. I can't wait to get on a campus and share what has been given to me!