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 Ryan Lowery |
Welcome to my home page!
| If you have questions about my lectures
or the college ministry, I'd love to hear from you. Contact me. |
I live in Columbus, Ohio, with my wife and son. I work as the assistant director of Campus Ministries at Xenos Christian Fellowship.
My wife and I help lead a home group in the campus area, and I lecture at our campus Central Teaching every week. We love being a part of this vibrant community, and seeing peoples lives impacted by the love of God.
I spend most of my time working on my master's degree through our distance ed. program, working on lectures for our Central Teaching, meeting with home group leaders, and hanging out with people in the college ministry.
One of the greatest joys in my life, is working with my family and friends to help college students learn and grow in their faith. The Campus Ministry is one of the most exciting and lively communities I have ever been a part of. If you are looking for a place to grow, learn and get close to other people, the Campus Ministry at Xenos is the best place I know!
Want to know more about me? Read about how I and why I became a Christian
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Central Teaching Page
Testimony (my spiritual journey)
Growing up my family was my place of refuge. We never really went to church except on Christmas. Some of my fondest memories are of sneaking out the back of the sanctuary with my father to go get ice cream. Christianity seemed contrary to the beliefs I was raised with. From my earliest days I remember being taught that if I put my mind to something, if I worked hard and desired it enough, I could do anything. My parents were very supportive of all my pursuits. They made it clear they wanted me to have the freedom to pursue whatever my heart desired, the only thing they asked was that I be the best at whatever I did.
I began playing organized football in third grade. Kids my age always seemed intimidated by my size and demeanor, but these became great strengths on the football field. I learned to play hard, hit hard, to focus my anger and frustrations from off the field and unload on the opposing team. But I didn't just want to be a jock, I wanted to be a well rounded unusual person. I enjoyed being the biggest kid in the seventh grade, captain of the football team, and singing and dancing in the school musical.
I was first confronted by Christianity when one of my first girlfriends turned out to be a committed believer. When my second and third love interests turned out to be Christians as well, it became a running joke between my friends and I. Whenever I would get interested in a new girl, my friends would tease me that she must be Christian and sure enough they were usually right (I guess God knew what would get my attention).
The main problem I had with Christian faith was the inherent weakness it seemed to require. I still believed that I could handle whatever life through my way, and integrity required that I deal with life on my own terms not looking elsewhere for strength. Christianity was a crutch for the weak, and I was not going to be weak. In 1991 I began dating a girl who of course turned out to be a Christian. Like so many of the Christian girls I had dated, she had a mother who was concerned about my intentions. Once while discussing the in and outs of the Christian message she asked me the question; "Hypothetically if God did exist would you want a relationship with him?" Declaring that this was typical Christian manipulation, I explained to her that a relationship was something personal, where you can effectively communicate with another personal being. If God wanted to come down and have a chat I would love it, but what she was describing was not a relationship it was a fantasy. However, the question stuck with me for the rest of the day and that night I decided the only way I would find peace was to address God directly on the issue. For the first time in memory I prayed, I told God "If you are there, and I'm not sure you are, you are going to have to show me why I need you. I don't see any reason to believe that you created me to be anything other than what I am. If you have something more you want from me you need to convince me I need you. I felt comforted by my courageous challenge to God. If he was real he would answer and my life would change. If God wasn't real, he wouldn't answer, and I would never need to doubt my own strength again.
I spent the next few day looking for the rainbow, or the stranger on the street to walk up and tell me God is real, or that I need Jesus. The sign I was looking for never came, and I went on with my life. Several months later, I injured my neck in an important football game and needed X-rays. It turned out that I hadn't seriously hurt my neck, but I did have a congenital birth defect in my spine called spinabifida occulta. The mildest form of this defect, but enough for the doctor to tell me that I should never play football again. Very suddenly and early, my football career had ended leaving a gaping hole in my life, and depriving me of a needed venue to vent my frustrations. I turned instead to my interests in theater. I devoted the rest of my high school career attempting to be a first rate thespian. Loosing football was a hard knock, but my shoulders were broad. My sophomore year, family tragedy occurred. My parents who had known each other since kindergarten, and been married for over 20 years, approached my sister and I one mothers day and informed us they were getting a divorce. My safe refuge, and source of strength, was suddenly thrown into chaos. My sister moved away, my parents separated, and I desperately grasped to find a replacement.
My girlfriend with the Christian family, became my world. If you've ever had one of the friends, who got so in to his girlfriend, that he sacrificed every other relationship he had, then you know what I was like. She was my world, her family became my family. Sixteen years old, and we were convinced we were going to be married. We went on trips together, stayed the night together, for all intensive purposes we functioned as a married couple. After about a year of this, I began to get the sinking feeling that our lives together were robbing each other of something important. I began to seek out deeper friendships with other people, trying to fill the hole, the empties I felt. Our love for each other was real but it was not enough to sustain us. We broke up my senior year. I honestly thought it would be a break that would be healthy for us both, and eventually we would come back together healthier, and better able to love each other. Understandably she and her family didn't see things the same way. I had betrayed her in the deepest and most damaging of ways, and I had become utterly alone.
I remember driving down the road, crying my eyes out trying to figure out exactly how I had gotten myself in this position. I realized that everything that was important to me, everything that defined who I am, had been destroyed. My identity in football, as a member of my family, and a boyfriend were gone. I realized if I was to avoid this type of situation in the future, I had to find something that could never be taken away. At that moment the Lord spoke to me. I didn't hear a magical voice, I didn't see a rainbow, but it was as if the Lord tapped me on the shoulder, and reminded me of the prayer I had prayed four years earlier. I had asked God to show me why I needed him and my answer had come. It was a piercing realization, God did exist and he wanted me to know him! I wasn't about to devote my life to Christ, but I knew God was there and felt that I now had to do my part and learn more about him.
I began reading the Bible, some Taoism, and other religious texts, trying to discover what I could about God. I met a new girl (who just happened to be a Christian AGAIN!) and she began helping me understand that the God of the Bible is not the rigid, judging, sadist that so many of his followers appeared to be. I began to see that I didn't need to shut off my brain to accept Christianity. There were rational, objective evidences, that God had communicated himself to man through the Bible. She took me to a high school Bible study she was attending at Xenos, and in Dec. 1994 I asked God to forgive my sins, to come into my life. I still had a long way to go before I would resemble a mature Christian, but it was the beginning of my new life. Shortly I began attending the Campus Ministry Central Teaching, Home Groups, and even living in a Ministry House. I began to learn how to deeply study, and trust the Bible.
Since that time, I have continued to grow and learn through this ministry. I married a woman based on principles of stewardship, attraction, and love. She is unlike any woman I have ever dated, I never would have chosen her for myself. God evidently knows me better then I know myself. She is my partner in crime, my best friend, and the love of my life. We have a beautiful son who constantly reminds me of how much God loves me. My life is filled with blessings, and yet I still suffer from time to time, only now I suffer for a reason. God uses my suffering to make me better able to comfort others who suffer and to bring me closer to him. I used to believe Christianity was crutch, for the weak because I defined strength as independence and control. I now realize that what takes greater strength, is to trust others. To allow yourself to be vulnerable, to be hurt, and to be let down. True strength is to love, and to love is to lay down your life, your rights, and your control, in service to others.
