God meets us in the things we love. That includes serving as a drum major

When I was a freshman at South Carolina State University, the thing I wanted most was to be a drum major. By every rule, that was impossible. I needed to be a sophomore to try out, and I’d never led anything in my life.

You need to understand what a marching band means at a historically black college or university. Across HBCUs, the band is its own institution, a generations-old point of pride the community claims as its own — at many schools, it’s bigger than the football team. That band was a cultural inheritance where I come from, and being drum major was one of the biggest things a young person from my world could reach for.

To me it was Herculean, bigger than the Super Bowl, bigger than the World Cup. I’d never reached that high for anything. I was the class clown back home. My teachers and classmates expected little of me. My brother was the family standout; he won the awards, earned the grades, followed in our father’s footsteps.

Just deciding to try out took a step of faith. Before I could convince anyone else, I had to convince myself. I trained, day after day, and prayed through every workout, growing closer to God even before I’d turned my life over to him.

Looking back, that discipline is exactly what 1 Corinthians 9:24 describes, and it became my life’s verse: run the race to win, purpose in every step. My best friend, another freshman, wanted it too, and I believed God could give it to us both. And he did. We both made it as freshmen, and I later became head drum major.

Here’s the honest part: When I first held that mace (a drum major’s baton), I was not yet saved. I was a preacher’s kid, so I knew how to pray, but I had not given my life to Christ. That came my sophomore year. God met me at a party, of all places, and let me know he had a bigger plan than the one I was chasing.

That Christmas, God finished the job with a translation. Even though my father is a pastor, I’d never read the Bible for myself. I couldn’t get through the King James version. Home on break, bored, I found The Living Bible on his desk. I picked it up, and it opened to plain, everyday English. For the first time in my life, the words were in language I could understand and apply.

My whole story turns on that translation. Without it, none of the rest happens. It was like a spiritual explosion. Over the next several months I read it every day, going through a real conversion, watching my life change like the scale moving when somebody’s finally losing weight.

When I came back to campus, I understood the weight of my responsibility. Three hundred students followed my count, and we were together more than in class. The band became my first ministry — Bible studies, prayer groups, leading by faith. My friends watched it happen, and because it was real, it moved them. I came as their friend still figuring it out, walking with them, not over them.

My leadership rose and fell with my closeness to God; obedience kept me on track. When I obeyed, things held. The band held. I held. When I drifted, the band drifted into chaos, like Jonah when he ran.

Week to week, I learned accountability. A faith leader lives by obedience and discipline, because God holds you accountable, and you learn to hold yourself accountable. Without the title, I had become the chaplain of that band and school.

Here’s what I understand now that I couldn’t have named then: I thought that band was the main stage of my life; it turned out to be the backdrop, and God stepped to the front. I had prayed so hard to be a drum major because I wanted something from God, but God wanted something bigger from me.

All through college, from freshman year to graduation, he stayed with me, speaking through my desire to lead. While I chased a title, he was making me a faith leader, even though I had no idea.

I wasn’t perfect. College offered many places to stumble, and I let people down. I’m still not perfect, but I represent too much to live any other way.

That season taught me that God has a plan for all our lives. I watched students come to Christ through my obedience, in real time, and it blew me away. That is when I understood my purpose: to help others find theirs. It set the course for everything that followed for me — seminary, ordination, preaching, chaplaincy.

Today I am a chaplain at Berea College, supervising 19 student chaplains. God called me to a state where I’d never set foot, and I was unsure how I’d be received. Now in my third year, I help students find themselves and find God at the age I was. I teach a course for first-year African American men, helping them avoid pitfalls and explore who they are. I know their struggle, caught between what your parents taught you and the need to find God, and the world, for yourself.

Just like the band, my students keep me accountable. They depend on me to be who I am so they can become who they are. I don’t tell a young person to leave what they love to find God; I help them find him right inside the sport, the music, the craft they can’t put down, because that is exactly where he met me.

He took the one thing I wanted most and used it to teach me obedience, and that obedience was the launching pad for everything since. Whatever you love most, God can use it the same way. Just make room for God to do it.