Mark Lowrey, founder of the Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), fought back tears as he described the vision that inspired his ministry at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in the early 1970s.
“We were going to impact the world with the Gospel, and people were going to understand who Christ was, and they were going to come to Him, and they were going to be part of His church,” he said in a statement. Video 2023 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the RUF.
Lowrey died on Christmas Eve at the age of 78, but not before seeing the RUF expand to 177 college campuses in 43 states, employing 160 ordained ministers, 57 women ministers, and 157 interns. Lowrey also spent more than 25 years with Great Commission Publications, an educational ministry jointly supported by the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC).
Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on September 27, 1945, Lowrey received his undergraduate degree from USM and served a tour in Vietnam with the Army before enrolling at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) in Jackson, Mississippi .
In 1971, Lowrey was approached by the leaders of three Hattiesburg Presbyterian churches and asked to lead campus ministry at USM. Called “Westminster Fellowship,” the campus ministry began in the 1950s as a ministry jointly supported by the three churches and carried out by ordained ministers. But in the early 1970s, the ministry was at a standstill: there were no more students at USM. The churches hoped that a first-year seminarian would revive the ministry.
“I was deeply impressed by an RTS speaker who emphasized the unique role of the Church in carrying out Christ’s mission to disciple all nations,” Lowrey later explained in an essay commemorating the founding of the RUF. He also recalled his time at several InterVarsity Christian Fellowship conferences and how InterVarsity struggled with the issue, How do you minister on campus?
Despite the obstacles, Lowrey saw opportunity at USM. Denominational campus ministries in the 1960s and 1970s had focused on students of their own faiths and “largely substituted social concerns and activism for evangelism and discipleship,” he wrote in 2023.
Lowrey’s approach would be different: minister to the children of Presbyterian churches, but fulfill the Great Commission to all students. As a ministry of the church, its work on campus would teach students the importance of being part of the local church now and for the rest of their lives. As the ministry grew, campus ministers – almost always trained and ordained at the seminary – ministered “to students through students,” according to Lowrey, with the goal of training students who would serve the Church after graduating.
The ministry focused on the essential elements of the Christian faith as expressed in the Scriptures and in the Westminster Confession of Faith: the authority of Scripture, salvation through Christ alone, growth in grace, worldview, evangelism and service.
USM’s campus ministry officially became a PCA ministry in 1973, when two of the three supporting churches transferred into the newly formed denomination. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, RUF campus ministries began at several Mississippi institutions, including Belhaven College (now Belhaven University), Mississippi College, and Mississippi State University. Mississippi PCA presbyteries encouraged Lowrey to expand his ministry. He developed an internship program, summer conference, staff training programs, and short-term mission conferences.
In 1983, Lowrey became the PCA coordinator for campus ministry.
“Mark was both a visionary and a detail-oriented person” recalled James “Bebo” Elkin, who served alongside Lowrey in Mississippi early in the ministry. “He was good at building a coalition: he was not only a master of facts and figures, he also prioritized relationships with people and could engage them in key ways.”
In 1996, Lowrey moved from campus ministry to children’s ministry and served as director of publications for Great Commission Publications (GCP) from 1996 to 2020. The publishing ministry that produced the Hymn of the Trinity was having financial difficulties and needed to update its children’s program offerings.
The central element of this new curriculum would be teaching children that all Scripture – the Old and New Testaments – point to Jesus Christ. They called the program “Show Me Jesus.”
Lowrey guided GCP through the pandemic as interim executive director from 2020 to 2021 and then as executive director from 2021 to 2023.
As news of Lowrey’s death spread, tributes poured in on social media. His fellow pastors described him as a “true man of the Church” and a faithful mentor.
“His life and ministry helped shape the PCA in ways that are not easily seen but undeniable. » said Daryl Madi, a pastor. “A bit like a steel support beam running the length of a house. It’s not displayed prominently for guests, but nothing would be the same without it.
He is survived by his wife Priscilla, whom he met and married while working for InterVarsity Fellowship in the early 1970s, and their two children, Leonard and Elizabeth.
“If you let the Word flow with the Holy Spirit, then it changes people,” Lowrey said of the RUF. “I know that God continues to work because that is what it is: God’s work. »
