April 18, 2024
Here at the Georgia Tech BCM, we are extremely excited to share how we’ve been seeing God move in the lives of our students this year. Specifically, we’re privileged to have the opportunity to share about the transformative journey of one of our freshmen, Heath Dorn.
Heath had been introduced to the BCM through a previous internship. Since he went to high school with a few of our BCMers, he already had plans to visit when he started college in August 2022.
Heath was more than willing to open up about his journey, sharing with us that even the choice to join the BCM in the first place was with distracted intentions. In the next few months, he would come to learn for the first time in his life what true surrender and dependence on the Lord meant.
Heath shared that he had attended church growing up and was familiar with the Christian life before coming to Georgia Tech to study Mechanical Engineering. At the same time, he described how he was in a dark place in life when he arrived at Georgia Tech. He described himself as being very self-sufficient and seeking to fill his time with worldly things, while having views that were shaped by a legalistic framework.
At first, Heath slowly began to get involved in the BCM. He started to open up and begin building friendships. At the same time, though, he still described himself as being a “slave to sin” and he knew something was off with his priorities.
Heath was encouraged to attend our yearly Confluence Conference in September 2022, and he decided to go. Afterward, something from that weekend kept playing in his mind: the call to those who weren’t sure of their salvation.
Heath says he felt that God had placed an ongoing thought in the back of his mind that he really couldn’t shake. It became clear to him that he was beginning to truly battle the conviction of his sin for the first time.
Heath explained that at this point he felt that his life was “basically falling apart”, and that he had really hit rock bottom. With sincere vulnerability and honesty, he shared that the thought of suicide was something that entered his mind.
Heath says he immediately thought, “It’s time that I talk to God or someone now.” The depression and loneliness that Heath shared was a weight that sat heavily on his heart and mind, and he finally decided to take the courageous step to be vulnerable with others about his struggles.
At our BCM on September 29, Heath started to share what had been on his heart with one of our third-year students, Lara Glendenning, and myself, a campus missionary. In a vulnerable conversation where the three of us talked and also read the truth of God’s word together, Heath felt that “God took him back” when he ultimately made the personal decision to surrender his life to stop the striving and the fighting to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
He says he felt a weight lift to where he could breathe again as he found reason to live again in the hope of Jesus Christ. Heath was immediately ready to begin taking steps to truly pursue Jesus for the first time as he started to read the Bible and talk about God with others, saying that he had never shared the Gospel before last semester.
He begins each day now with the question of, “What does God want me to do today?” This major perspective change has led him to be challenged to live out his faith and be guided by the truth that his life is not about what he wants, but “it’s what God wants.”
He enjoys being a part of the community of the BCM. He’s been encouraged by many in his walk with Christ and has found great joy in the accountability and vulnerability that comes from the guys within our men’s ministry.
Heath is filled with hope as he continues pursuing a daily walk with Christ, and seeks to grow closer in relationship with the Lord each day.
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Brittany Shepherd is the campus missionary for Baptist Collegiate Ministries at Georgia Tech.
