Excellence: One Week At Ropes Course Can Alter A Lifetime

Sometimes it only takes a week to change a life. Such is the case for many ORU alumni who have been on an ORU mission trip and thus have undergone the weeklong preparation of ropes course or, as it’s affectionately called by all who endure it, "ropes."

"At ropes, you're together 24-7, under these intense experiences, and it is impossible to hide," says Robert Smalls, a senior Finance major and a Team Leader for Team UK this summer. "Issues will come out. And they did. Ropes really reveals people. And it's not just tensions—strengths that you didn't know people had will come out, too."

"Everything we do in this week is purposeful and intentional," says Bobby Parks, a 2006 Business Administration graduate and former Director of Missions and Outreach who helps to run the weeklong course every year, "not just to prepare these teams for their mission trip but also to prepare them for how to live life missionally and take Jesus' heart to the world."

During ropes, students undertake several intense learning experiences, from physical challenges like scaling a wall to spiritual challenges like navigating evangelism in a non-Western culture to real-world challenges like gratefully eating food to which they aren't accustomed.

The ropes experience has proven to be so transformational that many of those who volunteer to help train the students come year after year after year.

"As a student I went through this," says Parks. "It changed me. It prepared me. It solidified the call of God on my life. Thirteen years later, I haven't missed a summer of reminding myself of who Jesus is and ways I want to be more like Him."

"To this day, the best leadership training I've ever been part of is ORU ropes," says Stephen Zarlengo, a 2009 Church History graduate and Associate Pastor of Smithtown Gospel Tabernacle in Smithtown, New York. "It was here that the seeds of my heart to be in full-time vocational ministry were planted."

"ORU has such a special spirit," says Jerry Dahlke, Associate Pastor of Faith Center Church in Vancouver, Washington and a 21-years-and-counting volunteer at ropes. "There's something really special here that I've never found anywhere else, and I've been pastoring and around other groups for 35 years."

"It's like God is cleaning house before we step out," says Smalls. "Then we can go out fully confident and fully ready."

"This is family to me," says Parks. "People who said 'yes' to Jesus at ropes are still saying 'yes' to Him in their everyday lives to the ends of the earth."

[Note: This article is featured in our Fall 2018 issue of Excellence magazine. To read the complete issue online, go here.]