July 10, 2011, Greencastle, Ind. — "In the middle of my sophomore year at DePauw
University in Greencastle, I had a chance to do a one-month internship
in a hospital," recalls Mike Woodruff, senior pastor at Christ Church Lake Forest in suburban Chicago. The 1982 DePauw University graduate recalls, "I was pre-med at the time but did not fully appreciate
what the life of doctor looked like." Pastor Woodruff recently completed a ten-week sabbatical, which included two weeks in Israel, and is featured in the Lake Forester.
During the aforementioned DePauw internship, Woodruff tells the newspaper, "I made the shocking discovery that hospitals are filled with sick people. I didn’t really like that. About that same time I felt called to work with college students -- to challenge them to consider the claims of Christ. After graduating from DePauw, I enrolled in a Master of Divinity program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School just down the street from here."
The pastor adds, "I'd been to the Middle East but not to Israel. I
wanted to go in part because it was the right place to go if you are
writing about Christ. But I also wanted to go just to 'walk in the
footsteps' of Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the four 
Gospels,
but the land itself is sometimes referred to as the fifth Gospel. You
really do see things differently after you’ve been there. History comes
alive. The stories take on more texture. You gain a greater
appreciation for his life and teaching ... The visit to Israel was more
spiritually profound than I expected it to be. Holy places can be
turned into tourist traps. You can get a T-shirt. You can get a coffee
mug. It feels cheapened. I was a bit worried that would be one of my
prevailing takeaways. But that’s not what I experienced. You can get
all the Holy Land trinkets that you want, but there is something
special about that part of the world." (photo at right by JR Geoffrion; www.jrgeoffrion.com)
You'll find the compete piece at the website of the Chicago Sun-Times.
In 1989, Mike Woodruff he founded The Ivy Jungle Network -- an association of men and women who minister to collegians. Today it loosely connects over 8,000 people on a monthly basis.
A psychology major at DePauw, Woodruff was president of The Christian International Scholarship Foundation (now named Scholar Leaders International) from 1993 to 2006. He has published more than 200 articles, and edited or written several books. In 2009, he presented the commencement address at Kansas' Sterling College.