NEWBERRY COUNTY — Those familiar with Newberry County Young Life probably know Area Director Cole Harper, but during the Newberry County Young Life Banquet, held at Wightman United Methodist, people got to know him a bit more.
Harper has been with Newberry County Young Life for three and a half years.
“God has used Young Life in my life from the time I was 15 years old,” Harper said. “I’ll start way back in 2008, I would have said I was a Christian, I was 14 years old at the time, I was morally upright, I hid all the bad things I did. I tried to get good grades, be a good kid, have friends, excel in sports — typical adolescent boy experience.”
Harper said he was then invited to a weekend retreat with his friend’s church. He said he heard the Gospel and on Nov. 22, 2008, he decided to follow Jesus in a way he never had before. He said that started his relationship with Jesus.
“I was not just knowing about Jesus anymore, I began knowing Jesus — changed everything about my life,” he said. “Super excited about following Jesus, I was reading my bible, I was praying and I held strong, for about five months.”
Harper said he fell back into the habit of just being a good person with a Christian label.
“What changed that rut I was in was when a guy named Dave Peterson walked onto my high school campus. It was spring of 2010, and he walked up to me and my brother Kyle and our two best friends Joe and Chad,” Harper said.
Peterson came up to the group and said, “hey, are you Joe, Chad, Cole and Kyle?”
“And we were like, that is a creepy way to start a conversation,” Harper joked.
Peterson said he wanted to start this thing called Young Life at their school, and he was told they were the guys to talk to.
“I later found out he knew Joe’s parents, Chad’s parents and he was in the process of meeting our parents as well,” Harper said. “So it was not totally out of the blue.”
Harper added that Peterson ended by inviting the guys to play pick-up basketball, after joking that he said, “I promise I’m not weird.”
“And we loved basketball, so we started playing basketball with Dave,” he said.
When summer came around, Peterson invited the guys to go to Young Life camp with him for a week. He told them if they hated it, he’d buy them a burger from a restaurant of their choice every day for the rest of the summer.
Harper joked that his 15-year-old self agreed, wholeheartedly.
“We went to Young Life camp and it was awesome, they market it as the best week of your life, and I feel like that is a fair title,” he said. “So we got back, and we thought we have to get this thing called Young Life at our high school. We got to help Dave start Young Life at our high school, we started Young Life club and campaigners. We took a weekend camp trip for the first time, and we kept the tradition of going to summer camp alive — we got to see powerful things.”
Harper told the story of one of those powerful moments involving his friend Ryan. During his junior and senior years, Harper’s friend group devoted themselves to reaching their friends with the Gospel — showing them what life was meant to look like, enter Ryan. Harper said Ryan was as different from him as you could possibly get.
“We were in the same community service organization in high school and we became friends. So I told Ryan one day that he should come to Young Life club with us,” Harper said.
Ryan asked Harper what they do there, and Harper said one thing they do is sing, which was something Ryan did, to where Harper said he could sing with the voice of an angel. After that first club, Ryan became a faithful attendee to club meetings. He even attended summer camp that following summer.
In fact, during that summer camp, Harper said Ryan pulled him aside and told him the night Harper first invited him to Young Life club, he was planning to sell his soul to the devil.
“I thought he was joking, but Ryan had been studying the Occult, he believed he could perform this ritual in exchange for his soul and get musical talent that would give him success in life,” he said. “He said, ‘I think God sent you to invite me to Young Life club because he knew that was not what life was meant to be.’”
Following this, Harper said he began having this hunger to continue inviting people into a life with Christ. When he graduated high school, he began attending Columbia International University, to study youth ministry.
“As soon as I got there I started going to leader training, I became a volunteer Young Life leader. For the next four years I led Young Life at Spring Valley High School. The last year I was in Columbia I also led at Westwood High School — helping start the ministry there,” Harper said.
While he was leading at Westwood, Harper recalled one specific time an invitation made a world of difference. Harper remembers telling one of his co-leaders, Tess, to tell him about one of the girls they met.
“She told me about this girl named Destiny, she was so sweet, she was shy and sat alone, she was insecure and didn’t have a lot of friends,” Harper said. “Tess told me they invited her to go to a football game that night.”
Following that game, Tess forwarded a message to Harper — it was from Destiny. It thanked them for the invitation, Destiny revealed she never went out with friends before and none of her friends invited her out before. She also said it brought happiness back into her life.
“A lot of times in Young Life we get to see the seed grow, get to see the fruit from these invitations. People leave behind bad habits, say yes to Jesus, reconcile relationships, work through pain — we got to see the fruit,” Harper said.
The end of college came around for Harper, and he decided to apply to be on Young Life staff. He said during that interview the region decides where your strengths and the area needs meet.
“They match you up, and ask you to move there. I felt the call to this ministry, so I put in my application. I also got engaged to Tori, and we are spending our date nights driving out to Prosperity, South Carolina,” Harper said. “We didn’t know Young Life was on the map here, the reason we were driving out was because Tori was taking a class at UofSC called Photography in the Rural South — she had to pick a town of 1,000 or less and do a fine-arts photography series on it.”
He said Tori picked Prosperity, they’d spend their date nights driving out, she’d take photos while he carried her equipment and they’d then go out to eat. They did this for a semester. He said when she was asked why Prosperity, she’d say she didn’t know, but she came to love it.
While this is going on Harper gets a phone call, he was invited to join Young Life staff.
“They wanted me to move to Newberry County and start a Young Life club at a high school called Mid-Carolina High School, in Prosperity, South Carolina,” he said.
And the rest is history.
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