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Jack Porter

Porter_Jack.jpgJack Porter’s great awakening came at the end of his freshman year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He had met CCO staff member John Brindger through some friends in his dorm who invited him to come to a fellowship meeting. Jack hadn’t really been looking for Christian fellowship, although he did attend church regularly, more out of habit than anything else. But a talk John gave about what it meant to be a Christian seven days a week intrigued him. “I thought, I could talk to that guy, he seems to have something going on,” Jack remembers. “I found the whole-life perspective on Christianity interesting and meaningful, something to take seriously.”

When John called Jack to see if he wanted to get together and talk, everything changed. “John asked me deep questions, like, ‘What is the center of your life, your ultimate authority? What are you living for? Jesus Christ is Lord and wants you to be under his lordship.’ And I said yes, I want that. I prayed for God to help me do that, and it was a great awakening, a very emotional experience. I remember feeling very good and having a sense that this is the purpose of my life. This is what it really is all about—to live in relationship with and serve Jesus as Lord.”

Three decades later, Jack continues to live out a seven-day-a-week faith, in his family, his church, his workplace, and the nation at large. In 2001, Jack was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as Director of the White House Faith-Based Initiative at the US Department of Education. “I got the appointment, and I was in charge of implementing the policy for faith-based groups to receive government funding,” Jack says. “As a lawyer, I’d meet with other Christian lawyers to study together, and to try to live out our faith as we were practicing the law.”

After serving in that role for four years, Jack and his family returned to Pittsburgh. Jack and his wife, Lori, have raised three daughters. Jack is an active member of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where he is involved in a men’s group and a discussion group about justice.

Today, he serves as an Administrative Law Judge, and he hears about 60 cases each month. “I try to treat all of the claimants with dignity and respect and try to make a just decision. I get to implement justice on a person-by-person basis. I try to apply the law fairly.”

When Jack attended the Jubilee conference during his sophomore year, Senator Mark Hatfield was the keynote speaker. “I was enthralled and blown away by the fact that a U.S. Senator was living out his Christian faith in his work, and was talking about it to all of us, Jack remembers. “I participated in a perspectives class at IUP, taught by Pete Steen and Bill Rowe. I was challenged to ‘double study’; I would do my required coursework, and I would also read books that helped me approach political science from a Christian perspective.”

Jack can’t imagine what his life might be like today had he not encountered the CCO’s ministry during his undergraduate years.

“It’s almost unthinkable,” he says. “The CCO has shaped how I live my adult life. During my undergraduate years at IUP and through law school at the University of Pittsburgh, it helped give purpose and meaning to what I was studying. It gave me a vision, meaning, and a framework. I try to tell my daughters how having a Christian worldview actually makes it easier to study, because there’s a framework for understanding what you’re learning. Our youngest daughter is a political science major at Pitt, and I’ve given her materials on Christian worldview that helped me when I was studying the same thing at IUP.”