The new preacher kid on campus

When I first walked past the new preacher by Life Sciences, I barely glanced at the kid walking pacing up and down. As a senior, I may have grown too accustomed to hearing (and willfully ignoring) the Willard preacher on my treks up to the library. The next few times I passed by him, I slowly realized that I knew the guy sharing his beliefs with students – or, at least, knew of him.

I had met Mike Drozdowski a couple years back, during my sophomore year at Penn State. The kid I remember seemed an entirely different person to the guy preaching at the Life Sciences Bridge. So, after tracking down his name and contact info from our mutual friend, Roman, I met up with fellow senior Mike at his stomping grounds.

Let’s start with something easy: what’s your major?

Human Development and Family Studies, with a minor in Psychology.

What made you choose your major?  

I was a Psych major, but I wanted something more hands on and practical, and that didn’t necessarily require graduate school. HDFS was the only major that really fit me at this entire place.

What made you want to start preaching? Would you even call it preaching?

Yeah, I’d call it preaching. A year and a half ago, my life was radically changed by what Christian would call “the gospel,” and by God’s love. Freshman year, sophomore year…I was a mess my entire life I just never wanted to tell anyone about it. It got to a point where I said, “Look, I can’t keep doing this on my own. I need help.”

Last year, fall semester, basically the guy “discipling” me said “Mike, what are you most afraid to do? As far as loving people or sharing the gospel?” I said “I can talk to pretty much anyone… but I don’t know what I’d do if I had to talk in front of a crowd.” He looked at me and said, “That’s exactly what we’re going to do then.”

This guy who “discipling” you, would you say he’s been a great influence on you

Oh my goodness. Yep. Remarkable.

How did you meet him?

So I didn’t believe in God but I was kind of spiritual. I was reading a book called The Alchemist at the time, and he talks about omens and the universe.

Sophomore year, I felt like basically the omens were telling me “Look you’re not supposed to go to this meeting. You’re late for it, you don’t know where it is, just give up. It’s not meant to be. It’s not right.” As soon as I thought that I turned to the left and I saw this sign that said “free spiritual reading.” I met Steven there, and two other people, and they’re like “Hey man. We’re Christians. We believe God can tell us something encouraging in your life or something about you that we couldn’t possibly know.”

Steven had given me, what’s called, a “word from God,” and I cried for the next hour and a half based off what they told me in three minutes. It was literally my life in three minutes. He asked me if I wanted to come to their church on Friday. I went there, but at the end of it I said “I’m never going back. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

But then I kept seeing that guy. And he’d meet with me and he’d just want to talk with me, because I think, in his words he knew I was valuable.

What are you all about? What’s your message?

God loves people. You’re valuable. Loveable. Worthwhile. Regardless of anything you’ve done, you haven’t done. What you might think about yourself, or what other people think about you.

In my life, in my heart, I believe I’ve encountered “God is love,” and it’s radically changed me from the inside out. When I see people, I see them the way my father, the father in heaven, sees me. When I see people I see it as “Oh my goodness, these are God’s beautifully and wonderfully made children that are meant to do awesome things and change people.”

The other day when I walked past, I overhead you talking about our society condones “slut-shaming”- would you say it’s a problem here? 

I believe that it’s something God put on my heart to talk about because I believe it is a tragedy and an injustice on this campus. Because it’s not the truth of who they are. The problem with slut-shaming is that one, you’re judging them, and secondly you’re telling them something that is not encouraging, not loving, not building them up––it’s only tearing them down. If you keep saying those words––whether it’s “slut” “whore” “sorostitute,”––all of these things, eventually those girls might begin to believe those things about themselves.

I’ve overheard you talk about how damaging the pressure to “be a man” is: would you consider this also a problem on campus?

Basically my level of masculinity, my level of identity was rooted in how well could I suppress my emotions, and look cool and look funny and look crazy all the time…which I totally was, and not for any good reasons. But yeah, I see that pressure still living here at Penn State.

I think the biggest problem here with the guy culture is that there’s no honor or respect for females. I don’t even think there’s honor or respect among each other.

Would you consider yourself religious? If you could label yourself, what would you label yourself as?

[Laughing] I’m glad you asked that…um…I don’t consider myself to be part of a religion. I don’t consider myself to be religious. I see a problem with religion, and religiosity.

I don’t see myself as religious because what I see religion as is a set of rules, of “do’s” and “don’ts.” So when a walk with God becomes a checklist––when it becomes a “I have to”––that’s when I believe the heart of God is lost upon that person.

In that same regard, I’m very spiritual. Like, super spiritual.

The Willard preacher is notorious for his fire and brimstone “thou shalt not” message. What would you say to people who want to compare you to him, or call you the next Willard preacher?

I preached at Willard, but I didn’t preach with him. Gary told me “hey, if you want to preach, you know just tap me on the shoulder, and the floor is yours: you can preach whatever you like.” I think from day one, my preaching style has been very different, because Gary and I do very different things. He loves science, so he loves the argument and scientific and history based style, and to be perfectly honest I suck at science.

As far as messages that I preach? To my knowledge I’m not out here screaming at people that they are a “slut” that they are a horrible person, that they are all of these things. But I think that if people just want to actually have a conversation with me? Actually if they wanted to have a conversation with Gary…Gary’s a pretty cool dude if you talk to him just outside of his preaching… I think people would see me and think yeah he’s a pretty genuine guy, he’s a pretty cool dude.

If you could reach one person, and change their life, who, or what kind of person do you envision?

There’s definitely, I think, a lot of pride on campus.

You know I get it, like “you’re in college” and you want to do the college thing. I was there. I was an alcoholic, drug addict, selling drugs, going crazy freshman year. But the main reason that I was able to come to God with my brokenness was because I finally pummeled myself into saying I needed help. There’s problems in my life that I can’t solve… and I finally just came to that place where I was accepting of that in myself. It’s a scary place to go.

I think pride really prevents that, prevents people from wanting to talk about what’s actually going on in their lives. That’s not to say everyone is prideful: everyone is different. But I’d like for pride to fall, because it doesn’t do anyone any good.

I don’t want people to hear my words and just be like “yeah I heard what this guy said, so God’s totally real so I believe in God.” I want my words to carry power so that they can hit deep levels of the heart that no one wants to talk about on this campus, in the classroom, in your friend groups and whatever else it might be. I don’t see where I’m going with this but I just want to love people. The reason I stand on this thing is because I just want to show the same love I was given.

As you know, there was a whole stream of terrorist attacks last Friday, in Paris, Beirut, Lebanon, etc. With that, in the US media, and even on campus Yik Yak, dialogue turns to violent expressions of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and blatant racism. How did you react?

You can’t say every Muslim is a terrorist or a radical. You can’t say every Muslim has that desire in their heart to destroy the world or crush the infidel or whatever. Because that’s not true. I know Muslims here, I have Muslim friends. One of my closest friends here is from Kuwait. I haven’t read the Qu’ran, but from my knowledge of it, Jesus Christ is not portrayed in the way that he is in the Christian faith and Christian religion, so for me if the love of Christ isn’t there, for me it’s not worth investing my heart: but that doesn’t mean I think Islam should go.

Now I do understand the sentiment of well we don’t want a terrorist attack. I will come against and say that the viewpoint that says “they’re worthless, they’re this radical evil, they need to be gone they need to be tossed out of this country” is wrong. I don’t believe that would be the solution, because if we’re called to love friends, we’re called to love enemies, we’re called to love the most vile people on the entire earth. I understand that heartache and that pain, but again I will preach. I will stand on that same exact rock. I will preach the same exact message. God loves all of his children.