“Here’s good news: The same God is pursuing you. Why? Because he loves you more than you can ever imagine,” David Jeremiah, preaching on the Parable of the “Lost Son” in Luke 15, reminded North Greenville University students, alumni and friends Oct. 19.

Jeremiah, senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church, El Cajon, Calif., and founder of “Turning Point for God,” and Christian recording artist Charles Billingsley were on the Tigerville campus as part of fund-raising efforts for “The Village at Tigerville.”

Billingsley, worship pastor at Jeremiah’s church, is a nephew of Jack and Patty Billingsley of Jacksonville, Fla., the visionaries behind “The Village at Tigerville.” Jack Billingsley’s father studied at North Greenville after being called into the ministry when Jack was a boy.

Observing that the wayward son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son tried to work in a pig pen for Gentiles and even wanted to hire on a worker for the father, Jeremiah likened these attempts to “our trying to figure a way out” or to “fix it ourselves.” When the son finally walked up the road toward home, “what the father did was very unusual,” Jeremiah noted, emphasizing that “the father ran out to him.” In this culture, older, distinguished gentlemen never ran because gathering up one’s robe to run would be seen as unseemly, he said.

And when the father met him, he began to kiss his son, Jeremiah continued. “He just loved on him,” Jeremiah said, highlighting how the father sent for the best robe, the family ring and a pair of shoes — attire befitting his children, not slaves. “He was totally and completely forgiven,” Jeremiah declared, adding that it was all “initiated by the grace of the Father.”

“God is the pursuer of a relationship,” he underscored. “God is pursuing you. He wants you back home” and “not out of fellowship with him,” Jeremiah proclaimed.

Prior to the address in Turner Chapel, Jeremiah and Billingsley keynoted a banquet and reception in Todd Dining Hall to help raise $1 million to transform the old Tigerville Elementary School into a state-of-the-art theatre to be used year-round for Christian plays. The theatre and the Eddie Runion Creative Arts Building will be the hubs of “The Village at Tigerville.” The project, which will be located on Highway 253 adjacent to the campus, will also include an art gallery, deli, coffee shop, bank, antique and craft shops, a museum, a bed-and-breakfast inn and other family-friendly attractions.

“We wanted to do something unique and different in Tigerville,” NGU president Jimmy Epting stated in an article in the university’s fall magazine. “We would love to see tour buses and church vans come to visit The Village and see a Christian play or the art. We want to attract people to this area and our university.

“This will help us bring many visitors to the North Greenville campus,” Epting explained. “This may provide the avenue for many to see the university for the first time. They may not come here just to see our campus, but they might come to see and experience The Village,” he added.

A substantial gift has already been received from the Runion family for renovating the historic Roe building to become a creative arts center. The university anticipates completing the theatre and the creative arts building by the end of 2007. While the timeframe for additional projects in The Village depends entirely on the success of fund-raising efforts, a projected completion date has been set for 2009.

More than 800 persons attended the Oct. 19 banquet, many of whom were on the campus for the first time, according to Wilson Nelson, director of advancement. The participants were serviced by 99 NGU students, plus staff, he noted.

While still unable to obtain accurate figures of amounts pledged since a number of pledges and gifts have yet to be received, “We are well on our way to the goal of $1 million,” said Nelson. “Many of the givers are first-time donors to the university,” he added.

“The gala was an overwhelming success, not just from the standpoint of fundraising, but in the area of the total university,” said Nelson. “Everyone came together from housekeeping to administration to the students, and everyone in between, as a team to make this work. It was an event that only God could put together in the way it happened.

“Old friends of the university stepped up to the plate and many new friends joined them. We will continue to see this pay dividends for the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ for generations to come,” he said.