In this Movement Portrait, Jack Vande Ven shares how a simple discovery process transformed his faith—from pressure and performance-driven identity to freedom in grace—and how that transformation now overflows into the lives of others.
Jack’s short video captures the emotional arc and anchor moments of the story, while the written Q&A preserves the back-and-forth conversation and the questions that shaped the journey.
Tell us a little about yourself.
Jack:
My name is Jack Vande Ven. I’m 24 years old. I graduated from Rockhurst University about two years ago where I played lacrosse. I’m getting married later this year, and I work as a mechanical engineer designing HVAC and plumbing systems for buildings.
Before you encountered Discovery, what was your life like?
Jack:
Especially during that two-year span in college, there were a number of things weighing on me.
I was studying engineering and asking myself, “Do I even like what I’m studying? Do I really want to go do this for potentially forty years? Does that seem fulfilling?”
I was playing lacrosse at the time, and that’s a college sport — it’s up and down. Whether you play, whether you don’t, how you perform. A lot of my identity was rooted in that. What I thought of myself was based on how I performed.
Those things were weighing on me. And when that pressure built up, I looked to things around me to try to make myself feel better in the moment.
Before Discovery, I had grown up going to church here and there, but I had never read my own Bible. I didn’t really know how to engage Scripture for myself.
When did you first encounter the Discovery process?
Jack:
That was fall of my junior year in college, about three years ago.
A little context — I grew up kind of going to church. My family were “Creasters.” We’d go Christmas and Easter. We did some Wednesday night school stuff. But I never read my own Bible or anything.
When I got the chance to do Discovery for the first time and saw how simple the process was and how low pressure it was — it took no previous knowledge or experience.
One of my roommates was an atheist. He had no prior background or experience. He was as skilled in Discovery as I was.
It was fantastic because I thought, this is the first time I’m learning how to read the Bible and actually digest it and understand it with a few very simple questions.
As long as I can read and think for myself, I can participate in this. I can be an expert, so to speak.
And then how to actually put some of these things into practice so that it affects my life.
I think what was most effective about it was because it was me in the text with a few other friends, everything I learned and discovered was God speaking straight to me.
It sank deeply into my heart in a way that going to church or being taught at had never done before.
That’s what started radically changing my life.
What were those first Discovery experiences like?
Jack:
The first one I was part of was me and two of my good friends — roommates — and two other buddies who introduced it to us.
They invited us to do this thing if we were interested, and we were.
We started meeting on campus. Eventually we started meeting at our house just off campus.
That was an integral part because it just felt comfortable.
I didn’t know the two guys who introduced it to us very well at the time, but I knew my roommates. So it felt safe. It felt normal.
It was almost a fun social thing on top of the important time in the Word itself.
Looking back now, especially as I facilitate Discovery and coach people through their “I will” statements, I can see how early on some of my obedience statements were very broad.
They were things like, “I will do better this week.”
They had the right heart, but we were just getting rolling.
When did you begin to notice a real shift in your life?
Jack:
There are two moments that really stand out to me.
One was reading the Great Commission. I had always heard some context about it. I had heard “tell people about your faith.” But I had never read it myself.
So when we got to the Great Commission, it felt like everything had culminated in this. I had seen how Jesus was changing my life, and I had been struggling with purpose in my own life — how I perform in lacrosse, am I getting good enough grades, is engineering going to be fulfilling?
Then Jesus says, with all authority, to go and do this thing. And I thought, well, there’s the fulfillment and purpose in life for me. That was a huge moment.
The second was somewhere in Romans. It talks about how the point of the law was to show how sinful we are and that nobody will ever become righteous by obeying the law.
For me that was a light bulb moment. I try to strive to be good for God to earn grace. But I realized I’ll never get there. So maybe this grace thing is actually already given to me.
That switched everything.
Instead of trying to earn it, I started asking, how do I live out of this? How does this affect how I live knowing I already have the gift? Now everything I do is not to earn God’s grace — it’s because of God’s grace.
That was incredibly empowering and comforting. Win or lose, there’s not really a loss anyway, because it’s trusting in whatever God wants me to do.
How did Discovery begin to overflow into the lives of others?
Jack:
As I was really getting into Discovery and loving it — this was a new way of having a relationship with Jesus that I had never had — I started thinking, how many people around me do I love that I would like to see enjoy this as much as I do?
Immediately I tried to bring it home to my parents and my two brothers.
That went fairly poorly because with my newfound knowledge and pride, I very quickly turned what was supposed to be Discovery into me teaching them what was right. There was not much patience. That didn’t go very well.
A year later, I thought about ten close friends I’ve known since grade school and high school who didn’t know Jesus.
I invited a couple to try Discovery. Two or three were down. We did it once or twice before break ended. One friend stuck with it. He didn’t believe in Jesus, but he was struggling at that time in his life. So we did Discovery over Discord, face to face on camera, for the rest of the semester.
At the same time, I was about to graduate. I had fifty immediate guys around me on the lacrosse team, many of whom didn’t know Jesus. By the grace of God, there were a couple other faithful guys on the team. So we teamed up and formed a Bible study-ish Discovery group. That group has continued and is still going to this day.
It’s taken some coaching and learning to move it more toward Discovery-based instead of traditional teaching style, but it’s been cool to see it continue.
A few months ago, a former teammate called me with questions about walking with Jesus and feeling like he lacked community. Through asking questions, he walked himself into realizing, maybe I can create this community. He had done Discovery before, so now he’s meeting weekly with two of his buddies doing Discovery. Their “I will” that week was to each invite someone else. Now I’m just encouraging and supporting him.
I also do Discovery with my fiancée and her family on Sunday mornings.
Her dad grew up Catholic and said, “I know there’s more to this, but I don’t know how to make sense of it.” So I said, let’s make it simple. We’ve passed facilitation around the family — some are following Jesus, some aren’t.
It’s been cool to see people grow confident — praying in front of each other, facilitating Discovery, realizing they don’t have to be experts.
Closing Reflection
Jack’s transformation did not happen because someone convinced him harder.
It happened because he encountered Jesus’ words for himself.
Under the normal tensions of college life — performance, future, identity — Discovery created space for God to speak personally. And when grace moved from concept to conviction, everything shifted.
Looking to enter into doing Discovery for yourself? Check out our Discovering Jesus Groups – Discussion Guide.