My Story

I just realized tonight that many of you may not know how I came to know the Lord and how I was called into full-time ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ. Let me tell you the story of how God intersected my life and laid it upon my heart to reach college students with the Gospel...

Although I had known of Jesus since I was a young child going to church, I had not come to know Him and understand His grace in a deep, personal, saving way until I accepted Him as my Savior the fall semester of my Freshman year of college. I had entered Montana State University with the ambition of being the top student in my accounting class, but after a few short months on campus, I was beginning to realize that college courses were much more challenging than I thought they would be. In addition, I was facing difficulties in a long-term dating relationship I had been pursing. My world of success that I had built in high school seemed to be crumbling down around me in this new depressing world called college. I was simply confused...

Thankfully, God in His providence placed a strong believer named Jason into my life as my roommate in the dorm. He had become involved in a ministry called Campus Crusade that had "Real Life" meetings every Wednesday on campus. His example of living the faith he talked about spoke volumes of hope to my heart, and I soon found myself following him hesitantly to one of these "Real Life" meetings one Wednesday in October...

What I found upon arriving at the meeting simply floored my mind and heart. There was well over 200 students in the lecture hall openly praising God in music. This was not the usual "church" music I was so used to hearing though. This was something different, more modern and exciting then I was used to hearing. All of the students seemed to be singing openly and joyously to God... some even lifting their hands while they sang. I wasn't so sure about that, but I knew by the smiles and joyous attitudes I saw around the room that I had been missing out on something big...

A local pastor gave a talk that night, and for the first time, it seemed that all of the pieces of knowledge I had heard about Jesus started to come together. As the talk drew to a close, the pastor talked about how as humans we inherently stray from God and how we simply needed to make a U-turn to come back to him. He explained that by accepting Christ into our lives we are forgiven of ALL sin in our lives. God imparts grace to those who believe in Him. After all of the mess-ups I had made in my life, I realized I needed God's grace and forgiveness. So sitting there in my seat in Leon Johnson Lecture hall, I asked Christ to come into my life and forgive me of the ways I had strayed from Him.

Since that day, God has continued to bless me in growing in the knowledge of Him through Bible studies, solid Biblical preaching, and men who poured their lives out to me to build me up in the faith. I became involved in the student leadership of the Campus Crusade movement on campus, and learned how to share my faith and lead small group bible studies. I stayed in the dorms for the five years of my college career with the purpose of reaching out to students who did not know the Gospel. God blessed me in seeing the lives of many men change over these years...including a dear friend of mine named Gavin coming to Christ for the first time.

As my senior year arrived, I began to consider interviewing for a summer intern position with a Big Four Accounting firm. My education had been progressing successfully, and I was in a great position to apply to some of the most prestigious firms in the profession. However, a thought kept recurring in my mind about about an opportunity I had once heard to use my accounting skills for ministry on a summer project for Campus Crusade. I prayed that if God did not want me to pursue an accounting position with a big firm, he would step in and close the door for the opportunity to happen. Then I would consider going on the summer project.

Over the next few months, I applied to the Big Four Accounting firms I wanted to work for. I was confident that I would be accepted into the firms based on my almost perfect 4.0 grades and extracurricular involvement. However when offers started coming to other students in my class, I realized I had been passed over completely with not one single job offer for the summer. Needless to say I was somewhat shocked. I thought to myself, "there was no way God could be in it that much to lead me away from the firms..."

The fall semester ended and I decided to go to a Crusade Winter Conference in Spokane. I thought to myself, "well if I hear anything about the Orlando summer project I can use my accounting for maybe...just maybe...I'll consider going this summer." Needless to say, God broke into my life that conference. There was a specific session for those interested in attending the conference and a specific team of ladies sent to answer questions anyone had about the project. In addition, I happened to be randomly placed with one of only two students out of the 750 at the conference who had been on the project before for the day of evangelism. Yeah...God was telling me to go for sure...I finally said I was all in on it.

The summer came and I prepared to leave for the Campus Crusade headquarters in Orlando, Florida where I would be doing accounting work for ten weeks on summer project. I flew hours across the country, arrived in Orlando not knowing a soul, but knew that God had a purpose for this summer for me...

Over the course of the next few weeks, God broke into my life in large ways. He softened my heart for the poor through outreaches at Lake Eola to the homeless. He widened my view of ministry as I saw just how large the organization of Campus Crusade is. But most importantly, he began to work on my heart to become a laborer in His mission fields.

As part of the summer project, we would have nights where we would have extended quiet time reading the Bible and in prayer with God. The first quiet time night, I could sense God working on my heart while I read "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Ask the Lord of the Harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his field" (Luke 10:2) I kept having this recurring thought of "what am I holding back?" and I could sense the Lord asking me to go all in on trusting Him.

Since project had begun, God had been slowly dissolving the desires I had once had to become successful and rich in the world of business and had been replacing them with desires to make an eternal impact for His kingdom. He had put me at a fork in the road where I needed to come to a decision. Was I going to follow Him into the uncertainty of Staff to work with Campus Crusade and enjoy life abundantly living for eternal purposes or was I going to trust in myself and live a life of numbers in accounting?

The answer became clear to me as I began to read how Paul considered all things in his life rubbish in light of ultimately knowing Christ. All that he had considered profit in his lifetime was nothing to knowing and experiencing Christ in a real way. (Phil. 3) The answer was simple for me. Follow the Lord with all of my heart and don't look back. Reach out to the lost of the world who need to hear the saving Gospel of Christ in order to make an eternal impact on the kingdom of God.

God had placed it on my heart to become a missionary...

And the story doesn't end there. There was a nice confirmation in God's bringing me to the point of decision to follow Him. A few short days after, I began talking to a cute girl on the project I had noticed and worked with in accounting named Jennifer. It turned out God had been working on her heart in the same way....we began to talk...and you guessed it...ten short months later, we became husband and wife, now working together to fulfill the Great Commission on Staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.