From College-Bound to “˜I GO Bound”

By T.R. Robertson

“Behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city” (Acts 20:22, 23, King James Version).

Corey Courtwright is a country boy at heart. He grew up with a love of fishing and farming, like most of his fellow college of agriculture students.

Now he makes his living constructing integrated fish farming systems and training people from all over the world how to use aquaculture and agriculture technology to develop sustainable farms.

It”s the sort of education-to-career path most parents anticipate for their children. Well, perhaps not exactly what the average parent pictures.

This country boy is in Central America, applying his education as the founder of Lasting Harvest International, a mission focused on Christian community development.

 

Study to Show Yourself an Approved Workman

Courtwright grew up with a love of country life, and also a love of God. At an early age, Corey felt God pulling him toward full-time ministry, and considered going to Bible college.

“I sort of thought if a person were to be in ministry, they had to go to Bible college, and that the definition of full-time ministry was probably a pulpit preacher.” Instead, he chose agriculture and the University of Missouri. “Honestly, I just couldn”t see myself as a pulpit preacher.”

Courtwright was a shy freshman, “pretty much a homebody,” but he was living at the Mizzou Christian Campus House, where some of the student leaders helped him come out of his shell.

The next summer he went on his first foreign mission trip, to Ecuador.

“I was miserable!” he remembers. “Sure, the adventure was great and getting to serve was great too, but that homesick side of me was overwhelmed at leaving family, home, culture, and language.”

Back at MU for his sophomore year, after lots of prayer, he changed his major from animal science and Spanish to fisheries and wildlife””a decision that would plant the seeds for how God would use him in the future.

Courtwright found himself drawn to the CCH international ministry, where he worked with a lady from Cali, Columbia, helping her to improve her English.

“In my time working with her, I hope she saw Jesus in me and that the things I said helped move her closer to a decision toward a saving faith in him. But I know God was working on me through that time, to ready me for cross-cultural ministry working in a second language.”

Also during his undergraduate years, Courtwright and some friends at CCH felt the Spirit leading them to start a Spanish-language church. Since it was Corey”s idea, he was nominated to preach.

“I preached my first Spanish sermon, nervous and shaky, to a tiny group of people. That was the only service we did because not enough people were interested. I thought it was a failure, and I wondered why God had called me to do something that had failed. Looking back, I know that God wanted me to be obedient and preach his Word when he asked, and he wanted me to trust him.”

In his junior year, Courtwright asked campus minister Roy Weece if he knew of anywhere he could go to get his feet wet in missions. “I wanted to see what missions is really about. He connected me with Glen Russell, a former CCH minister, and I joined him in Panama for the summer.”

That summer changed everything for Courtwright. He discovered there might be a way to use his aquaculture education in full-time missions.

 

From College-Bound to I Go Bound

Courtwright”s story is like many being repeated across the country. Young people, hoping to make a good living from their passions, head off to secular universities. Along the way, something changes, and they discover God has other plans for their passions, different applications for their education.

For many of them, a chief agent in their change of heart is a campus ministry.

“One of the unique things at a campus ministry is that people are training for degrees in things they want to do, but they don”t always have an idea of where they want to do it,” says Lance Tamerius, director of the Mizzou CCH. “So that opens it up for them to do what they want to do where God wants them to do it.”

“From the time our students first land on campus, they”ve got to decide who they are going to be here,” says David Embree, campus minister at Missouri State University. “It is so easy to blend into the crowd and anonymously drift along with the “˜not interesteds.” But for those who choose to follow Jesus on campus, the needs and the opportunities for outreach often compel them to learn more about sharing their faith.”

Steve Hagemeyer, now with Pioneer Bible Translators, appreciated the college experience of being exposed to people from outside the country and making friends from other places. “As a result,” he says, “you”re actually able to rub shoulders with people who had never heard of the gospel before.”

Campus ministries nurture that missional spark by getting students involved in weekly ministry activities to the elderly, homeless, poor, prisoners, and others.

“It gets them used to the idea of crossing the usual social boundaries,” says Embree. “During fall semester, we take students to inner-city St. Louis to lead them a bit farther afield and to cross some different boundaries.”

Alesha Hagemeyer, also with PBT, says it would have been easy to have gone through college and not been challenged. “But the teaching and the ministries of CCH were the challenge I needed to think outside of my small world, to consider where and how God might want me to serve in the future. No ministries were considered trivial; they were all equally important. An emphasis was placed on serving in the community, on living out faith with deeds, and on keeping my eyes opened to the needs of people around me.”

 

I Want a Job Like That

When Caleb Sellers arrived at college, he was on the brink of renouncing his faith, in spite of a Christian upbringing. He chose to major in engineering because it would be a lucrative profession. In his freshman dorm, he was surrounded by plenty of sin with plenty of freedom to indulge in it. But God had other plans.

“In the selfish pursuit of a girl, I began attending CCH services. The preaching and teaching I heard there was unlike any I had ever heard before””simple, honest, powerful. The relationship with the girl didn”t work out. I kept coming back anyway.”

Then he went on a CCH trip to Mexico.

“I saw poverty with my own two eyes. Children digging in the city dump. People living in shacks pieced together from scraps. A man who had his entire family of 13 people sleeping in his house that was about the same size as my bedroom at home.

“I didn”t just see physical poverty, but spiritual poverty as well. There wasn”t a church at every corner, like in America. Many of these people didn”t even have a basic understanding of the Bible.”

That week Sellers helped mix cement, paint walls, and seal a roof. He carried bricks and worked until he could barely walk. He slept on a concrete floor. “But at the end of each day, I knew every ounce of energy I expended was for the Lord. I had never had that feeling before, and I thought, What would it be like to have a job like this? To go to bed each day knowing that the energy I”ve expended was directly related to spreading the gospel? I want a job like that!”

A dozen years later, Caleb and his wife, Jackie, are working with Pioneer Bible Translators in Africa.

For Jayne, college mission trips sowed the seeds for her to consider the possibility of going to Japan, where she spent three years serving the Lord. “Since I had grown up and been educated solely in Nebraska, I really hadn”t been exposed to many cultures different from my own. The chance to go to a foreign country with fellow believers and serve those from another culture was a huge eye-opener for me.”

Campus ministries are also eager to bring in current missionaries to speak and to spend time with students.

“We like to work with our own alumni especially,” says Mizzou”s Tamerius, “because they”ve been in the seats where our students sit. How you get from here to there is always a part of the story.”

Steve Hagemeyer points out that some of those visiting missionaries were really not the best communicators. “But at the same time, they were some of the most inspiring presentations I heard, because their very lives challenged me. They were just really faithful people who had gone out and done things, and the campus ministers wanted us to meet them, to rub shoulders with them, and be inspired to wonder, what could I do?”

“Last week,” says David Embree, “we had alums Joel and Cassie Binkley speak at our weekly larger group meeting. Joel got a degree in business marketing, and she got degrees in religious studies and early childhood development. Right when they were starting to settle into the graduated-working-let”s-buy-a-house-and-have- kids routine, they perceived God”s call to Europe.

“Most of the members of Team Expansion”s Tunisia team came through this university and our ministry. None of them ever saw themselves as missionaries. One had his undergrad in construction management and an MBA before he heard God”s call and left a very lucrative career track.”

 

Equipped for Missions

Tom Love, who returned after 12 years in Southeast Asia to pursue further education, says the training he received in agricultural development at the university gave him the knowledge (“passport skills”) and credentials he needed to confidently present himself to the governments of the countries he was hoping to enter.

“Since I wanted to work in rural areas that were least likely to have had the opportunity to hear of Christ, my chosen course of study gave me an instant rapport with people whose lives are based on agriculture. By practically showing that God cares about their lives and livelihoods, I was able to build strong relationships with them. I had endless opportunities to naturally “˜give a reason for the hope that lies within me.””

“As far as preparing someone for missions,” says Steve Hagemeyer, “I don”t think one could [say] it”s campus ministry vs. Bible college vs. the church. It has to do with discipleship. If the leaders understand that the Christian life is about sharing God”s love with other people and being missional, then that”s what they pass on. Our campus ministry taught us a love for the lost and a love for evangelism.”

Tamerius agrees. “I don”t know that there”s any experience that replaces teaching the Word of God. That provides the opportunity for God to speak into the lives of people what he wants to say.”

David, a Missouri State graduate now working with Team Expansion in Southeast Asia, says campus ministry discipled him to be the kind of Christian he needed to be in order to do effective ministry, wherever that may be, “rather than just puffing me up with a lot of academic knowledge.”

Following the call has been a life-changing experience for those who have followed the common “college-bound” call with the same “I go bound” call Paul heard from the Holy Spirit.

Corey Courtwright, the kid who couldn”t picture himself as a pulpit preacher, now preaches frequently, usually in Spanish.

“I think I am probably more comfortable preaching in Spanish than English,” Courtwright confesses, “and it”s that one Spanish service at CCH that helped set me on a course where I know my job is obedience, not comfort. Now I understand that results and success are often not understood for years, and even then likely something we never dreamed at the time.”

 

T. R. Robertson is a business technology analyst with the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he has been involved with the Christian Campus House off and on for more than three decades.