With another semester slowly heading towards a close, Mitch and I have some bittersweet news to share with everyone! From Mitch:
With all of the excitement and
anticipation this time of year brings, Amy and I wanted to share a bit of
exciting news about our ministry as well.
As many of you well know, one of my (Mitch) major passions as a
Christian is to teach truth to fellow Christians regarding their faith and why
we can be confident it is true and coherent. That has continued to be the case during my last five years
on staff with Campus Crusade. One
of my favorite things we do on campus as a ministry is give a weekly talk
discussing the deeper things of God and his Gospel. There are so many ideas floating around a college campus,
and as Ravi Zacharias likes to say, “Ideas have the greatest of consequences…
either for good or for ill.” The
battle for the mind and true ideas is fierce and never ending, especially on
ever “progressive” college campus.
A few months ago, with this in
mind, Amy and I had a discussion as to where we would like to see ourselves and
our family in 5 or 10 years. Where
was God leading us? What giftings
and passions had he given us that would lead us? It is normal for a cru staffer to be asked to take on team
leadership role after their 5th year. Is that something we felt led to do, or perhaps something
else? Amy asked, “If you could do
anything, what would you want to do?”
Without thinking much about it, I responded, “I would love to go to
seminary to teach theology and apologetics to Christian students so that they
can be a light in an ever hostile world.”
We hadn’t really even considered the possibility before, but now that it
had been said (and with the risk of over-spiritualizing a situation, said by
the influence of the Holy Spirit), it seemed to make great sense. I love teaching the material, but most
of the time I feel woefully inadequate in my knowledge.
Since then, Amy and I have prayed about it and have received great
confidence in where our next steps will place us as a family. We will continue to be in ministry, but
it will look very different. I
have applied to and have been accepted at the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary based out of Louisville.
They offer one of the best degrees in Christian Apologetics and
worldview studies, and they have extension centers throughout the country for
easy access to education. While we
will still be working towards careers in ministry, we will regretfully be
leaving full time staff with Campus Crusade in September. We have truly loved our time as full
time missionaries, but our time of dedicating our lives to spreading the Gospel
of Christ will never be over this side of Heaven. All of your support has been and continues to be a great and
eternal blessing! - Mitch
This has been such a hard decision for our family! We absolutely love the relationships we have made in Mississippi and through Cru (Campus Crusade). However, we are very confident in God's calling and we are also excited for this new step for our family. The degree program that Mitch is enrolled in has the possibility to do a good portion of his school work online. Because of this, Mitch and I had the freedom to job search in several different places and pray for God to open doors wherever he desired us. After applying and searching in several different cities, we have had two open doors in Columbus, Georgia. I (Amy) will be accepting a job to work alongside my dad at his business; something that I did in high school and I am so excited about getting to do again! Mitch has accepted a job offer at Calvary Christian High School to teach mathematics. The way that both of these doors opened up have left us extremely confident that Columbus is where the Lord is calling us to go as we work our way through seminary. We plan on moving sometime this summer before the school season starts this fall.
We are so thankful for the many of you who have prayed for us and supported us during our time with Cru and we covet your prayers as we begin a new branch of ministry in Columbus!
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