In 2001, Tim and Melissa Kern traveled to Helena from Dillon Montana with Curtis Cole, campus minister at University of Montana–Western (UMW) to check out Carroll College. Curtis and Delyn Freeman Cole were their XA pastors and mentors who invested years in them as students at UM-W. Tim and Melissa were 26 years old and were toting around their daughter Hannah Kern who was 1 month old. That day, God birthed in them a calling to pioneer Chi Alpha at Carroll College, a private Catholic campus. Pastors Ken Ross, Norm Christofferson and Paul Feuerstein were incredible mentors and supportive of XA along with so many other pastors in Helena and Montana that helped them start XA. Levi Mielke was their first student who transferred to Carroll to help the Kerns pioneer the ministry. Emily Roehm was their first full time associate staff and Haylee Petrusha and Haley Feuerstein were their first students to “give a year” back to XA at Carroll. Keith Elder, district youth director for Montana, challenged and appointed the Kerns to establish XA at Carroll College.
Nick & Haylee Petrusha and their team took over the ministry at Carroll College. Tim and Melissa received national missionary appointment in 2013, to relocate to South Bend, Indiana to pioneer another private Catholic University, University of Notre Dame and they have! They also began ministry at the Indiana University at South Bend and St. Mary’s College.
Scott Barnett just completed his 20th year on staff with Chi Alpha. In August 2001, Scott moved back to Missoula, MT to serve as a campus minister at the University of Montana while finishing up three classes he needed to complete a teaching certificate. He had just migrated from Milwaukee, where he had helped plant a church for the Assemblies of God in the suburb of Germantown. Scott only planned to work with Chi Alpha for one year, then he would probably go back into church ministry or perhaps teach high school history and coach basketball…but God had other plans for Scott’s life!
The first few months on Chi Alpha staff were a bit disorienting, as the values and strategies of Chi Alpha seemed quite different than his church ministry experience; especially the practice of weekly 1-1 discipleship with key leaders.
During that first year, two things about Chi Alpha really captured Scott’s heart. First, Scott met the Chi Alpha staff from around Montana. They had an incredible unity and comradery, lived simple, yet devoted, missional lives, and prayed passionately for each other needs.
Second, Scott discovered the incredible variety of university ministry: from teaching deep theological truths, to writing silly dorm skits about healthy relationships; from helping students encounter God’s power at a retreat, to organizing a Luau in the middle of the snow-covered campus in January. Half way through that first year, God led Scott to commit to working with Chi Alpha for “just a few more years.”
Scott became the UM Chi Alpha Director in July of 2002, led the Big Sky Missions Expeditions from 2008-2010, and in 2013, he was elected to be the MT District Director, overseeing the seven Chi Alpha campus ministries in Montana. Scott is married to Anna, who he met in Poland in 2005, while on a Chi Alpha missions trip.
They had their first child, Kuba, in 2014. Kuba was born twelve weeks pre-mature and weighed only 2.2lbs at birth. He had to stay in the NICU for seventy days before finally being able to come home. Their second child, Maya, was born in 2018.
Scott stepped down as UM Chi Alpha Director in July of 2018, in order to devote his time fully to the role of MT Chi Alpha District Director, providing training, strategic direction and personal ministry for the 30+ Chi Alpha Staff in Montana. In this role, Scott gets to now perpetuate the same ministry values that inspired him to serve with Chi Alpha two decades ago. Scott states, “I am amazed at God’s leading and provision over the past twenty years: thousands of students impacted for Christ, hundreds of students experiencing salvation and water baptism, and more than thirty students going into devoted ministry after graduation.” Scott hopes to continue to expand Chi Alpha ministry across Montana so that every four-year and two-year college in the state has a viable outreach, including the seven tribal colleges.
Brady came as a student in the fall of 1969 as a non-believer. He came to faith in fall of 1970 through a fellow student. A group of students and young believers, we started the college ministry in the spring of 1972. Brady graduated at the end of fall quarter in 1973 with a BA in Secondary Ed. and returned in the end of winter quarter of 1974 as a campus minister. Forty-five years later, Brady ended his full-time career as a campus minister at Western Washington University. He was the longest serving Chi Alpha campus minister at one campus his entire adult ministry.
After he graduated from WWU with my Secondary Education degree, I had a very unexpected encounter with the Lord. “I worked late nights in my janitor business. Over three nights as I was driving alone, the Lord was very present to me. The third night, this mental picture came to me of Western all lit up on the hill it sits on overlooking Bellingham.” Then Jesus’ words about “a city on a hill could not be hidden” entered my mind and left me with the question to the Lord, “Do you want me to go back to Western?” It was an idea he had never thought of doing.
He wasn’t raised with much church background. He was a Jesus person planning on teaching. The Lord said yes to his question. He had a deep sense of peace at that moment. He asked, “how does one go back?” He told the Lord, “If You open the door, I will go back.” The following Sunday Brady was invited to visit a church he had never attended. Following the service, the pastor (Richard Ellison), asked Brady out for a burger. The pastor was aware of Brady’s involvement in campus ministry. The Lord had put Brady on the pastor’s heart a couple of weeks earlier, and the pastor had gone to his board and received permission to approach Brady to see if he was interested in returning to campus and if so the church (Hillcrest Chapel—a church of about twenty members at that time) would be willing to help make it possible. Brady became the Wednesday night service teacher, and an offering was taken to help him do campus missionary. He went back to the campus that spring term, and the rest is history.
Brady draws upon his years of ministry to offer keys to your longevity in campus ministry: Continuing to breathe and staying put in the same place will do it. Don’t move because of positive or negative traumatic events. Move because you are fully convinced you are called by the Lord to move. I heard him call me to WWU, and I have continued in that call. There have been times of review and consideration of other invitations, but only in the attempt to discern if I am to move. So far no new orders have come.
Reject false assumptions. One of my favorites was the assumption some had that because I was successful as a campus pastor I should cash in that reputation and get a job as a lead pastor of a local church. Assumption: real pastors lead local churches. Another is that older folks can’t do campus ministry. It may be true that we will need younger men and women partnering with us, but my campus has a significant number of professors who are in their sixties or beyond. Oftentimes they are the folks with the greatest impact in their departments.
Keep the Sabbath. The central concern is not which day of the week I take as a day of rest. But I do believe that not having a minimum of 24 uninterrupted hours each week works against our spiritual, mental, and physical health over the long run.
Surround yourself with people of prayer, insight, truth telling and shared vision. Keep your inquisitive learning spirit alive. Be a perpetual reader of thoughtful and broad topics related to your faith, as well as to the culture and world you find yourself seeking to make a difference in. Campus ministry often feels fast and furious. The feeling of redundancy can press folks to look for something that has a longer lifespan than 30 intense weeks and perpetual transition of a significant number of your community each year. I have found it essential to remind myself that while the questions oftentimes are the same from each entering group of new students, and I have heard my answers to them many times before, this new young student in front of me may have never heard a helpful answer before and certainly not in the environment of the secular university. This awareness on my part keeps my mind and heart fresh and thankful for the opportunity to be strategically placed to impact another life that finds him/herself searching for answers to the great questions of life. I may help them keep their untested faith in the test of the university, or I may sow a seed that will germinate and grow into a later commitment that will impact the person’s earthly legacy and their ultimate destiny.
Excerpted from https://campusministry.org/article/qa-with-brady-bobbink January 8, 2018
