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.
I never thought I would pioneer a ministry. This was affirmed to me in multiple ways. Indirectly, I remember listening to someone I highly respect publicly teach that pioneering ministry requires an outgoing, “type A” personality. I am an introvert who needed to overcome his shy tendencies and risk-averse nature. Besides this public pronouncement of what it takes to pioneer campus ministry, I recall another veteran campus pastor say that the best way to determine if someone is a leader is to “place them on a campus and see if anyone will follow.” If I could not escape my introspective and introverted personality, surely my fear of the unknown within a crowded campus would trip me up. But I felt like Jesus was leading me into campus ministry in places where it had not been established. Thus, I headed out to the Northeast with my wife as interns at Georgetown University. It was a challenging, yet highly influential year. I faced all my fears in one year. I had to engage with students I did not know or share much in common every Wednesday afternoon in the center of campus called “red square.” The ministry would not succeed or fail due to my efforts so part of my experience was getting outside of my comfort zone (personal), while the other was learning to creatively consider why anyone would listen and take seriously the Gospel (theological).
After a year of ups and downs, the day of our final internship evaluation was upon us. My wife and I sat before our internship directors and listened to their feedback. Their final analysis: “Matt, you could take over a campus ministry as a director, but we don’t think you can pioneer one at this time.” They weren’t wrong. However, it was an uplifting moment for it showed me I was headed in the right direction.
After Georgetown I went to Cornell University where the group was being rebuilt after years of officially being chartered through a local church. My wife and I took over and through the 7 years we spent in upstate New York, we learned and worked through what it takes to cast vision, preach the Gospel, and equip students to follow our example. When we moved to St Louis (for reasons beyond this short story), we entered a city where almost every campus is private, and no one had much success establishing campus ministries.
As a 32-year-old with two kids and another coming shortly after arriving in St Louis, I walked onto campus, as a reflective, confident introvert, determined to show that with God’s leading, others would follow. In Genesis the patriarch Jacob left his mother and father in order to find a wife among some distant relatives. Over those years, his personality changed, and his experiences produced a tremendous household of people, livestock, and wealth. But it was his confrontation with his past, with his brother Esau, that caused his fears to rise again. And it was in the middle of the night, as he wrestled with God, that his fears were relieved and he moved forward. The story of his son Joseph would be similar. A foreign country became the proving grounds for his faith as well.
If I could impart one simple lesson in all of this it is this: making disciples for Jesus is not a matter of who you think you are or who others think you are, but using what spiritual gifts God has given to you in whatever calling His is leading you into. Not all will have the spiritual gift of leadership or administration, etc. The point is to find out what your gifts are, and use them to make disciples. Pioneering cannot be done by anyone, but far more are capable of its calling than we make it out to be. That was the case for me.
Matt Herman, is the author of Pioneering Campus Ministry, What You Should Know Before Stepping Out Into the Unknown (2021). See a complete Book Review in the Resource section of the web.
“This may be the first book written in such a way that brings you on campus in the first few years of forming a campus group from scratch. You get inside Matt’s head as he encounters students for the first time to build relationships when he is unknown and few cares about what he doing. It is a masterful book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is pioneering a new ministry, particularly on campus, and to those learning how to exhibit humility as a leader.” Dennis Gaylor, former national director, Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, USA
In 2007 Mike Amiot, the Minnesota District XA Director approached me about re-starting XA at Winona State University (WSU). At the same time, Roger Stacy, of the Minnesota AG Church Planting Network, was recruiting my husband Chuck to be a church planter. We went to visit Winona just to “get them off our backs” but were surprised when we felt a strong pull to the area—myself to the college and Chuck to the community. We left a very established position at a larger church a few months later so I could start XA and Chuck could plant a church. Because I did not know one student at the college and Chuck did not know one person in town this made starting two ministries a huge challenge—not to mention our kids were young. Reid was 13, Ellie was 6 and Calvin was 4. However, we felt God calling us to go even though each of us starting separate ministries was quite unprecedented.
Both the XA ministry and the Church began meeting in the former church building XA owns right across from the WSU campus. This is the same building in the early 1970s that Jim Bradford (former undergraduate student at WSU) with his mentor picked the lock to access the old empty church building to pray for revival to hit the campus. They met in the empty building numerous times to pray. Those prayers, and the hard work of the founding WSU XA pastor Dave Babler and then intern Mike Amiot, built a strong foundation so the group would thrive today.
I saw hundreds of students come to Christ at XA services. Fourteen years later God has brought over 2000 to saving faith in Him. XA has trained nearly 500 students to lead small groups. These are disciples that make disciples! Many students have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and in water.
It may look like a church but it is the Chi Alpha Student Center serving Winona State University students.
Although many have heard the Winona miracles and success stories, there have been many challenges. In the 2017-2018 we had a major exodus of leaders; my knee fell apart and put me on crutches and in a wheelchair and ultimately had to be replaced. The XA house had a fire that caused it to close for months. In 2019 the college newspaper published a very biased destructive article attacking the ministry. In 2020, the challenges to the campus ministry due to the pandemic faded in comparison to the attack my family had launched against us which is still ongoing to this day. A news station from Minneapolis was outside the building this fall as our students walked into service. They were trying to cause more chaos and division, but even fellow campus ministries in Winona were praying that the “enemy’s camp would be confused.” God did exactly that! They ended up leaving empty-handed and nothing has hit the news. We continue to pray it will stay that way.
But even in the midst of those things, we soldier on! I know I have been called to not just lead students to Christ that are disciples that make disciples but to raise front-line warriors on the most intense battlefields. One way we are doing that is by becoming a Campus Missionary-in-Training location in 2020 (yes- during a pandemic). We are entering into some of the most challenging yet rewarding days of campus ministry and I am confident God is walking us through these many struggles as a way to educate me and my staff on how to train strong resilient warriors for Christ. We look forward to what’s ahead!
Check out Winona State U XA story when they first started in 2008.
When Steph Peterson held her first XA planning meeting at Winona State University (WSU) a decade ago, the group numbered 10 students —barely enough to qualify as a campus club. Her daunting task focused on restarting the WSU XA chapter, one that had included as many as 200 students on the Minnesota campus of 9,000 in the 1990s and early 2000s. But after the departure of previous leadership, membership had dwindled to a solitary student. Steph began her time on campus by connecting with one football player, and day by day she introduced herself to more students. The small group began meeting in October 2008 with 18 students and grew to over 50 by the end of the first year. check out:
