Why CU/GRTS?

I grew up near Dayton, Ohio, and was looking for a Christian college with a youth ministry program.  I really liked Cornerstone’s Christ-centered programs and community, balanced with teaching students discernment rather than dictating a long list of rules.

What You Want Others To Know:

When I was a sophomore at Cornerstone, I began attending “The Journey Church” in Cedar Springs, Mich. where Chad Wight and Norm Byers were pastors.  Chad was also one of my youth ministry professors at Cornerstone.  The Journey was a brand new church at the time and hadn’t launched publicly yet.  I attended for a month before they launched and was involved at the church for the duration of the school year. 

Following my time at Cornerstone, I got a job in Okemos, Mich. working as a youth pastor and was living 20 minutes from my job in a lower-income apartment complex in Lansing. My wife and I began to do cookouts with our neighbors, and through this began to build relationship with them.  Our neighbors were not Christians, nor were they the type of people that would walk into a church on a given Sunday.  These were just regular people, mostly blue-collar workers, just living their lives. I began to see a disconnect between the type of church I was a youth pastor at and the type of church needed to reach this type of unchurched person.  God began to put a vision on my heart of what a church would look like that would reach my unchurched (and unsaved) neighbors.

As I began to think of this, I called up Chad Wight since The Journey was my only connection to the concept of church planting.  As I talked with Chad about this vision, he told me about Converge, the network of churches to which The Journey belongs.  He encouraged me to go to Converge’s Assessment Center, which assesses potential church planters.

 I completed the assessment and soon after began to make plans to plant Crossroads Church in Lansing with support from Converge in November of 2005.  I was also receiving guidance from Norm Byers, who was already planting his second church in Petoskey.  Chad and Norm both encouraged me to enroll in GRTS’s church planting courses, so in January 2006 I took my first class: Church Planting I. I eventually decided to enroll as a degree-seeking student because the seminary experience was so helpful to me as a pastor. 

Crossroads launched publicly in September 2006 and is now nearing its 5-year anniversary.  We have a growing ministry that reaches many in their 20’s and 30’s as well as inner-city youth and their families who live near our building, and also a large group of Bhutanese (Hindu) refugees in Lansing. 

It has not been an easy road, but having guys like Chad, Norm and the rest of the Converge church planters and pastors behind me has been an essential support to me.  There is nothing more rewarding than looking back on these past years and reflecting on the people who have received Christ as their Savior and King, those who have grown closer in their walks with Him, and those where seeds have been planted in anticipation of fruit to blossom in the future.