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Renee Boring

boring_renee.jp“The CCO’s ministry is what taught me that being a Christian teacher is about more than just sharing what you believe with colleagues and kids,” says Renee Boring. “It’s about how you organize your lessons and how you decide what you’re going to teach, and even where you’re going to teach.”

Since graduating from Grove City College in 1992, Renee has worked at a Christian camp, done outdoor education with adjudicated boys, and taught English to middle and high school students. Her earliest teaching assignment was in the Wilkinsburg School District in Pittsburgh, an inner-city teaching environment that she sought out deliberately, and which she calls “an intense cross-cultural experience.” This was a choice that she is convinced she wouldn’t have made if not for her involvement in the CCO’s ministry.

“I don’t know that I would have been stretched to consider a lifestyle that was different than the one I grew up in,” she admits. “I wouldn’t have thought to move to the city or consciously seek to teach in an inner-city school or go to an inner-city, inter-racial church. I probably would have stuck with my culture and grown in my faith in those contexts.”

Not only has Renee not stuck to her suburban upbringing—she has spent the past four years living in Nepal with her husband, Don, and teaching British and American students at an international mission school.

Renee was a student at Grove City College when she connected with the CCO’s ministry—on campus, through the Jubilee conference, and during the summer between her sophomore and junior years, when she participated in the Ocean City Beach Project. “I didn’t grow up in the church,” she says. “I made a commitment to Christ during high school, when I was involved in Young Life. I came to Grove City partly because I knew I could be involved as a Young Life leader there.”

Renee’s commitment to young people extended through her continued involvement in Young Life to her pursuit of a secondary education degree. Her vision for how to serve God with her whole life, including her vocation as a teacher, was sharpened when she attended the Beach Project.

“What was so powerful about OCBP for me is that it was the first time I understood that being a Christian impacted every single aspect of my life—how I saw the world and how the world worked,” she says. “Beforehand, mine was a very individualistic faith, focused on my ‘spiritual walk’ and how I related to God, one on one. At the Beach Project and at Jubilee, I began to understand that politics matter, that there are sinful patterns in the world, not just sinful people. I began to understand that God cares about the poor, issues that I don’t think I had given enough thought to before that. I remember being challenged to think through what I was going to do with my life and my education, and that how I used both could impact the world around me.”

The Beach Project is also where Renee was encouraged to seek out other Christians for day-to-day accountability. That challenge has had a life-long impact. When Renee returned to campus, she invited a fellow student, Karen, to be her accountability partner, and the two are still close friends today.

“My interactions with the CCO really challenged me to know that I had choices about how I was going to live my life, and that they didn’t have to be dictated by my culture, but dictated by where God wanted to use me,” Renee says. “As Don and I pursue our vocations, we realize that being a Christian overseas doesn’t have to mean direct involvement in mission work. We share a comfort about working in secular organizations as a venue for impacting the kingdom of God.”