Note: You are reading this message either because you did not load our stylesheets, or you are not using a standards-compliant browser. Please consider using one of these browsers to view this web site: Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, or Safari (Mac).

CCO Campus Ministry

Home / Chris Thompson

Chris Thompson

thompson_chris.jpg“I could have made such a greater difference in my high school if I understood then what I understand now,” says Chris Thompson, Executive Director of Metro Pittsburgh Youth for Christ. “I now see my role at my alma mater as a minister of the gospel—a missionary to the school.”

When he was a student in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, Chris was involved in his church youth group. “I grew up in the church, and I gave my life to Christ when I was in the ninth grade,” he says. “But other high school activities—my friends, the band, musicals—became my focus. I went to youth group, but it wasn’t until my college years that my appreciation and understanding for God grew.”

Chris attended Grove City College in the late 1980s, where he majored in business administration and where his student RA (and future CCO staff member), Dean Weaver, invited him to attend a weekly Bible study.

“Dean had been praying all summer for the guys who would be on his floor,” Chris remembers. “He approached four of us and invited us to meet with him weekly. We studied the Bible and J.I. Packer’s book Knowing God. Through Dean, and through my involvement in the Salt Company fellowship, the New Grace Singers, and the Jubilee conference, my faith started to grow again. It had been latent during high school and into college. I wasn’t really understanding the foundational aspect of Christianity to all of my life. That started changing during my freshman year.”

The summer after his sophomore year, Chris participated in the CCO-sponsored summer leadership program, the Ocean City Beach Project. That experience deepened his faith even further.

“OCBP was pure, unadulterated, intense discipleship,” he remembers. “I remember learning about Creation-Fall-Redemption; this was the point of origin for me in beginning to understand the biblical story. I was also grabbing a hold of building relationships in my workplace and seeing that as a place of ministry, not just a place to earn money. I remember making a pact with a couple of friends in the middle of the ocean that, when we’re together, let’s make sure that everything we do brings God into it. That was a watershed summer for me.”

Today, Chris and his wife, Lisa, are living out their call to ministry, as they reach out to middle and high school students and raise their five children in Pittsburgh’s South Hills. They are active members of Peters Creek Baptist Church, where Chris teaches an adult Sunday school class, sings in the choir, and where Lisa is chairperson of the care committee and leads a small women’s Bible study group.

“The things that happened at Grove City laid the foundation for being in vocational ministry,” says Chris. “God used them to prepare me.”

Not only does Chris direct one of the Campus Life Clubs at his alma mater, Bethel Park High School, but he oversees the entire Pittsburgh Youth for Christ Team, which includes eight school districts and 12 schools. Chris also casts the vision for ministry, sets the budget, and raises money to make sure the ministry happens.

“The CCO’s ministry taught me about being salt and light in any environment, because there is no place where God is not, nor is there anyplace or thing or person that God cannot redeem,” says Chris. “I also learned about accountability, the importance of having checks and balances in my life, and about recognizing God as relevant and the highest priority in my life. This is what I want to instill in my own kids, and in the kids I reach out to at Bethel Park High School.”