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Laurie Truschel

truschel_laurie.jpg“My relationship with Christ would have lacked depth and scope without the CCO’s influence on my life,” says Laurie Truschel. “I doubt that I would be in campus ministry today without the CCO.”

Laurie was a first-year student at Grove City College when she first connected to the CCO’s ministry in 1980. Today, she serves as Director of Student Ministries at Gordon College in Massachusetts.

“I was looking for Christian fellowship when I showed up at Grove City, but I didn’t really get involved until my sophomore year,” Laurie remembers. By the time she graduated with her sociology degree in 1984, she had served as a member of the leadership team for the campus fellowship, led several Bible studies, and participated as a student at the very first Ocean City Beach Project.

Laurie also attended the Jubilee conference, both as a student and later as a CCO staff member. “Jubilee had a huge impact on me,” she says. “It was so encouraging to hear so many speakers talk about what I was learning through my CCO staff and some of my professors. Later, from 1986-89, I was the Director of the Jubilee Conference for the CCO!

“This idea that my Christian faith needs to inform my whole life was taught by my professors and reinforced by the CCO staff at Grove City, and it totally changed the way I understood the relationship between faith and learning.  I would not have been able to think critically about how a relationship with Christ informs all of life without the ministry of the CCO—at least I wouldn’t have thought this way in college!”

Today, Laurie and her husband, John, who she met through the CCO ministry, live in Massachusetts. John now serves as Chief Investment Officer for the Boston Company Asset Management, and the Truschels are members of First Presbyterian of North Shore. Laurie is very active with Bible studies, children’s ministry, leading worship, and helping out with the college Sunday school class which her husband teaches. Before taking on her current position at Gordon College, Laurie served as Christian Education Director for two congregations—one in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is now co-leading a neighborhood Bible study with her neighbor.

“John and I definitely have tried to pass on the CCO’s perspective to our kids from an early age,” says Laurie. “Because I learned as a college student that all of life belongs to Christ—all of it—our lives and the lives of our kids have been directed toward vocational ministry, not just a ‘me and Jesus’ kind of faith. I remember being taught at summer training with the CCO that we ought to be able to share our faith no matter what we are talking about, so I have really tried to do that in my work, in my neighborhood, working on PTA committees, with sports teams and so on. God has been so faithful. I’ve had lots of very interesting conversations over the years!

“I hope that our faith informs all of our decisions about life—where we live, how we live, and what we do for a living. It’s not always easy, and we are grateful for the grace of God and how He has used the ‘junk’ of our lives for His glory. I have watched the Lord use John in amazing ways in the financial industry in Boston. And I use my CCO training all the time! I function very much like a campus minister at Gordon, and I still use a lot of the same materials I used as a CCO staffer—not because it is convenient, but because it is such good material and I truly believe it is the way to reach college students with the Gospel. God is faithful and wants to use us where He places us, according to the gifts that He has given us.”