CCO Campus Ministry

Home / Transformed Lives / Peter Chace

Peter Chace

chace_peter.jpg“The CCO ministry is what made college meaningful to me,” says Peter Chace. “Being part of Crossroads, a CCO ministry, helped give purpose to my studies and interactions with others. My experience in school would have been completely different had it not been for the CCO.”

Peter graduated from Duquesne University in 2009 with a degree in Music Technology Sound Recording, and today, he is working with AmeriCorps VISTA, a national service program whose mission is to fight poverty in the community. Peter’s particular position has to do with family strengthening programs and after school tutoring in the neighborhood of Hazelwood, a low-income Pittsburgh neighborhood that he was introduced to through his involvement with the CCO at Duquesne. Peter and his wife, Sarah, live in Pittsburgh and worship at the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community.

“One of the first things I sought when I got to Duquesne was some kind of Christian fellowship,” Peter says. “I was very active in high school in youth group, and wanted to continue that in college. I found Crossroads through links on Duquesne’s website, and a ministry fair they hold for freshman.”

Peter dove in by offering audio visual support for weekly meetings, and by his sophomore year, he was helping to lead a men’s Bible study. “By the second semester of my sophomore year, I became president of Crossroads and served there for two years,” he says. “During my time as president, [CCO staff member] Herb Kolbe mentored me.”

Peter attended the CCO-sponsored Jubilee conference every year, and he credits those experiences as being among the most significant of his college career. “The first two years had the biggest impact on expanding my vision for what it means to be a Christian in the world. Tony Campolo challenged my assumptions about what it means to be an evangelical, Shane Claiborne challenged my assumptions about what it means to truly follow Christ, and the list goes on.

“But it wasn’t until my last year that I finally understood the idea of jubilee as it comes from God. The redemption of all of life and the reconciliation of all things to Himself is something that never clicked for me until I was a senior. That was a very freeing realization to me, to understand that things like art, finance, school, entertainment and everything else is important to God. Every aspect of life is so important to God that he wants to reconcile it all to Himself, and we as Christians have a responsibility to be part of that reconciliation.”

Peter is grateful for the role the CCO’s ministry played in his life throughout college. “I changed so much from year to year,” he says. “The fellowship I was part of had a lot to do with that. Older students challenged me in my younger years to grow, and I helped lead other students in my later years. Herb helped me a lot to grow over the time we spent together, and the trips, Bible studies, and retreats that Crossroads put together truly helped shape my faith into what it is today.”