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Tracee Denlinger

denlinger_tracee.jpg“The Ocean City Beach Project was probably the most significant experience of my entire college education,” says Tracee Denlinger. “I learned how to lead a Bible study. I learned the biblical story—creation, fall, redemption and the idea of ‘all of life redeemed.’ But maybe most meaningful to me, I learned and lived the richness of community life. I loved sharing meals and space and life with other Christians. For me, it was like learning family life in a healthy way and on a much larger scale.”

When Tracee started her first year at Westminster College, she describes her commitment to Christ as “tenuous.” She attended chapel services and got connected to the CCO-advised fellowship group on campus. “I was involved in a Bible study and professed to be a Christian, but I couldn’t articulate very well a reason for my faith,” she remembers. “And I was making choices that went against my conscience. The first person I remember meeting was [CCO staff member] Jenny Penderville. She was the one who encouraged me to attend OCBP at the end of my sophomore year of college.”

Today, Tracee and her husband, Jeff, live in Indiana, Pennsylvania with their three children. Jeff is Associate Pastor at Graystone Presbyterian Church, and Tracee is pleased to be able stay at home to make a home for their family. Tracee and Jeff met when they were both serving on staff with the CCO, and their experiences as students and staff with the CCO have shaped the way they choose to live their lives today.

“During my last two years of college, I met CCO staff members Laura and Greg Carmer and Kristin Saplin,” Tracee remembers. “At that time in my life, I think I was looking most for someone to show me what it meant to love, to be in healthy relationships, and to live in grace more than I was looking for understanding worldviews and doctrine. They were people I wanted to be around and people I wanted to be like.”

Tracee also credits the CCO’s ministry with helping to develop her love for the church. “Connecting with a local body of believers is something that I heard a lot about as a college student. Jesus had to use a number of different experiences and people to help me realize the gift of weekly worship within the context of a local church, but the foundation was laid through the CCO. And Laura was the first person who talked to me about tithing. I didn’t even know what that was when I was a student. I learned to tithe because of the CCO’s ministry.

“The relational investment of CCO staff in my life was such a grace. Through them, Christ just kept holding up to me the life he desired for me. I was immature and lazy, and I really didn’t know what I needed and what was being offered to me then. But I know now that their investment in me, even their presence on campus, kept me close to Christ.  The CCO’s ministry was a healing balm, the mortar between bricks of knowledge, air and the light of Christ in dark places. In it was Christ creating a foundation of truth and grace that He continues to build on. I don’t know what I would be today without it. Lost, probably.”