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Mark Steffey

steffey_mark.jpg“I try to live for God’s glory, realizing that he is involved in every area of life,” says Mark Steffey. “The CCO helped instill this in me. My faith is the central component in my life and the lens through which I view everything—marriage, parenting, work, and recreation.”

Recreation is one of the major venues through which Mark shares his faith today, as he works for the CCO in ministry to student athletes at the University of Pittsburgh. Twelve years after he graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, Mark transitioned from doing youth ministry to doing college ministry. His decision was largely based on the difference the CCO’s ministry made in his own life during his college years.

At OWU, Mark connected to the ministry that Sandie was running, and he stayed involved all four years, as a participant and a student leader. Whether in Bible studies, on backpacking trips, at the Jubilee conference, or through his role as Sandie’s student intern in the Chaplain’s office, Mark learned what it meant to be a leader and to share his faith with his peers.

“I attended Jubilee all four years, and the conference had a huge impact on my life,” Mark says. “Jubilee helped me to put legs on the kind of active Christian faith that I was yearning for while in college.”

“The CCO’s ministry helped me to make sense of the some of the challenges that I faced as a religion major at a liberal arts school that viewed the Bible with skepticism. It helped me to sift through some of the ideas that I was confronted with and affirm the Biblical worldview. If Sandie had not been at OWU, I think I would have transferred to a Christian school where it would have been easier to be a Christian. The CCO helped me to grow in the midst of a secular campus, rather than run or hide from it.”

Today, Mark and his wife, Kristin, are raising their three children in the Pittsburgh suburbs, and they are active members of Northbridge Community Church.

“The central way that I share my faith is by how I live,” Mark says. “I try to live a life of grace and love, and to serve others. While I am a full-time campus minister and it is part of my job to share my faith with college students through words, I don’t think of life as being divided into times when I am ‘on’ and times when I am ‘off.’ It is my goal to share my faith by living life wide open to God’s grace in front of others.”