CCO Campus Ministry

Home / Transformed Lives / Beth Caldwell Barr

Beth Caldwell Barr

beth_barr.jpg“I was raised in a strong Christian family and my father was a pastor, but the CCO helped me see that you could serve God in every area of life,” says Beth Caldwell Barr. “I decided early that I would always serve the Lord. Seeing how important it was to inculcate a biblical worldview in my own children helped motivate me to homeschool my own seven children, and I feel strongly that God has called and equipped me to serve Him in this capacity and that He is glorified by my work.”

Beth first connected to the CCO’s ministry when she was a student at Grove City College, and CCO staff workers Terry and Natalie Thomas, Tom and Janice McWhertor, and Darryl and Debbi Davis all invested in her life. She served on the leadership team for the Salt Company student fellowship and served as a resident assistant during her junior and senior years, when she was supervised by CCO staff members and resident directors John and Denise Chapko. She also attended the Jubilee conference every year—including her senior year in high school, when she tagged along with older siblings. Beth credits her experiences at Jubilee and on campus with inspiring her to consider working for the CCO herself.

“I always felt inspired by the many speakers and always learned more about how to see all of life redeemed,” she remembers. “Seeing how valuable it was helped me decide to go on staff with CCO so that I could help other students catch the vision for how they can serve God in every endeavor and to wrestle with what it means to serve God in every aspect of life. We have tried to instill a Christian worldview into the raising and educating of our children as well.

“The whole idea of ‘all of life redeemed’ opened my mind to thinking through things from a biblical perspective. During my senior year, I was challenged to compare public educational system with private Christian education, so I created an independent study on this topic that enabled me to investigate this more thoroughly. Little did I realize how providential this would be as my convictions developed to where I felt called to homeschool my seven children—something I am still doing today!”

Beth joined CCO staff after graduating from Grove City in 1980, and reached out to students at Robert Morris College (now University) and later, alongside her husband, Jim, at Thiel College. The couple now lives in Virginia with the younger four of their seven children, and they are active and long-time members of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, where Beth has taught Sunday school classes and served on the prayer team. “Our family also purposefully engages in a ministry of hospitality, providing meals and housing for visitors and friends—especially bigger families and missionaries.

“I am very conscious that I am training up a new generation of Christians—my children—who are active in missions. My three oldest have served on mission teams in Peru, Honduras, Romania and India, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. They have also served on ‘diaconal mission teams’ serving the poor and needy in our region. This deliberate effort to be ‘salt and light’ in our culture is part of their training to be Christians who want to make a difference.

“My Christian faith was well established by the time I arrived on campus as a freshman, but the CCO’s ministry provided me with a community of believers that challenged me to think harder and deeper about the importance of thinking Christianly. I don’t distinguish one part of my life from another in a way that puts one aspect as ‘Christian’ and the other as ‘private’ or ‘personal.’ I work hard to live in such a way that how we live and what we do is purposefully based on wanting to advance the Kingdom of God. We try to honor Him in all we do.”