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Steve Benson

benson_steve.jpg“More than just looking for a job, I look for a calling,” says Steve Benson. “I don’t want to just do a job to do a job. I want to do something that matters. The CCO gave me that vision.”

When Steve started his freshman year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Christian fellowship was not a high priority for him. “I kept getting emails from a guy named Bill Shimko,” he remembers. “Apparently, my youth pastor had asked Bill to look me up. I never read the emails; I just kept deleting them.”

Then he met a couple of guys who invited him to attend TREK, the CCO ministry on campus. “I showed up at TREK, and I was introduced to Allie Grott and Bill Shimko. I said, ‘Hey, aren’t you the guy who keeps emailing me?’” And the rest was history.

TREK was set up as discussion-based time, exploring different topics from a Christian perspective. “I love to argue,” Steve says. “Allie said later that I was such a pain in the neck, they almost dreaded me coming!”

Nevertheless, Steve ended up on the student leadership team at the beginning of his sophomore year. He met his future wife, Jill, who also became involved in the ministry, and after they graduated in 2005, they both joined CCO staff to minister to students at Penn State University.

“I went to college with a basic understanding of who Christ was and what my faith meant—that is, not a lot,” Steve says. “My life and my faith were two totally separate things, and freshman year, I lived that way. I went to church on Sundays, but every other day was mine to do with as I pleased. Bill and Allie helped me understand that it needed to affect my school life, how I wrote my papers, my social life, everything. I majored in criminal justice and political science, and at Jubilee, Byron Borger put a book called Crime and Its Victims by Paul Van Ness into my hands. That book changed the way I thought about the criminal justice system, and it finally dawned on me that I could merge my faith and my studies.”

Today, Steve and Jill live in Peabody, Massachusetts. While Jill pursues a degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Steve is working part-time in retail and is hoping for the opportunity to continue to doing campus ministry. The Bensons are actively involved in North Point Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a new church plant, where they are already offering leadership.

“At Penn State we ran a conference called Faith 4 Thought, which was sort of a mini-Jubilee conference,” Steve explained. “We’ve been doing something similar through our church with a program called Every Square Inch, inviting guest panelists to speak about how they integrate their faith into their area of vocation. I moderate the panel and a documentarian in our congregation films it to be broadcast on the local public access station. We have featured the arts, business, media and politics.”

“The CCO taught me that I cannot separate my faith from any single thing I do, from deciding what church to attend, how to approach my work, how to spend our money, how to be a spouse and eventually a parent. The CCO was revolutionary in my life. It changed the way I did and thought about so many things, and I feel strongly called to continue to do that kind of ministry, wherever I am.”