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Austina Jordan

Jordan_Austina.jpg“I really can’t imagine life without the CCO’s involvement during that time of my life,” says Austina Jordan. “I continue to draw on the things I learned as a student and staff member. It shapes the way I talk to students, it makes me a better librarian, a better wife and a better step-mom. I attended a Christian college, I grew up in a Christian family, and faith has always been a central part of who I am. My CCO years allowed me to continue to grow into my faith and it really began to take shape in very tangible ways.”

Austina first connected to the CCO when she was a graduate student at Kent State University, although her first real encounter came during her undergraduate years at Covenant College, where CCO staff alumna Barb Scheur was the Assistant Dean of Students.

“Barb often spoke of her time as a CCO staff person,” remembers Austina. “After I became involved in the CCO as a student and staff member, I remember looking back on my college years and seeing how even then, on a ‘non-CCO’ campus, the CCO was influencing me through the ways that Barb engaged students through student development. I still to this day remember when she did a student’s laundry because that student was feeling overwhelmed by life. How many Assistant Deans do laundry for students?! That act of kindness was a clear picture of servant leadership.”

By Austina’s third year of graduate school, she was so committed to the CCO’s ministry that she joined as part-time staff person, and transitioned to fulltime, serving students at Kent State and later at Ohio Dominican University. She has attended the Jubilee conference every year since 2002, the last three as a volunteer. “Jubilee is a great place to encounter new ideas of Gospel transformation,” she says. “It’s a place of great encouragement for me that God is alive and at work in his people and his creation.”

Today, Austina is serving as Public Services Librarian and Chair of Freshman Seminar at Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Georgia. She recently married David Jordan, who also teaches at the college and is the Mayor of Royston. Austina is learning what it means to be stepmother to David’s three children, and the Jordan family is actively involved at Royston First United Methodist Church.

“I have come to live out of the notion that God has the power and ability to use me wherever I am,” Austina says. “I moved to Northeast Georgia because of a job I was offered. I couldn’t imagine that I would have been putting down roots here. I am still a newlywed, I’m still learning to be a librarian, and I’m still learning to be a step-mom. I take great comfort in knowing that God is sovereign and that he is using me here in this place I now call home.

“If anything, the CCO is a vivid reminder that whether I live in an urban setting or in a rural small town, God’s hand is at work and all communities are in desperate need of the love and redeeming power of the Gospel. I desire to see my college campus and my town transformed by the power of the Gospel. The CCO’s influence challenges me to think deeper and to ask harder questions that don’t have easy answers. I continue to see God’s hand in my life and how he has me in this place and time for reasons I both know and understand and for reasons I’m still discovering.

“I have worked to carry the core values of the CCO into my work in academics. Those five values help me to see students and coworkers in a light that really can only come from my Savior. I am wrapping up my third year here at Emmanuel College, and my first year of marriage. I am really beginning to see how God is using this place to shape and transform me. I am continually surprised at how God allows me to be involved in the lives of college students.”