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Brett Latta

Latta-Brett.jpg“I don’t know if there’s ever a time of faith equivalent to the college years,” says Brett Latta. “Life presents plenty of forks in the road, and when you’re in college, there are more forks than at any other time. I think that’s why the CCO is so key. I had good parents and a solid family, but I could have gone any number of directions once I left home.”

Thankfully, the CCO’s ministry was available to Brett during his years as a student at Ohio Wesleyan University. “I grew up Catholic, went to CCD, was an altar boy, but had no real relationship with God,” Brett remembers. “When I showed up at OWU to play basketball, I knew I wanted to find a church—even though I wasn’t really that involved in my home church in Pittsburgh. I started going to the Catholic church because that was familiar.”

Brett met CCO staff member Sandie Starr in the dorm lounge, and he found out about the Fellowship of Athletes group at OWU. “I started going to FCA, because it felt like a good place to be. Until then, the basketball team was my primary community.”

During the summer after his freshman year, Brett accepted the invitation of one of the girls from the FCA group to go with her family to a Christian music festival. “That’s where I made a commitment to follow Jesus,” Brett remembers. “When I came back to campus for my sophomore year, I was all fired up.”

Sandie recognized Brett’s excitement and invited him to be a student leader for FCA. Brett went to Jubilee and discovered that his faith could have an impact on his studies. As a geology major, he recalls how impressed he was that there was a seminar about the sciences.

“I remember the book tables and going out with other students for meals, and just the opportunity to be around people who were thinking about what it means to Christian in every area of life. We students were really hungry for that, at least those of us who wanted to take our faith seriously. Because of the CCO and the church I was attending, I was beginning to understand how Christ influences every area of life.”

Today, Brett and his wife, Sarah, who was involved in the CCO’s ministry at Malone University, are raising their three children in Delaware, Ohio, near Brett’s alma mater. They are actively involved in their community and in a church plant called Delaware City Vineyard, and they homeschool their children.

Brett has worked as an engineering consultant for many years, and recently accepted a position with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help enforce Clean Water Act regulations. He is also an adjunct professor at Franklin University in Columbus, teaching earth science. He is grateful for the opportunity to stay connected to college students.

“After 15 years of working in the ‘real world,’ I realize how much of a challenge it is to get people to recognize that there is a God and that He cares about us,” says Brett. “Before you can have conversations about what it means to be a Christian and geologist, you need to understand what it means to be a Christian. I’m constantly thinking about the things that I learned in college, and even now I’m rereading a book called The Galileo Connection, about resolving conflicts between science and the Bible. I’m always trying to find ways to apply my faith in day-to-day routine work settings, and that’s because of the CCO’s influence on me when I was in college.”