Vince Burens

“The message I received in college was that God cares about every aspect of my life, and how to live that practically. How do I interact with people from different cultures, how do I spend my money, how do I coach soccer? We want people to notice that there’s something different about us and we want them to want to know why.”

Jennifer Wingenroth

“If not for the CCO, I probably never would have gone to the Shippensburg Presbyterian Church and learned what a church family should be like. The CCO has provided me for extended periods of time with some really awesome God-directed people who have taught me many lessons and guided my spiritual life.”

Colby Long

The CCO, Colby believes, is successful in encouraging students to live a holistic life in regard to Christianity—not separating the spiritual life from the secular. To Colby, faithful Christian living involves seeing God in the daily decisions he makes, whether in daily activities like taking out the trash or doing dishes, or in how he treats his students.

Todd Johnson

“Through the CCO community, I deepened and broadened my faith in ways I never would have imagined, and I discerned a call to ministry,” says Todd Johnson. “This call has taken me though a variety of experiences, as I have served as a police and hospital chaplain, campus minister, parish pastor and now seminary professor. Through it all, I have continued to look at my days in the CCO as pivotal.”

Stephanie Wessel

“The main thing the CCO gave me was an intentional community—a framework, a context, people who spoke the same language and had the same beliefs,” says Stephanie Swaney Wessel. She remembers hearing for the first time about developing a biblical worldview perspective and thinking, “this is what it really means to be a Christian.”

Scott Mulrooney

“The CCO taught me that I should integrate my faith into my studies, and subsequently into my professional career,” says Scott Mulrooney. “Twenty years later, I am still attempting that integration as a self-styled architect of the poor, humbly ministering to both their physical and spiritual needs in developing nations around the world.”

Katie Willey

“I know that being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jordan is something I could not do without a strong faith. My faith is strong because of my experiences with CCO.” Given the opportunities she has to influence lives in Jordan, Katie believes that without the CCO, not only would her life be different, but so would the lives of the people in her village.

Jim Wilson

I can say with confidence that the CCO has affected the trajectory of my own life in a number of ways. The CCO has been that little voice in the back of my head that demands excellence, that demands faithfulness, that tells me that in the long run, people are important, and therefore relationships have a very, very high value.

Sarah Springer

In lots of different ways, CCO staff helped me to understand that my profession as a pediatrician is really not about me, but is about opportunities to serve and to show God’s love. The way we do things in our family is different than it would have been if we had not had that mentoring from the CCO.

Jim Paul

“God used different ministries of the CCO to guide me into not just my current profession, but pointed me in a direction that I plan on continuing for the rest of my life,” says Jim Paul, Director of Adventure Education at the Ligonier Camp and Conference Center in Ligonier, PA.

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