“Each year, Alpha Phi Omega at RMU chooses one faculty or staff member as their honorary brother of the year,” says Randon. “The honorary brother is initiated into the fraternity with the spring class and is the guest of honor at the end-of-the-year banquet. The students of APO nominate faculty and staff members for this honor. This year, two of us were nominated and they voted and they named me honorary brother.”

Randon was initiated into the fraternity on March 24, 2008, and APO held their end-of-the-year banquet on April 18th, where Randon was invited to speak about the influence that community service has played in his life.

“It is an honor to be acknowledged by the campus community, especially students, for the work that I do on campus,” says Randon. ]]> http://www.ccojubilee.org/2008/05/16/alpha-phi-omega-honors-cco-staff-member-randon-willard/feed/ http://www.ccojubilee.org/2008/05/14/renee-suhr/ http://www.ccojubilee.org/2008/05/14/renee-suhr/#comments Wed, 14 May 2008 15:42:09 +0000 Maxine Kenyanjui Transformed Lives http://www.ccojubilee.org/2008/05/14/renee-suhr/ “The CCO pushed me to think about every single area of my life and encouraged me to be voracious about understanding the perspective of Christ as it relates to everything,” says Renee Suhr. “I’ve made life choices that I never would have made otherwise.”

Renee Dayan first connected with the CCO as a junior high school student in the suburbs of Cleveland. Her youth group leaders at Heritage Congregational Church, Jenny Penderville and Sue Sarver, were also CCO campus staff at nearby Baldwin-Wallace College. “I hung out a lot with Jenny and the college students during my junior and senior high school years,” Renee remembers.

When Jenny took a group from the church to Haiti, Renee went as well. “It was the summer before my freshman year of college, and the Haiti trip changed my perspective on poverty issues. Because of that trip, I was compelled to explore different issues in college—poverty, power, the environment, etc.”

When Renee headed off to college in 1988, it was Jenny who dropped her off and connected her to the CCO staff on campus. “Jenny took me to look at a bunch of colleges during my senior year, and she dropped me off at Messiah College that first weekend, where she introduced me to [CCO staff worker] Bonnie Jones personally.”

“I’ve learned so much from the CCO during different stages of my life,” Renee says. “During high school, through Jenny, it was social justice issues. At Messiah, I learned what it means to follow Christ as a student—academic discipleship. And my years of staff taught me how to love others as Jesus loves us.”

It was after she left CCO circles for a while that Renee recognized how influential the ministry had been in her life. “I realized once I got out there that most people don’t really think that deeply about their life choices in light of their faith,” she says, “at least not in the ways I’d been encouraged to do so.”

In the mid-90s, Renee married Matt Swanson, who had made a commitment to Christ during his years at Westminster College through the CCO. Renee and Matt met while they were both working for the CCO. After getting married and living in other parts of the country for a while, Matt accepted the job as Assistant Chaplain at Geneva College, they returned to western Pennsylvania with their two young sons. A year later, Matt passed away from colon cancer.

Three years later, in 2007, Renee married Hank Suhr, who also was deeply influenced by the CCO’s ministry during his years at Allegheny College. Hank and Renee live in Beaver Falls with the boys, and Hank teaches part-time at Geneva. They have recently purchased a house in downtown Beaver Falls, close to First Presbyterian Church, where they are actively involved.

“The choice to live downtown in a depressed former steel town is a direct result of the CCO,” says Renee. “The CCO’s ministry has affected every area of our lives—how we eat, how we shop, where we shop, how we raise our kids. Without the influence of the ministry, I would never have chosen any of this. We live in a very complex society. The CCO gave me tools to navigate, and maybe even made it more complicated, but in appropriate ways. It gave me the eyes to see how I am meant to live a faithful life.”

“I went to a Presbyterian church when I was in Baltimore, so I was looking for a Presbyterian church here,” he says. When Charles arrived at the University of Pittsburgh for his freshman year, he noticed a huge sign in front of the church across the street from his residence hall, advertising a weekly gathering of Christian college students. That’s how he first got connected to Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, the CCO-sponsored ministry hosted by Bellefield Presbyterian Church.

“When I came to Pitt, I already had an agenda, Charles says. “I knew that God was calling me to Pittsburgh and that there was work for me to do. I had considered dropping out of high school to be a missionary. I started tutoring at The Pittsburgh Project shortly after I arrived. I wanted to start a ministry to homeless people, and a month into my freshman year, I met Mike, who also wanted to do that. On November 2, the ministry officially started.”

That was 2002. Today, Charles is the Community Outreach Coordinator for LIVING Ministry, and Mike Ichimura is the Chief Operating Officer. LIVING Ministry—“Love Initiated Ventures Investing in Neglected Groups”—is a fully-developed nonprofit organization which reaches out to the homeless in Pittsburgh.

Cornerstone Christian Fellowship continues to be the number one source of volunteers for the ministry, two years after Charles graduated with his degree in social work. “I was very involved in Cornerstone throughout my college years, but now that I’m out of college, I’m more involved than ever,” he says. Not only does he recruit student volunteers, but he mentors four students intensively, and he occasionally speaks at the large-group meetings.

“Cornerstone gave me a place to grow, to be in Bible study with other guys my age,” he says. “The friends I developed during my freshman year are by best friends now. There were 45 freshmen involved the year I started, and almost all of us are still in Pittsburgh. I met my wife through the fellowship. If not for Cornerstone and the introduction that came between me and Mike as a result, LIVING Ministry wouldn’t exist.”

Charles and his wife, Liz, who works for Urban Impact and is pursuing a PhD at Pitt, live on Pittsburgh’s North Side, near the headquarters for LIVING Ministry. They are active members of Allegheny Center Alliance Church, participating in Sunday school, choir, and various outreach ministries of this active congregation.

And Charles appreciates the ongoing opportunity he has to invest in students’ lives through Cornerstone. “It was a safe place where I could continue learning and growing in my faith,” Charles says. “That was invaluable for me, and I’m glad that I’m able to give back in some way.”

Do you know how to best communicate with college students? Better yet, do you know how they prefer that you communicate with them? If you guessed “by text message,” you would be correct.

A recent focus group study of young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 posed the question of how they most like to receive communication. In order, the top eight preferred methods include:

1. Text messaging
2. Internet (i.e. MySpace or Facebook)
3. iPods and Podcasts
4. Instant messaging
5. Cell phone
6. DVD / CD
7. Books
8. Email

Dr. Tim Elmore, Founder and President of Growing Leaders, Inc., notes that not only is email the eighth item on the list, but suggests that these findings say a lot about the nature of this generation:

Students today are inundated with messages, from every side. I believe they’re most likely to respond to a text message because it allows them fast, current, relevant communication with friends—but at a safe distance. They like intimacy without a lot of vulnerability. It sounds like a paradox and perhaps it is. I believe this is but one of several paradoxes that exist among Generation Y.

A 2001 graduate of Bethany College, Jim recalls that staff member Amy Barnick Cumer led a men’s group on campus in which he participated. “If ever there was a woman to pull off a men’s group, it was Amy,” he says. Amy was plugged into the CCO’s Outdoor Leadership Team (OLT). After a few years of participating in OLT, Jim applied to the Leadership and Discipleship in the Wilderness program (LDW) and spent six weeks in the wilderness of Wyoming. The CCO’s LDW program focuses on developing character, competency and confidence in leading others safely in the outdoors.

Participation as a student in LDW brought Jim to Ligonier Camp and Conference Center initially. Jim has since returned to the camp where he met his wife. They currently live in Ligonier with their four-month-old daughter.

In his position, Jim directs programs which incorporate faith, team-building, and teamwork through experiential education in outdoor activities. Through his work, Jim has the opportunity to influence the lives of people from a wide variety of organizations, ranging from soccer teams to corporations to churches and youth groups.

Participation in the Jubilee conference also had a significant impact on Jim as a student. He saw that there were actually more college students out there who were struggling to learn what it takes to have Christ be a part of their everyday lives. Jubilee was revolutionary, Jim says, in terms of shaping his thinking about worship and what that means. At St. Michael’s of the Valley Episcopal Church, Jim assists with worship and the children’s choir.

Jim is committed to sharing his faith with others, especially high school students, through life-on-life ministry. Whether through empowering others through experiential education or hanging out with high school students in the Ligonier Valley, Jim is active in the life of his community and church. Through his participation in a weekly men’s group, Jim has learned to appreciate the older men in his church who are willing to mentor him and keep accountable. Likewise, he looks for opportunities to influence high school kids through participation in a Thursday night fellowship group or simply in grabbing a cup of coffee with a student. In these kinds of settings, Jim is demonstrating that the influence the CCO had in his life extends not only to his career but to his lifestyle and worldview as well.

Michele and her husband, Jahmal, live in Akron, Ohio, where they are raising two little boys, Simon and Ellison. They are actively involved in the children’s ministry of their church and have also been members of the drama team. Michele is currently a stay-at-home mom, and most recently worked with the CCO with students at The University of Akron.

“I have volunteered as a counselor at a Pregnancy Crisis Center in my old neighborhood, and I have also volunteered at a soup kitchen in my current neighborhood,” Michele says. “I loved it! Now I’m a stay-at-home-mom of a one- and two-year-old, so I don’t have as much flexibility or freedom to do that as I once did. I’m eager to return to it, though, and plan to have the boys volunteer with me when they are big enough.”

Michele made a commitment to Jesus Christ during her freshman year at Kent State University, and soon afterward, she connected with students and staff involved in the CCO’s ministry. Michele attended Jubilee several times and was grateful for the conference. “Jubilee got me really excited about my faith and got me connected with other college students who were also excited about their faith,” she remembers. “During my first Jubilee, I met a girl named Crystal who was from Thiel College in Pennsylvania. We are still good friends today, and we’ve been able to watch each other grow in our faith and mutually encourage one another in our faith journey. That has been such a big blessing.

“My connection with the CCO was a vital part of my student life and spiritual growth. Being a Christian was the center and foundation of my life as a student and I credit my involvement with FCA and Ted Schumacher’s ministry with helping me grow and develop into a mature believer.”

Michele takes joy in sharing her faith, and she learned to do it while she was in college. “Some of those I shared my faith with came to make a decision for Christ,” she says. “One of them, a young man named Courtney Taylor, came to the Lord soon after I shared the gospel with him. He is now in leadership at The House of the Lord, the church I now attend.”

“It was during my time at Kent that I myself began to feel called into ministry. My faith is not just a part of my life; it IS my life. All of my decisions and choices and the way I live my life are based on my relationship with Christ and my service to and for him.”

Dustin currently works for The Sprout Fund, a nonprofit organization supporting innovative ideas and grassroots community projects, as the Program Coordinator for Pittsburgh 250 Community Connections. Dustin and his wife, Tera, live in the Friendship neighborhood of Pittsburgh and attend The Open Door, a Presbyterian church plant pastored by BJ Woodworth, who previously served as his campus minister at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dustin attended Pitt as both an undergraduate and graduate student, and he was involved in the CCO’s ministry at Bellefield Presbyterian Church, Cornerstone. He helped lead youth programs while there, participated on the worship team for the fellowship, and attended the Jubilee Conference on two occasions.

“The conference’s emphasis on the relevance of Christianity and pragmatic focus on exercising faith was appealing,” he says. “The concept of integrating my faith with my vocation, regardless of my career path, was a valuable lesson to learn.”

Dustin has applied that pragmatic focus to his work with The Sprout Fund. He began his work there in 2007, after graduating with a Master of Public Administration Degree from Pitt, with a focus on Public and Nonprofit Management. In his role as Program Coordinator, Dustin is responsible for a $1 million grantmaking portfolio, providing assistance to 100 community projects supported in recognition of the Pittsburgh region’s 250^th anniversary.

“My experience with the CCO substantively contributed to shaping my worldview,” says Stiver. “It is responsible, in part, for helping me develop the construct that governs my decisions regarding things like church, faith, where I live and what I decide to do.”

Dustin serves as a leader in his church and, by vocation and by choice, is an active community volunteer. He currently serves on The Open Door’s governing body, the “Steering Team,” and he leads worship there on a monthly basis. He is also on the Board of Directors of Friendship Development Associates, his neighborhood’s Community Development Corporation.

“I express my faith through actions and interactions, as humbly and genuinely as possible.”

Kevin and his wife, Betty Mae, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978. The decisions they made as a result of being involved in the CCO’s ministry during those years completely changed the trajectory of their lives.

“The first weekend of my junior year, I went to First Baptist Church on Sunday morning,” he remembers. “There was almost no one there, and those who were there had to be 60 years and older. I got up, walked out, and headed over to Bellefield Presbyterian Church and loved it.”

Bellefield Church, positioned right in the center of Pitt’s campus, was a hub of college student outreach, and Kevin immediately got connected. He started attending worship services, Wednesday night fellowship meetings, and he became a part of a small “action group.” He attended the Jubilee conference in 1977 and 1978 as a student, and he still shows up every year to help register students.

He had made a commitment to Christ during his senior year in high school, but he credits the CCO with helping him to know what to do with it. “If the CCO hadn’t been there and I’d just continued in the vein of going to church on Sundays, who knows where I’d be today?” says Kevin Tatman. “I wouldn’t have met my wife, and we wouldn’t be living the life we were called to 30 years ago.”

Kevin ultimately became a leader in the fellowship, where he met Betty Mae, the woman he would marry. They got engaged the weekend they graduated, and received their pre-engagement and pre-marital counseling from CCO staff worker Mike Ford.

At the end of his junior year, CCO staff member Dana Shaw came to the fellowship group to recruit students to help run an after-school youth club in West Oakland, the neighborhood adjacent to Pitt’s campus. “I just felt called to do it,” Kevin remembers. “I’d never experienced anything like it; I couldn’t explain it.” He and several of his classmates went to West Oakland two days a week to hang out with the kids. By the fall of 1977, a few of the Pitt students decided to start attending Friendship Community Presbyterian Church, where Dana Shaw served as lay pastor.

“We wanted to support the church in the neighborhood where we were reaching out,” Kevin explains. Little did he know he’d still be living in that neighborhood and worshipping in that church three decades later.

Kevin has served as an elder at Friendship Church, among other leadership roles, including his current term as church treasurer. He and Betty Mae were married at Bellefield Church, but their three children were baptized at Friendship. They have continued to reach out to neighbors in the community where Kevin served as a college student, and he commutes from his inner-city home to work as a claims adjuster for an insurance company in the western suburbs of Pittsburgh.

“Those two years I was involved with the CCO on campus propelled me to live my Christian life in all aspects,” Kevin says. “We’ve tried to do that ever since.”

“I became a Christian in the first semester of my senior year at Pitt, as a result of the prayers of one or more students who were already involved in the CCO’s Cornerstone Fellowship, at Bellefield Presbyterian Church. Following my conversion, and after half a year of arm-twisting by my best friend’s girlfriend, I was finally persuaded that I needed to get involved in Christian fellowship.”

Barry Luokkala, a 1976 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh went on to receive two graduate degrees in physics and is now a physicist at Carnegie Mellon University. He and his wife Janet, a 1979 graduate of Carlow College, in psychology and business, are active members of nearby Church of the Ascension.

“Janet and I met at CCO’s Cornerstone Fellowship. Janet had already been actively involved in the fellowship for some time before I started to attend in the summer of 1977. We were both involved in (separate) small group Bible studies as students. I became part of the leadership team, and led a small group focused on the arts (somewhat unusual, considering that I was in graduate school in physics at the time). We were married at Bellefield in 1980, and small group Bible studies continue to be an essential part of our life together.

“In terms of theology, the biggest impact of the ministry of the CCO was the reformational idea that God is interested in redeeming and transforming all of life, not just saving souls. This rests on the solid foundation of scripture, and has implications for daily living and all of human activity: “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do it as unto the Lord.”

“The CCO’s ministry brought me to a growing awareness that God cares about all areas of human activity, and so should we, as followers of Christ. My vocation is in academia, specifically physics. The people with whom I interact, for the most part, are naturally curious about all sorts of things, and most people in the sciences still believe that there is such a thing as truth. As opportunities arise, I’m happy to tell my story, and to talk about the One whom I believe to be the way the truth and the life. But I also try to put into practice the words of St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

“In addition to weekly worship services, Janet and I are members of a weekly small group bible study. Both of us are members of the ushering team, and I’m on the sound tech crew. Were also leaders of a small group bible study for roughly 18 years. At various times I’ve been a member of the Vestry, a layreader, head of the adult education committee, and have taught a number of adult education classes.

“If it is true that God is concerned about redeeming all of life, there must be implications for how we live. I’ll pick two examples at random: politics and vocation. In regard to politics, I grew up in a non-Christian home, in which the prime directive was peace and social justice. I still carry with me a strong sense of social justice, and I suspect that I always will, but with a growing awareness of the complexity of issues, and the need for thinking deeply and critically about the world around us. In regard to vocation, I see opportunities all around me for having a positive impact, and find it difficult to say no when asked to serve beyond my basic job. Even at this stage in my life, I have to learn to curb my youthful enthusiasm.”

Today, Darin works in northeastern Pennsylvania as an electrical engineer and is an active member of St. Hippolyte Roman Catholic Church. As an undergraduate at Gannon University, Darin’s first connection to the CCO’s ministry came when he met students and staff who lived at the Kirk House.

The Kirk House is a ministry of First Presbyterian Church of the Covenant and the CCO, where students live together in Christian community and reach out to their peers. This cooperation between a Presbyterian church and a Roman Catholic-affiliated university offers students of different denominational backgrounds opportunities to interact and grow in faith together.

“I learned life lessons in community living, dealing with the everyday differences, trials, hardships that come up, and some of that spilled over into my experience as a student,” Darin remembers. “Without the CCO, I probably still would have learned a lot of the same things from my involvement in campus ministry, and from going to Mass, but it would have been much harder. The CCO is a great resource for students.”

Darin’s main connection to the CCO was through living in the Kirk House during the school year and participating in the Erie Summer Project, which provided Christian students a chance to live in community while working out their faith in summer internships and jobs. Darin also attended the Jubilee conference.

“It was my first large conference, and eye-opening to realize there were so many other Christian students actively seeking a closer relationship to God,” he remembers. “The small-group talk about being a Christian engineer was inspiring, and some of the principles I learned that day guide me still. Also, the music history lesson of Bill Romanowski was very interesting. It caused me to buy his two books on popular culture and gave me a new perspective on movies and songs. Some of these ideas were further formulated during discussions after movies at the Kirk House.

“The staff and students I met as a result of the CCO’s ministry each in their own way had a hand in making me the person I am today.”