It’s a Lifestyle By Jennifer Underwood
Students on a trip to the Middle East pray for the city and the people they will serve.
If Joel Orr ’09 had been asked the question, “Why did you pick Sterling?” when he was a first-year student, he would have answered, “I want to do well in athletics and make a good future for myself—good job, money, family.” By the beginning of his senior year, though, Joel had a different reason. “God used Sterling to change my direction, to change my life.” And how did God do that? “He used the first mission trip I went on to make me want His plans for me instead of my own.” Joel’s plans didn’t include mission trips; they didn’t even include prayer meetings. “My first semester here my friend Paul and I stumbled into a prayer meeting for Hurricane Katrina victims. By the time we figured out it wasn’t a chapel—we needed chapel credits—it was too late to slip out. We didn’t want to be there, but both Paul and I felt led to pray. That was the first step.” Dr. Hank Lederle, Sterling’s director of cross-cultural ministry, was part of the second step. He approached Joel a few days later. “I heard you pray the other day. I feel God is leading me to ask you to go to Kenya with me next summer.” Joel’s answer was a quick “no.” He didn’t know that Dr. Lederle had also asked his friend Paul. Paul, too, had refused, but both young men, separately, began reading their Bibles, praying—and thinking about Kenya. Two months after the original offer, and well past the decision deadlines for the trip, Joel asked Dr. Lederle if he could still go. Dr. Lederle said yes, and then told Joel that Paul had done the same thing. Joel knew, without any doubts, God wanted them on that trip. “Kenya changed my perspective,” Joel said. He began taking ministry classes and went on other mission trips. He spent the summers after his sophomore and junior years at Urban Promise, an inner-city youth ministry begun by Tony Campolo. His work there has led him to seek his Masters in Urban Studies at the Campolo College of Graduate and Professional studies at Eastern University in Philadelphia, beginning this fall. “Making money isn’t the focus any more—although I’m learning it can be used to help others. The focus now is on God’s plans instead of my own.” God’s plans brought Joel to Sterling at just the right time. If he had come earlier, he would not have had the same opportunities. When Dr. Lederle came to Sterling in the fall of ’02, the school had not sent out a mission team for five years. The first summer after Dr. Lederle came, one team traveled to Brazil. There were two trips in ‘04; two more in ’05; three in ’06; and four in ’07. During the 2007-2008 year, eight teams were sent out. By the fall of 2008, nearly 200 students had gone on 20 trips. This past school year two teams have already gone to the Middle East, and others have gone to Ghana, India, Peru and Thailand. Later this summer a team will travel to East Asia. The destinations sound exotic, but the focus of the program goes far beyond experiencing new cultures. Dr. Lederle wants students who go on mission trips to see the work of God. He believes this has the power to transform students, to take them past the place of skepticism to the bedrock of faith. “Often our post-modern students have a difficult time fully accepting absolute truth-claims, like the conviction we at Sterling hold most dear: that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father. In my experience, one of the best ways to convince students of that truth is to allow them to encounter the real-life effects of Christianity in cultures different from our own. They see the truth of Christ changing lives.” And that is when the students’ lives are also changed. The Joel Orr who graduated just a few weeks Joel Orr ‘09 went to Nairobi, Kenya, twice during his time at Sterling College. Here he plays ago is a different young man than the one who entered Sterling in 2005. “I’m learning that it’s awewith one of the children at the Tumani “Hope” some—even joyful—being a part of God’s work. That is missions. It’s not just a trip; it’s a lifestyle.” AIDS orphanage. 10 • Spring/Summer 2009