In the Field: Leaving a Legacy

It started with the usual Tuesday night routine. The van pulled up outside and was swarmed by a small group of people. They grabbed speakers, instruments, storage containers, music stands, and cords and carried it into the building. Most of it stayed in the auditorium. The storage containers full of flyers, markers and blank name tags passed through and stopped in the lobby. A sign was carried to the front of the building, directing the student body to Mizzou Chi Alpha's first service of the year.

The staff and set up team members laid the flyers in order on the table. Two greeters took their positions at the door; two sat at the table, armed with Sharpies. Students started trickling in - sophomores, juniors, and seniors returning to the group they called family. The trickle grew quickly.

But this was no normal Tuesday night. Within an hour, Memorial Union South had been flooded with students. A line three and four people wide stretched from the table, down the hallway and out the front door. By the time the band finished practicing and the auditorium was opened, it was like opening the doors to a dam. A flood of students rushed in.

In previous years, Mizzou Chi Alpha had never seen more than 90 people at a service. That night, more than 100 first time visitors came and experienced the love of God.

"I just cried when the first service came and we had people waiting from Jesse Wrench all the way out to the doors," Missi Trask recalled. "Maybe we didn't see every single person come back, but we definitely saw the ministry at least doubled in size that year."

Mizzou's Quad

In May, Tom and Missi Trask will complete their twelfth year at the University of Missouri - Columbia and their fourteenth year of campus ministry. They work with Chi Alpha - an organization with groups on campuses all over the world. Chi Alpha is similar to a church for college students. Students attend weekly services, are able to engage in small group Bible studies, and be discipled regularly. The service Missi describes as her favorite memory from her work with Chi Alpha was the start to their seventh year at Mizzou.

When Tom and Missi married in 2003, they knew they wanted to become missionaries. They planned to work with Tom's uncle in Asia, but when illness caused him to return to the states, they began praying about other options. While working for the Assemblies of God district office in Springfield, Missouri, Missi met the campus pastor at Missouri State University and found out he was looking for some new staff members. Missi went home and began talking to Tom about the possibility. That fall, they were on campus at Missouri State.

"We both messed up our witness to people in college," Missi said. "We knew the way. We knew the truth, but we didn't do a good job of helping our friends be better Christians. We kind of felt like this was a way for us to redeem that and give back and help future generations from falling into the same kind of stuff that we did, whether it's Christians coming into school or people who don't know Jesus."

Tom encourages his students to remember "ebenezer moments." The term comes from 1 Samuel 7 when the prophet Samuel set up a stone to remind the people of God's help in battle. Tom explains to his students that ebenezers are moments and places you can go back to remember what God spoke to you.

For Tom, one of those moments came during a late night drive. Earlier in the year, they had visited Mizzou to learn more about how ministry was done on other campuses. During their visit, they found out the pastor would be leaving for California and was looking for a replacement. Tom and Missi visited several times more but still were not sure of their next move. Then, late one night, Tom was praying as they drove home to from Columbia to Springfield. As they rounded a sharp turn, he felt peace that they were supposed to become the campus pastors at Mizzou.

Tom and Missi believe one of their purposes at Mizzou is to raise up future ministers. It was a call they already felt, but that was strengthened during the first World Mission Summit. During their first year at Mizzou, they took their students to a conference where students are able to meet missionaries from all over the world. It was at that summit that national Chi Alpha began encouraging students to "give a year and pray about a lifetime" of missions.

"We took that seriously, even from that very first one, even if there wasn't major fruit there, at that point," Missi said. "We took that mandate seriously, so we've done everything we do with that in the back of their minds."

Tom and Missi worship at the third World Mission Summit
*Provided by Tom and Missi, taken by Kim Boley

The World Missions Summit has happened three more times since then - once every four years so that each student has the opportunity to attend, and Tom says the third, in 2012, was his favorite memory. "The Bible makes it clear, sometimes it takes a while for fruit to bloom. We had a good amount of people go, but we also had an even greater amount of people respond." He had to hold back tears as he remembered. "It was in that moment, the work and the time and effort and sometimes the tears were finally paying off. We began to really see the fruit begin to develop.

"Even that moment, as great as it was, it was the beginning of greater things yet to come. For so many years, we didn't see a whole heck of a lot of fruit, or even any. Even at that moment, things were turning a corner. God was going to be able to really use the ministry," Tom said.

During a sermon in December 2014, Tom spoke to the students about leaving a legacy. He told them how many people had made the decision to give their lives to Christ while He and Missi have been at Mizzou: 323. Then he issued a challenge to them. "Beat me!"

And they've got quite the legacy to beat. The number of people who have decided to follow Christ has grown. Mizzou Chi Alpha owns a house just across the street from the campus, and if you go upstairs, you'll see a map. It's surrounded by pictures of all the students and alumni who have gone on to give at least a year in missions, who are pastors, or who plan to be ministers. Students who have been taught by Tom and Missi have gone on to become missionaries in Japan, Egypt, Thailand, the Philippines, Las Vegas, Southeast Missouri State, and Atlanta. They have become pastors, youth pastors, children's pastors. Not to mention their beautiful daughter, Taylor, whom they are raising to love and serve Jesus.

Missi, Taylor, and Tom Trask
*Provided by Tom and Missi, taken by Amber Moya

"As of this district council [this coming April], we'll have 25 people who came out of the ministry that are credentialed ministers with the AG. And a ton more freaky excellent Christians who bring Jesus into the workplace every single day," Tom said. "That's what I'm talking about. That's my heart, my desire. I think God's pleased."

Prayer request from Tom and Missi:
"God’s brought us so far in the ministry. We almost feel like there’s, not next level, but a next step, that God has for the ministry as a whole. And I don’t know what that is right now. I don’t know if that means more growth. I don’t know if that means expansion for another building. Whether that means we do more. We’ve been encouraged to do a CMIT internship with Chi Alpha. National office has called us multiple times. You know? We’ve got the worship team that’s got their album out. We just feel like things are really enlarged, and we don’t know what the Lord has. Just that we will be obedient to His will as a ministry and do whatever He wants. It’s exciting, but at the same time, we don’t want to get outside of His will. Bad things happen when that happens. Just that next stage in ministry, to go where God wants us to go."

If you want to learn more about Tom and Missi's work , you can visit mizzouxa.com.

By This...

"Did you see that?" a friend of mine asked as we walked through the mall.

Considering how non-observant I was that year, especially when I was with a group of my friends, I figured I had missed something pretty strange happening. "No. What?"

"Those people we just passed. They were staring at us." Okay, apparently it was once again my group of friends that was out-of-the-ordinary. Except, for once, we were acting fairly normal. No one was hula-hooping in the middle of the store. (Granted, there were no hula hoops nearby.) No one was turkey calling or making a llama face. No one was attacking each other over cookies. We were just walking and talking, killing time until movie night at my place.

"It's not normal to see a group like us," my friend remarked.

That's when I figured it out. There were five of us. Three girls, two guys - fairly normal for a college town. Three of us were white; one was black; one was Chinese. As soon as my friend pointed it out, I knew what she meant. But I never would have noticed it.

These people were my family. In fact, my "family" that year was probably the most diverse group of friends I had ever been a part of. People from Indonesia, Latin America, Japan, China, all over the U.S., and more. It was normal to me. I talked to people from different races and cultures on a daily basis.

But I learned something about the body of Christ that day - something I had known but never really understood the way I do now.

Jesus told His disciples, "By this, everyone will know you are My disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). He told this to a group of people that included a former tax collector (considered a traitor by Jews because they worked for the Romans) and a Zealot (someone who would stop at nothing to see Rome's rule in Israel overthrown). It was a group of men who had to clearly see the work of God to believe that Gentiles could accept Jesus as Lord.

As the years went on, a common belief in Jesus was able to unite Jew, Greek and Roman. It was able to unite fishermen, doctors, tentmakers, farmers. It was able to unite men and women, slave and master, ruler and subject, rich and poor. They were able to lead people to Christ because they were able to see past their differences and be brothers and sisters to each other.

The same is true today. The body of Christ transcends cultures. It transcends race, age, status, wealth, and power. It transcends political viewpoints. It transcends national origins. It makes a family.

People will notice. They notice unity in a world divided about every possible opinion. They notice friendship between races when people are being killed because of the color of their skin. They notice when a Democrat and Republican can have a civil conversation instead of blaming each other for the country's problems. They notice when we love one another.

And eventually, they'll have to ask. They'll have to know and understand the difference -- Jesus.

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." - Galatians 3:28