Collette Schubert
Riverview Church
Michigan State University
Lansing, MI

I grew up in Allentown, PA and went off to Penn State University thinking I was a Christian, but quickly fell into the typical party girl lifestyle. After watching my brother’s life completely change for the better due to his conversion to Christianity, and realizing the lifestyle I was living was empty, lonely, and not at all what I had hoped, I began to pursue the truth about God and Jesus. I wondered, “How can what I know about God be true, yet I’m still searching for more? Is this all there is?” I became a Christian in 1988 and quickly became involved in the GCM campus church at Penn State. I knew there was so much to learn and that I needed help. So, after graduation I remained in the PSU area to continue growing and to help to reach out to students on campus with the gospel. God started developing my heart to help other “party girls” find their true worth and value in Christ alone. I went on staff in 1992 (same staff training class as Kathy Jackson) and really loved serving the students and trying to minister to the women God brought around. Often I found myself overwhelmed at being the only woman on my staff team and I always desired someone to be teamed up with.

GCM decided to dissolve the Penn State campus church in 1995. I did a short stint at Purdue University for team building en route to Michigan State University to continue campus ministry with a slighty larger team. God continued to develop my heart for helping women and it amazed me how he could use me – a broken and insecure person to draw women to himself – what a blessing!

Dave and I got married in 1999 and within a year were making plans to move to Ball State University to continue campus ministry work there. We loved ministering at BSU and it was there that I finally got to team up with women to do ministry. Andrea, Leah Chandler and I worked together to build up the women’s ministry and we all learned so much about oursleves, the beauty of co-leading and using God’s gifts to serve others. I thank God for these ladies and hope to co-labor with them again someday.

Alongside of the blessings of this time was the reality of the difficulty that Dave and I were personally going through. We had just been diagnosed with unexplained infertility and those couple years were some of the most challenging. We both have a great love for children and desired a larger family. The way God used the women’s ministry in my life and the staff team at BSU in general was very healing to us. God’s grace was sufficient, and He did eventually bless us with an amazing adoption of our daughter Anika Grace in 2003. Soon thereafter, we were blessed with achieving pregnancy through In Vitro Fertilization through the amazing generosity of a wonderful fertility specialist. Carissa Faith arrived in 2004.

God called us to move yet again, this time to Orlando, FL to join the GCM Headquarters to continue our campus ministry, but on a more national level. Sometime around that time I got involved with Kathy, Wendy and Andrea in the National Women’s Ministry. I love working with these ladies and consider it an honor to be involved in whatever I can to encourage and serve the women in GCM.

Our time in Orlando was also brief and within a year and a half we were starting to plan our move back to the mid-west. Some of the changes in GCM affected Dave directly and led him to a new job working with Greg VanNada, continuing to serve the campuses in a national role. And, God also had more changes in our personal lives as we miraculously naturally conceived Serena Hope (2006).

We are still unpacking boxes from our move back to Michigan State University (1/08), but already feel it is home and that God indeed is pouring his blessings on our family. I’m eager to see how God might use my new location – being at a campus setting again, to minister to the women around me. I’m also counting the days for God to reunite Andrea and I here at MSU and hopefully use us as a team again.

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