ST. JOSEPH – When Paul Damery surrendered to a vocational call to ministry at the age of 14, he didn’t expect to spend 20 years doing college ministry as the Campus Missionary at the Missouri Western State University BSU, which changed its name to Christian Challenge in 2017. His aspiration was simply “to mobilize and equip and make disciples,” he says, wherever that might be.

That aspiration is what motivates him still as he transitions to a new role as lead pastor at Frederick Boulevard Baptist Church, a congregation that has closely partnered with the BSU for many years. He desires to help his church grow stronger in equipping, mobilizing, and developing people for kingdom work. “College ministry has prepared me for that along the way,” says Damery.

Damery had his first taste of college ministry at the Illinois State BCM. He got involved as a freshman and met his wife, Jala, there. They served together as student leaders and got married. “In some ways I feel like I’ve been doing college ministry since 1998,” he says. “College ministry has been near and dear to my heart.”

Paul Damery

After college, the Damerys moved to Missouri for Paul to attend seminary at Midwestern. While in seminary, he led a Sunday school class at Tower View Baptist Church and served the BSU as an intern for a year-and-a-half. As Damery graduated seminary, Brent Prentice, the BSU director, took another position in Oklahoma. Damery applied to stay on as the new campus missionary for the BSU, which later changed its name to Christian Challenge in 2017, having no idea the Lord would have him there for another 19 years.

In 2010, the Lord led Damery to Frederick Boulevard Baptist Church. He served as a faithful member leading the college Sunday school class, serving as interim youth minister, leading community groups for young adults, and helping with AWANA, among other things. “In many ways, even though I have seminary training, I was an ordinary church member for a long time,” he says.

He’s well aware of the tension that can exist between parachurch college ministries and the local church, and he wanted his own life to set an example for his students. “I never wanted our ministry to replace the local church,” he says. “I tried to always champion the local church and model that through what I did.”

Meanwhile, Frederick Boulevard championed Christian Challenge in return, sponsoring outreaches like the fall kickoff tail gate, providing financial support, and bringing meals to weekly gatherings. As a result, many Challenge students plugged into Frederick Boulevard, although Damery encouraged his students to simply be involved in a church. “Be involved somewhere,” he’d tell students, “but you don’t have to come to my church.”

In 2020, Damery went through Frederick Boulevard’s elder application process. The Lord was stirring him to more directly use his gifts and experience to strengthen the church as an elder. He envisioned working alongside the lead pastor, Scott Gilbert. The Lord had other plans. Two years after Damery became an elder, Gilbert responded to a call to pastor a church in Tennessee.

“I thought, okay, what’s the Lord doing here?” Damery says. The idea of being a pastor had been on his mind, but in a do-before-I-die kind of way, not a right-here, right-now kind of way.

As the elders talked, they decided that they had enough seminary training and preaching gifting among them to handle the interim themselves. Damery helped fill those gaps, sharing some of the preaching and leading. “It was a ‘for such a time as this’ moment for me,’” he says.

The search process was a slow one; they didn’t even form a search team for 8 months. “We wanted to let the dust settle from where we were and establish some shared leadership procedures,” he explains. Once they did start the search process, Damery felt prompted to apply, knowing full well the Lord might call someone else instead.

But the Lord called him. The search committee went through the process and entertained other candidates, but they asked Damery to preach in view of a call at the end of March. The church voted him in, and he agreed to start on June 1, 2024, after the conclusion of the school year.

Damery’s ministry was prepared for the change in leadership. Over the years, he’d learned how to develop student leaders and raise up a staff. For the last several years he’d been operating with multiple staff members at his side, sharing in the work of the ministry. “I’ve tried to share leadership all along,” he says of his other staff members. “Their opinion mattered to me, and it was such a joy to work together.”

Damery is excited for the future of Challenge without him. He sees the prospect of younger leadership as a good thing, and he’s thankful to be able to hand the next Campus Missionary a team of ten student leaders. In his last MBC Campus Missionary report, Damery shared,

“As we wrapped up the semester, our staff team took the time to interview our student leadership team from the year. We wanted to hear how they are doing and to challenge them to make some goals for growing in Christ over the summer. It was encouraging to hear stories about how the Lord had strengthened their faith throughout the semester through the ups and downs of leading a life group of their peers, relationship challenges, school, and even through working through conflict among friends. One of the most exciting findings to me, however, was the fact that 7 of our 9 leaders are returning to serve in the fall even though I am not going to be there. The two not returning are graduates! We are also welcoming 3 new leaders to the team, so this fall, Isaac, or whoever ends up as the next director, will have a team of 10 and I am confident they will work well together.”

Damery credits part of his success in creating a culture of leadership to what he learned from the MBC college ministry team, particularly the late Gene Austin and Matt Kearns. The books, the Cohorts, the Campus Missionary Trainings, the conferences, all of it has been “invaluable,” he says. “I want to say a huge thank you to Missouri Baptists for investing in Campus Missionaries. As I’ve been equipped, I’ve been able to repeatedly pass along what I’ve learned to students over the years.”

Twenty years of college ministry have taught Damery that training up students in that way is an investment that’s “not just for the church of tomorrow but of today,” he says. “If we don’t care about the next generation and mobilizing and equipping college-aged students, then we’re going to lose people.” Plus, he says, when churches don’t engage that demographic, “you’re missing out on a real joy.” Churches that partner with Challenge have told him over the years how grateful they are for the students that come to their church because “it’s brought life.”

Damery admits that coming alongside college ministries is costly for churches. “It will cost you time, maybe money; you may wonder what’s in it for our church?” he says. “But you’re getting to invest in the next generation. There’s a joy in that. It’s cool to think about the number of leaders in our MBC campus ministries who end up becoming leaders in the church or on the mission field. It’s fun to be a part of those stories.”

Now, as a lead pastor, he wants to continue to be part of those stories of seeing people prepared and unleashed to live for the kingdom in local church life, the mission field, the workforce, and more—just in a different context. “The MBC training I’ve received was beneficial for campus ministry, but I believe it’s also prepared me well for ministry in the local church,” he says

It’s that kind of equipping, mobilizing, and developing that Damery wants to see spread like wildfire at Frederick Boulevard. And by God’s grace, his years in college ministry have prepared him to do just that.