C.N. Hostetter, Jr. Fellowship Program
Amanda Wagner

Amanda is from McClure Pennsylvania, “where about a thousand people live in my town”. She is a nontraditional student here at Messiah, and her vocational journey has had more twists and turns than the average Junior. She graduated with an associate’s degree from the South Hills School of Business and Technology. For three years, she lived comfortably as an employee of Raytheon Company. She worked with youth on the side, which was the beginning of the call to ministry that was soon to turn her world upside down.

“While I started out really loving software, soon I enjoyed being with youth more than my own job,” Amanda remembers. When she lost her job, her life “turned a complete 180.” She decided to pursue her passion for working among youth, and at the age of 24, she enrolled as a freshman at Messiah College. Starting as a Christian Ministries major, she eventually changed to Religion. She realized that the best way she was going to reach youth was by understanding the religions of the world.

“A lot of kids are looking for the truth,” she says as she explained all the alternatives to Christianity that youth are turning to. Her quest for determining why these religions are so attractive has started in the classroom. “I feel we need to know where they are coming from and find a way to respond to that in a knowledgeable way,” she says. “We are not winning people over to Christ by bashing the Bible over their heads.”

As a student at Messiah, Amanda has worked as maintenance at a youth church camp. At the time, all she could think was how she “went from working in a cubicle to scrubbing toilets.” Yet, from that job she learned one of the most valuable lessons of her life, “I learned that God can use every person.” With graceful wisdom, she describes how she came to realize that without her washing dishes, youth would not be coming to Christ week after week. And with that experience, she was exposed to the service side of ministry.

Amanda hopes to ultimately be ordained in the United Methodist Church. However, she has firmly decided to not hold to a five year plan. She explains that when she started technical school, she was asked what her five year plan was in one of her first classes. She envisioned living in a house and making good money. When the clock struck five years, she was jobless. “That’s when I decided to throw away the five year plan—I don’t need to know”, she exclaims with a smile. “My five year plan is not God’s five year plan.”