In July 1984, Eldon responded to an ad posted in Christianity Today for a director of campus ministries at Messiah College. One month later, the Fry family moved to Pennsylvania. Eldon had not envisioned this step in his vocational and spiritual journey, but he now says, "It feels like it fits me to be a campus pastor. I've always enjoyed the belief that students will do greater things than I can imagine and go places I will never be."

Elisa Joy Seibert '92 is one of many former Messiah students who had dropped by Eldon's office for advice and discovered someone eager to invest in her life. It was her second semester at Messiah, and she had become the manager of a ministry team that drove into Harrisburg on Friday nights. The team was facing difficulties, and it was Elisa's responsibility to resolve them. "Eldon came alongside me," she says. "He gently reoriented my perspective on how to address the issues with my team without diminishing what we were seeking to do. It really impacted me — just the fact that someone would invest in me."

After 13 years at Messiah, Eldon accepted a call to pastor a church in Colorado Springs. The College had chosen to make a shift to a more academic and administrative, rather than ministerial, college pastor position, and Eldon felt his strength was in ministry and that he needed to pursue that calling wherever it led him.

In Colorado Springs, he found new opportunities for pastoral care and completed his Doctor of Ministry. Then in 1999 Eldon transitioned into pastoral care work at Colorado's Focus on the Family. Throughout his experiences there, Eldon says, "I gained new insights into the life of the church and challenges of living as a Christian in today's culture. In some ways this became my sabbatical experience."

After five years in Colorado, Eldon stepped back into campus ministry at Bethel University where he served as college pastor for three years. It was there, one evening over dinner, that his wife asked him, if he were in a perfect world, where he could do anything, what would he do? He began to think seriously about it. A week later, Messiah College President Kim Phipps called him. She told Eldon that several members of the campus community had nominated him for consideration by Messiah's college pastor search committee. The president described her vision for the position, and it was strangely similar to what Eldon himself had been thinking of regarding his own vocation only days earlier. But was it wise to return to a place where he'd previously ministered — and left?

Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next Page