Paxton Bauer
Student Ministries Director, Youth Pastoral Fellow
I grew up attending Blackhawk Church and loved it, certainly the foundations of my faith were set in the student ministry there. But it wasn’t until college that I truly came to understand the reality and presence of God in my life. During my first couple of years in college, I drifted from my faith and from church due to lingering doubts and questions I had about God. Through searching and questioning, I found that the Christian God was the one true God, and much to my joy, he was active in my life and cared about me. During my junior year I gave my life completely to Christ, and was baptized in Lake Mendota.
During my late teen years people would often tell me that I had a gift for ministry, especially with young people. Yet, my focus was on a career in political law—I thought law would be my best way to use my gifts to positively impact the people around me. But, after interning at the Wisconsin State Capitol, I started to see that many of the issues I was trying to address legally stemmed from selfishness and hatred in the human heart, and thereby legislation alone couldn’t solve the problem. The core issues of society were, and are, a matter of the heart. I realized that only Christ could bring about the change people really need, and that’s what drew me toward ministry.
Now, as a Student Ministries Director, my goal is to lead others to Christ and encourage them to love God and their neighbors out of gratitude for what He did for us on the cross. It’s my hope to help young people know God, experiencing His love expressed through the Church and His Spirit, and find purpose in following Him and inviting others to do the same. My hope and prayer is that my ministry would be used by God to bring about the kind of heart transformation that I believe makes the deepest difference in the world, changing a heart of stone cold hatred and selfishness into a heart of flesh characterized by love for God and neighbor.