By: Kayla Cowen
3/9/2006

He was born weighing 4 pounds, 11 ounces. Even though his parents had two stillborns before him, they wanted to try again. Five months into the pregnancy, his mom was confined to bed rest.

The doctors told his mom he probably wouldn’t survive. Yet in confidence his mother said, “This baby will live, and the joy of his life will be spent in sharing about Jesus.”

Thirty-two years later Patrick Sehl, Campus Ministries director, is living out those words.

Sehl grew up in Oregon, Calif., where he spent much of his free time mountain biking to the beach with friends and being active in his church’s ministry.

While attending a community college, Sehl also interned in youth ministry at his church, yet said something was missing.

 “I went to a mega-church. It was huge,” said Sehl. “My church was going great. We had a large youth group, but my walk with God was really dry. I remember thinking, ‘There has to be more.’”

And there was.

Sehl’s career path began unfolding when the youth director of his church invited him to attend a conference at Mt. Hermann, Santa Cruz, Calif., where Jim Smith, Friends University assistant professor, was speaking.

“I told him I didn’t want to go because I just knew the speaker would be bad,” said Sehl.  “He told me to come anyway; that I could stay in the cabins and bring my mountain bike so if it got boring I could go biking.”

Sehl took him up on the offer and invited a friend to go with him. They took Smith so seriously that Sehl and his friend took their mountain bikes to the first conference.

“We went all geared up,” said Sehl, “so the moment it got boring we could take off.”

But plans changed when Smith began talking. 

“Jim talked about the love and grace of God in a whole new way I’d never heard before,” said Sehl.

After the conference Sehl said something within him drove him to speak with Smith. He approached Smith and in a bold manner said, “Dude, I don’t think you know your Bible very well. I think you’re wrong.”

Smith gave Sehl the scripture references from Galatians, 1 Corinthians and other New Testament books he spoke from and told him to read over them, study them for himself and then contact him later if he wanted to discuss them.

That evening Sehl read the verses and discovered Smith was right.  Standing under a grove of pine trees in the pouring rain, Sehl said he reflected on what he’d just learned.

“I felt God was going to fill my cup in a way as never before.”

The next morning Sehl met Smith for breakfast in the speaker’s cabin where he admitted Smith was right and he was wrong. They discussed the verses and Sehl said, “Tell me more.”

After Smith returned to Kansas, Sehl wrote a thank-you note to Smith for the breakfast and the talk. Several months passed and he never heard back from Smith, so he gave him a call.

When Smith answered his phone at Friends, Sehl was perplexed. He thought Smith was a traveling speaker, not a professor.

“Somehow talking about him being a professor led into him asking me where I went to college,” said Sehl. “I told him I was about to graduate a junior college, and he invited me to come here to finish up since I was interested in ministry.”

Sehl said at first he didn’t know what to think. He’d never been east of Nevada, and there certainly were no mountainous regions for him to enjoy mountain biking. But in the end Smith’s connection with ministry, the career path Sehl had wanted to take since high school, influenced him to give it a shot.

In 1996 Sehl graduated from Friends with a bachelor’s degree in Religion and Philosophy and then proceeded to attend Princeton Theological Seminary for three years.

After seminary he and his wife Janeen moved back to Kansas where his wife got a teaching job in Goddard. For a while Sehl substitute taught sixth grade at Mead Elementary School and worked at the YMCA.

Eventually Sehl worked at Consumer Credit Counseling Service for two years, counseling families for free, analyzing their debt and developing a budget for them.

“I had a feeling like I wanted to help people with their marriages,” said Sehl, “and the No. 1 problem is money.”

His career with the counseling service was interrupted when he received a call from Smith informing him he was stepping down as Campus Ministries director. He told him there was a job opening and he should apply. So he did.

“I had always wanted to do what Jim did,” said Sehl, “but I knew that would mean he’d have to leave, and he adds so much to this ministry that I didn’t want to see that happen.”

Sehl said he and Smith have remained close friends since he first started attending Friends, so that connection is essentially what brought him back to Friends.

When he took over Smith’s position, he began Cornerstone, a student led worship service on Sundays at 8 p.m. in the Casado Campus Cafeteria. Sehl said he wanted a place not very threatening, where anyone could come. And it had to have two things: worship and teaching.

As Sehl reminisces he leans back in his plush leather chair and smiles, casually placing his hands behind his head.

“I have the best students in the world. The best part of my job is having the opportunity to walk along beside them in life as they grow,” he said. “It’s all about meeting them where they are.”

Sehl pauses and looks around his second-floor office in the Davis Administration Building, then leans back again in his chair.

“Ministry jobs require everything of your family,” he said. 

In order to remain dedicated to his family, he leaves at a decent hour every evening to spend time with his wife and 14-month-old son.

“There’s a good chance you’ll never remember a single sermon I’ve given, but you’ll remember I loved my wife,” said Sehl. “That’s what I want people to remember; to remember me by my example.”