Propel mobilizes student leaders for collegiate ministry

The 2026 edition of Propel, Christian Challenge’s annual leadership retreat, honed in on raising the next generation of student leaders who will shine the gospel on Arizona’s college campuses.

A total of 113 college students, collegiate ministry leaders and volunteers attended the event held at Trinity Southern Baptist Church in Casa Grande April 10-11.

Christian Challenge, the campus ministry of the Arizona Mission Network of Southern Baptists, is currently reaching students on 24 college campuses in Arizona. Challenge exists to engage college students in Arizona with the gospel, develop them into disciples of Christ, mobilize them to be servant leaders for the church and send them as missionaries to the world.

Trevor Bush, regional catalyst at Challenge, started the retreat by underscoring that the college campus is the most strategic mission field in the world.

“Challenge helps churches reach college students,” he said. “It wants to raise students who will be lifelong church members.”

A campus missionary’s job is to work themselves out of their job, because students are the best missionaries to their peers, he added.

Student leaders and potential student leaders were offered breakouts on Challenge communities, gospel appointments, leadership skills, tabling, surveys, and discipleship. Challenge communities are small groups that are biblical, relational and missional. Gospel appointments are one-on-one meetings students set up with their peers with the expressed purpose of sharing the gospel.

Tabling involves setting up a Challenge table on the campus to engage with the students.

“First-time student leaders were trained how to share the gospel through gospel appointments,” said Marc Hill, state director of Christian Challenge. “At a Gospel appointment, the Challenge student hears his peer’s story, shares his [own] gospel story, then shares God’s story and asks for a response. These new leaders were also trained on how to lead missional Challenge communities that are always open to new students and intentionally reach out to a segment of the campus.

“Students who have served before and who will continue in the fall were trained in evangelistic surveys, evangelistic tabling and a one-on-one, peer-to-peer discipleship process.”

Hill delivered two leadership talks, emphasizing that it’s essential for student leaders to love God, love people and be “great” at being servants.

Calvin Stepp, a freshman from Central Arizona College, attended Propel as a potential student leader.

“A few weeks after I connected with the Challenge chapter on my campus, I felt pulled to share my story and bring people to Christ,” he said. “At Propel, I learned how to share the gospel with my peers and how to lead Challenge communities.”

Kyle Villa, a Challenge missionary at ASU Polytechnic Campus, said, “The best thing Propel offers new student leaders is perspective on the larger mission of Christian Challenge. Especially for students on smaller campuses like ASU Poly, it can be easy to forget all the leaders around the state pursuing gospel work on other college campuses.”

Scott Winter, a Challenge missionary at South Mountain Community College, said, “Propel is the opportunity for students to buy in and decide if they want to be leaders with Challenge. They get to experience the power of partnership with the church. They learn how Challenge’s mission is rooted in Scripture.”

At Propel, students from various campuses got to know each other through the mixer activities.

“The whole group also spent an afternoon session praying in groups for the prayer requests from 20 campus ministries around our state,” Hill said.”Campus missionaries were given multiple ‘campus times’ to debrief their student leaders and make ministry plans for the 2026-2027 school year.”