I Am The Missouri Conference

News January 01, 2014

By Fred Koenig

Some students drift away from church when they get to college. Julia Buchholz let her church choice guide her
college choice.

“I had grown up in Wesley UMC in Springfield, but then I moved to Kansas City in high school,” she said. “It was important to me to have a connection to church in college, which is one reason I came back to Springfield.”

That connection ended up being a strong one. While a student at Missouri State University, members of Wesley UMC had her over for dinner, and offered up their homes for places to study. Buchholz started working for the church, in the nursery, with the youth and in the preschool. She was involved with Wesley’s campus ministry program called The Gap, and when the Green Door college-age ministry moved to being based at Wesley she took a leadership role with it. The program has weekly worship, and seven different life groups that meet at various times during the week.

Her involvement in college-age ministry took her off-campus as well. She has gone on two mission trips to Honduras, and spent two spring breaks working on hurricane relief in North Carolina and Biloxi, Mississippi.