UNION UNIVERSITY GRADUATES MAKING AN IMPACT FOR CHRIST ACROSS THE GLOBE

STORY BY TIM ELLSWORTH

For much of Union University’s 200-year history, missions and church planting have been a central focus. Hundreds of Union graduates have left Jackson to take the gospel into all the world, serving both domestically and internationally.

“Missions has been in the DNA of Union for as long as I’ve known it, and that’s why they continue to be one of the leading sending schools,” says Andy Pettigrew, a 2000 Union graduate who now serves the International Mission Board as team leader for NextGen mobilization.

Pettigrew says that emphasis comes from Union’s focus on the integration of faith and learning.

“You do not just study for the sake of studying and getting a degree,” he says. “You study for the sake of advancing the gospel.”

As Union has celebrated its bicentennial over the past year and remembered how God has faithfully provided for the institution, it has also looked to the future and how God can and will use Union in the days ahead. One thing is certain: Union’s commitment to missions and church planting remains, and recent Union graduates are making an impact for Christ all over the world that will be felt for years to come.

Take David Kagaruki (’20) and his wife Tiffany (’21), for example. After serving as a pastoral intern at Cornerstone Community Church in Jackson for the past couple of years, David is heading to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he will serve as a pastoral intern for the next year at Grace Baptist Church alongside fellow Union alumni Chris and Sarah Ortiz. Chris has been serving the church as pastor in an effort to revitalize the small congregation and provide a faithful gospel witness in the city.

“We’re going to go by faith,” Kagaruki says. “We know it’s going to be expensive, but we know that the Lord will provide.”

The work of the church in Brooklyn is vital, Kagaruki says, as churches all around the city have been closing over the past decade.

“It seems like the numbers of believers there are dwindling, in some sense,” he says. “One of the challenges is just trying to be bold and courageous in the midst of a culture that’s anti-church, antitruth, anti-gospel, and really, it’s going to be a battlefield.”

Other recent Union alumni are serving or have served as missionaries and journeymen with the IMB in places like Taiwan, West Africa and Turkey. TO READ MORE

Meritorious Service

Union University has a long history of producing graduates who excel in their careers, in ministry, in service and in life. Each year at Homecoming, the university presents a number of Meritorious Service Awards to select graduates who have distinguished themselves in a number of ways. Complete biographies are available at uu.edu/alumni/awards/2022.