“My job is making 19-year-old disciple makers who are going to fight for the salvation of their friends,” says Nate Banke, a U.S. missionary ministering with Chi Alpha in Colorado. To Nate, getting to his current position in missions has been a long time in the making.
While he grew up in a Christian environment, Nate began to struggle with questions and doubts regarding his faith at age 11. He wondered why he believed in God. This struggle led him to experience major bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies. After a few months of intense depression, he attended a youth conference. Nate remembers being in awe of the conference’s speaker. “I sat there and prayed, ‘God, that guy knows you. Whatever he has, whatever loving you looks like, I want that.’” In that moment, he had his first experience with the Holy Spirit. “My depression immediately broke, and I have never dealt with that again,” he says.
Nate continued to mature in his faith and was soon able to recognize how it felt to hear the voice of God. This developed more when he was 13 and attended a cattle show with his grandfather in Denver, Colorado. He was praying at home after the show and heard the Lord tell him, “I am going to send you back there someday, but next time it will be for my purpose, not yours.”
As his high school graduation neared, Nate decided to spend three days in fervent prayer to ask God what his next steps were to be. His prayer time ended with the start of a youth conference. Just as God would have it, the youth speakers began sharing testimonies about God’s calling on their lives. Then, after the closing prayer was prayed, a man walked up to Nate saying, “God told me that we need to talk.”
The man was part of a Christian missions program aimed at taking young adults on long-term cross-cultural missions trips. “That’s cool and all but I’m not interested,” Nate told him. “I’m supposed to go to Denver.” Over lunch, the man told him of one program based in Denver, Colorado, where he could learn how to hone his missional calling and then use what he has learned to minister across the world. Ecstatic, Nate decided to take the plunge and join the program for a year.
Looking back, Nate believes that taking time before college to learn about missions was essential to where he is today. “Before going to college, I needed to learn how to share my faith with others,” he explains. “That year was the kick in the pants I needed to learn how to do it.”
Nate began attending the University of Idaho, equipped with the things he learned during his gap year. “While in Idaho, I grew a heart for what college students were going through,” he says. “Until that point, my faith was largely about me. Suddenly, it was about so much more.”
He got involved with various campus ministries to athletes and fraternities on campus. It was also at this time that he was introduced to Chi Alpha. “I was really attracted to the discipleship aspects of Chi Alpha, as well as their openness to the works of the Holy Spirit.”
During his sophomore year, God spoke to Nate again. He heard God clearly tell him, “Your time is short here. I still want you in Colorado.” While he was confused and slightly irked at the idea of leaving, Nate stepped in faith and began the transfer process to attend the University of Northern Colorado.
“Since I was transferring, I told God, ‘If there is a Chi Alpha group at this school, I’ll check them out,’” he says. There was one Chi Alpha group in the entire state of Colorado — at the University of Northern Colorado. Nate spent his last few years in college becoming more involved with the ministry of Chi Alpha and graduated with his degree in 2005.
Even when his time at school was over, Nate’s time with Chi Alpha was just beginning. He began working with Chi Alpha in many ways, from working as staff in his alma mater’s Chi Alpha group to interning under a U.S. missionary serving with a Chi Alpha group in Texas. Nate then began the process of becoming a U.S. missionary and was fully appointed in 2007. He still felt called to Colorado; however, only a few years after his graduation, the Chi Alpha group at the University of Northern Colorado was in the process of shutting down.
Nate became a U.S. missionary and gathered a team to pioneer Chi Alpha ministries across the state of Colorado. “In the past four years we have pioneered five Chi Alpha groups across Colorado,” he enthuses. Additionally, the team has launched Chi Alpha groups across other states.
Along with pioneering Chi Alpha at Colorado State University, Nate and his wife, Lindsey, worked in Russia for a year to plant a Chi Alpha group there. The Chi Alpha groups across Colorado are an integral part of their ongoing ministry as well.
“Our goal is to get to the point where there is not a single university campus in Colorado without a Chi Alpha group,” says Nate.
