Ashley Smith attended two Urbana Student Missions Conferences as a student, Urbana 03 and Urbana 06, and they were completely different experiences.
As a freshman at Urbana 03, the last one on the University of Illinois campus, Ashley attended all of the seminars she could find and totally enjoyed worshiping together with 19,000 fellow believers. “Urbana 03 opened my eyes to what God’s Kingdom actually looks like,” she said.
Ashley returned to Washington University in St. Louis and became a leader in the the Harambee chapter of InterVarsity. In 2005 several people encouraged her to join InterVarsity staff but she was hesitant.
Honest Dialogues
Urbana 06 was located in St. Louis, her home town, and Ashley gave a spoken word testimony in one of the sessions. But she spent much of the rest of the Urbana week in the prayer room at one of the hotels, wrestling with God’s call to campus ministry. “I didn’t want to be called to staff,” she recalled. “God and I had some honest dialogues during that week.”
Ashley had a long list of reasons that staff work was out of the question. “I told Him, ‘There’s no way I can raise the money needed to be on staff,’ and He responded by bringing unexpected donors across my path. I told Him, ‘My heart is geared more toward elementary and middle school aged kids, not college students,’ and He responded by re-shaping my heart and giving me a burden to see the lives of college students transformed.’”
Ashley concluded, “After I laid aside all the excuses, and wholeheartedly accepted the call of God on my life, He began to open my eyes to dream bigger than I ever had for what He could accomplish in the ministry He has assigned me to.”
Influence on Campus
Ashley started as an intern, working with the Harambee chapter at Washington University, and then became a full-time staff member a year later. In the last year or so the chapter has been struggling and Ashley has challenged the students in their faith walk and in their outreach to the campus. She also restructured the chapter leadership, to give it a new sense of purpose and direction.
On September 6, 2011, when an emergency meeting was called to announce the death of one of Washington University’s top officials, Vice chancellor James McLeod, Ashley was invited to the meeting and asked to pray. She was invited to help organize a candle light vigil that evening, and asked to pray again at the close of the vigil. “Having personally been close to Dean McLeod, I am definitely feeling the grief that comes with the reality of his death, but I am grateful to Jesus for providing platform and opportunity to be a minister of hope to a hurting community,” she said.
God keeps calling Ashley out of her comfort zone and Ashley keeps responding. Last year she expanded her work by planting InterVarsity on another St. Louis campus, Harris-Stowe State University. HSSU is one of two historically Black colleges in Missouri, and was founded before the Civil War.
“Ashley is building a strong culture of servant leadership and Kingdom witness for this new InterVarsity community at Harris-Stowe,” said Ashley’s supervisor, Missouri Area Director Elizabeth English. “In the midst of many demands from her primary chapter, instead of being an additional burden, the trips to Harris-Stowe have often been the most life-giving moments of ministry for Ashley.”
Building Relationships
Howie Meloch, InterVarsity’s Associate Regional Director for the Central Region, has known Ashley since she was a sophomore at Washington University. “Ashley is highly respected on campus by students and faculty,” he said. “She has great relationships with everyone from security workers to residence hall leaders to college deans. I am impressed by her love of campus and her engagement in the community.”
Howie also admires Ashley for being a risk taker. “At Harris-Stowe she was invited to lead a faculty-staff-student prayer gathering she was attending. They enjoyed what she did so much they asked her to do this regularly. She has worked hard to develop a broad base of relationships with faculty and staff on both campuses where she works.”
After four years on one campus and two years on the second campus, Ashley is just getting started. “I know that God has more for us,” she said.
(Ashley also did a spoken word presentation on John 1 at Urbana 09, which you can view on YouTube.)
