Joy Schroeder and her husband Dick have been campus missionaries with Chi Alpha Campus Ministries since 1978. After serving for 30 years at Montana State University in Bozeman, including 15 years of training campus missionary interns, they are now national Chi Alpha field staff. Dick travels and teaches extensively. Joy is a life coach, seasoned mentor, Bible teacher, and director of Summer Job Project, a national student leader discipleship program.
Dick and Joy believe that the currency of God's Kingdom is relationships and strategically focus on developing disciples through relationship-based small groups and one-on-one mentoring. Their legacy includes hundreds of alumni who carry the values of Christ's Kingdom into their jobs, families, and missions. Tools for Mentoring is a product of their experience and God's profound grace.
Joy grew up in a Chicago suburb with dreams of someday seeing the Rocky Mountains. She graduated from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a degree in elementary education and taught in the Tulsa public schools for almost three years. In 1977, more dreams came true than simply going west when she joined a Youth with a Mission team doing evangelistic outreach in Yellowstone Park. She met Dick Schroeder, who was the team leader, and they were married the following summer. Dick was the Chi Alpha director at MSU, and Joy, recognizing her own call to college student ministry, jumped in wholeheartedly. She hiked, skied, hunted, and rode horses—fully embracing Montana's spectacular outdoor opportunities.
In 1987, Joy was in a car accident. She sustained a broken neck and is paralyzed from the chest down. At the time of the accident, their children David and Mandy were four years old and one. Through God's grace, she continued active involvement in the campus ministry, home schooled the children, and developed Tools for Mentoring.
Joy devotes her life to empowering people to run life's race unencumbered by needless baggage. She is a voracious learner, loves truth, and loves to laugh. She believes that following Jesus is best done together in authentic community.
More:
How I Broke My Neck and Lived On
Refusing Bitterness: Joy's Story
