Chicago was never at the top of Campus Outreach’s list of places to start a campus ministry. It wasn’t even on the list.
While about 70 percent of adults in the Chicago metro area are Christians, only 16 percent are evangelical. At the University of Chicago, just 25 percent of students in recent years said they were Christian. Church planters report hard work in hard soil.
“You’d hear that hardly anyone has been able to thrive in Chicago in college ministry,” said Tony Dentman, the Campus Outreach (CO) Chicago expansion director.
So when Dentman’s wife, Jenny, got a job opportunity in Chicago and he asked about the possibility of starting a ministry there, CO leaders didn’t jump at the chance.
Tony Dentman / Courtesy of Funding Tribe
“There was a lot of prayer, a lot of debate,” CO network director Olan Stubbs said. Because normally when CO expands into a new city, they like to do it with a seasoned director. Dentman was too young. He hadn’t had enough experience.
CO also likes to partner with large, established churches that aren’t only close to college campuses but can support and oversee the work. They weren’t sure who’d fit that profile in Chicago. And CO likes to focus on places with a lot of “campus life,” which means lots of students living on campus, with easy access to dorms or cafeterias where people might gather. In Chicago, most students live in securely locked apartment buildings spread out all over the neighborhoods.
“I remember sitting down with [TGC interim president] Sandy [Willson],” Dentman said. Willson was then the senior pastor of CO’s overseeing church in Memphis. “I was nervous. He was my boss’s boss. We needed him to tell us we weren’t crazy for doing this.”
Willson listened to Dentman and Jenny. Then he gave them the least nuanced advice possible.
“Here we were, fasting and praying and sweating,” Dentman remembers, laughing. “And he said, ‘Just go. Try it. The worst thing that happens is you come back.’”
Six years later, Dentman has seen about 75 students commit to Christ. He’s got 40 students regularly coming to weekly events at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and another 30 involved at Roosevelt University. He’s taken nearly 350 young people to CO’s New Year’s conferences and has 125 signed up for summer projects.
“They’re ahead of what we expected as far as evangelistic fruit,” Stubbs said. They’re also helping to pave the way for future CO ministries in other cities well outside the Bible Belt.
“It definitely makes us more excited about what the Lord could be doing in the future,” he said.
Missouri to Memphis to Chicago
The first week of his freshman year at Southeast Missouri State University, Dentman met a CO staffer named Stewart Childress.
“He invited me into his life, built a relationship with me, and shared the gospel with me multiple times,” Dentman said. After Dentman came to know the Lord (at a CO New Year’s conference), grew in his faith, and figured out the fundraising, he signed on with the University of Memphis CO team.
Memphis CO in 2013 / Courtesy of Tony Dentman
“I wanted to reach African Americans,” he said. And he did: in six years, the ministry of about 300 students soared to 70 percent black before settling down to about 50 percent.
That wasn’t the only population Dentman was reaching. He was also discipling Hispanic and Filipino students, leading some to the Lord.
“My heart started to grow for even more diversity,” he said. That was true even outside his work. In 2014, he married a Hispanic girl he’d fallen for during college.
Jenny worked for Kraft Heinz, and sometimes Dentman tagged along when she’d travel to the company offices in Chicago.
“I’d visit Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and UIC,” he said. He loved the ethnic diversity on campus.
“I started asking people about campus ministries, and I was surprised at how few there were,” he said. Last year, Northwestern listed 23 Catholic and Christian groups for more than 22,000 students. The University of Chicago has 19 for 18,500 students. At UIC, there are just 9 for 33,500 students.
For comparison, the University of Memphis has 42 religious student organizations for fewer than 22,000 students.
“There are as many college students in the Chicago area as there are people in Memphis, and yet the University of Memphis has more full-time campus ministers than the city of Chicago,” Dentman said. “That blew my mind.”
Then, in 2016, Kraft Heinz announced it was shutting down its Memphis office. If she wanted, Jenny could take a position in Chicago. But that’d mean Dentman would have to start a campus ministry from scratch, in a difficult secular city, by himself.
“I was on a mission trip with some guys, and Jenny called,” Dentman said. “She said, ‘I know this opportunity isn’t an option for us. I just wanted to share it with you.’”
He told her to pray about it. By the time he got back, they both felt called to go.
Dentman asked his CO leaders, who were hesitant but willing. Then he asked Willson, who was, if not enthusiastically optimistic, at least ready to take the risk.
University of Illinois at Chicago
Dentman didn’t really know anyone when he and Jenny unpacked their bags in Chicago. A year later, he knew everyone.
“I met with probably 70 pastors and church leaders,” he said. “Whenever I had a meeting with someone, I’d end it by saying, ‘Who else do I need to connect with in the city? Who is doing great work for the Lord?’ I just went from meeting to meeting taking notes.”
He also started volunteering at a church and with Athletes in Action (AIA), the sports ministry of Cru.
“I just got in the game,” he said. “I did ministry with people already doing ministry.”
Those people became his connection to a local church. Though he’s still technically under the umbrella of Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, he’s added two—Holy Trinity Church and Renewal Church of Chicago—that support and guide his work in Chicago.
Those meetings also helped him pick a campus.
“People said if you want to reach Chicago, UIC is not only the largest school, but it also has the largest amount of Chicagoans,” Dentman said. “UIC brings in students that are ambitious, blue collar, often first generation, diverse, and from the city.”
It also looks nothing like a typical CO campus.
“CO started at Samford, which is a small, private Christian college,” Stubbs said. “Historically, CO has thrived in two types of campuses—a school like Samford or a Division 2 athletic school in a college town.”
In other words, CO has traditionally done well in schools that enroll between 3,000 and 6,000 students.
UIC has 33,500 students, which means it’s bigger than 93 percent of America’s towns. The annual budget is just about $4 billion, almost eight times bigger than the city of Birmingham’s. With more than 11,000 on the payroll, UIC is one of the city’s largest employers.
“UIC was a big and bold choice,” Stubbs said. “If it was me, it might not have been what I would have chosen. But I tend to trust those decisions to guys who have boots on the ground.”
In this case, the guy on the ground was looking for diversity. He couldn’t have found a better fit. In fall 2023, UIC was about 30 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, 20 percent Asian, and 10 percent black.
“You walk on campus, and you don’t know who anybody is from an ethnic and religious standpoint,” Dentman said. “Even the black guys are diverse—I’ve got guys in my Bible study who are Nigerian, Jamaican, and Dominican. They aren’t international students—they’re from the south side of Chicago.”
Less than 10 percent of UIC students identify as a Christian, he said. The rest are religiously diverse—nones, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims.
All of Dentman’s career—from starting an African American Bible study in Memphis to moving to Chicago to choosing UIC—focused and fed his love for minorities.
That’s why his friends laughed—and he knew God was at work—when his first UIC student Bible study turned out to be an all-white swim team.
Getting Started: Athletes in Action
One of the first evangelical leaders Dentman met in Chicago was Jamie Borchik, a graduate from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a staff member of AIA.
“He had a Bible study with the football team at Roosevelt University, and he said I could tag along with him,” Dentman said. “So I did.”
Turnabout is fair play, so when Dentman got a chance to present to the UIC swim team, he took along an AIA volunteer. (“I need somebody who can talk swim,” he said.) When half a dozen swimmers said they’d be interested in a Bible study, the AIA volunteer said he’d come to that too.
Dentman (bottom right) teaching the swim team Bible study / Courtesy of Tony Dentman
“The AIA team embraced me wholeheartedly, welcomed me into their community, and equipped me to better minister to athletes,” Dentman said. He grew so close to the AIA team that it was almost inevitable the two ministries would enter UIC together and at the same time. They call themselves Team United.
“Our staff teams meet together,” Dentman said. “We recruit to each other’s conferences. We do trainings together. The guy who came up with the CO summer programs is on the AIA staff. They make us better.”
That’s unusual. Normally CO—and most other college ministries—work alone.
“It’s been sweet to see areas where AIA has been strong, and areas where CO has been strong,” said Mike Roberge, a AIA staffer who works on Team United. “We’ve sometimes focused on individual discipleship, and Tony’s team has focused on team discipleship. We’ve been able to morph those things together, and it’s been really fruitful.”
By setting up a ministry partnership on the city’s largest campus, Dentman was already off the CO script. He didn’t stop there.
Getting Started: Leadership Institute
When CO Chicago launched in 2017, Dentman had six staff—all from Memphis.
“We didn’t have any Bible studies or weekly meetings, because we had no students,” Dentman said. “We were just on campus meeting students and sharing the love of Christ.”
Normally, that’s CO’s only goal. But in Chicago, Dentman found he needed something else.
“We learned early on that we had to offer true value to the students, whether they wanted Jesus or not,” he said. That stemmed from the students’ ambition.
“UIC freshmen come to college with nonprofits and LLCs and real estate property,” he said. “They want to arrive at the American dream more than I have seen in other places. They’re working a job, commuting 40 minutes a day, getting good grades. They don’t want to miss their chance to make it big.”
When CO surveyed Memphis students to see what they wanted most out of college, the answer was “to have a good time and to get a job,” Dentman said. “In Chicago, students want to grow in leadership, to become a better version of themselves. We kept hearing that over and over.”
So Dentman’s team took an idea from one of his many initial meetings and adapted it into a leadership development program.
“I got my John Maxwell leadership certificate and I’m working on a doctorate in strategic leadership,” he said. “As the students grow and learn to trust us, I can say, ‘What is this really rooted in? Let me tell you about the best leader in history—Jesus himself.’”
To date, more than 540 students have joined the leadership program, including more than 350 minorities.
Kate
Two years ago, freshman Kate Rodriguez was one of those applicants. An ambitious, first-generation, Latina, Chicago-area-native, she spotted CO’s email about the leadership course in the second or third week of school.
Kate Rodriguez (left) gives her testimony at the 2024 New Year’s Conference / Courtesy of Kate Rodriguez
“I didn’t know it was Christian-based,” she said. “I randomly applied.”
At the time, Rodriguez was struggling. “I didn’t know anyone,” she said. “I was the furthest from my faith I’d ever been. My parents just got divorced two months prior to that time. That was the biggest factor in my questioning of God: Why do I feel like this? Why did this happen to me?”
As she began attending leadership events, then CO meetings and Bible studies, everything changed. “I’ve never felt this strong of a relationship with the Lord before,” she said. “It’s gotten me into such a bright and happy area, where I trust God has a plan for me. That has eased my worries. Before, I’d only pray when bad things were happening. Now, even in the good—all glory to him.”
She loves to share the gospel with others and was able to help lead one of her friends to the Lord. Today, both girls are student leaders for CO.
Campus Outreach Developmental Experience (CODE) meeting in 2024 / Courtesy of Tony Dentman
They’ve seen the ministry grow and expand. In 2023 alone, CO reached hundreds of students with the gospel, saw 16 professions of faith, took 4 on a mission trip to Zambia, and launched a ministry at Roosevelt University. The weekly Bible studies, which Dentman added in the fall, are drawing 60 to 80 students a week. When the students were asked if they wanted to keep going after spring break or quit for the year, 95 percent wanted to continue.
“We see students who didn’t believe in God six months ago, and they’re up there speaking now,” Dentman said. “The spiritual desire to multiply their lives is a common conversation. People are bringing their friends around. They’re coming to Bible studies—they’re leading Bible studies. They want to come on staff. They see the beauty of helping other people grow in their faith. It’s incredible.”
Sprouts in Hard Soil
“We’ve never had a work in Chicago before,” Stubbs said. “It was a step of faith for us, because CO started in Birmingham, Alabama—the buckle of the Bible Belt—and primarily spread in the southeast and Midwest. We knew Chicago was going to be definitely harder and more unique than anything we’ve done in America before.”
The fruit has been encouraging, and not just for Chicago. In 2021, CO started ministries in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan. The organization is also exploring expansion possibilities in places like Iowa or Idaho.
“My hope is that Tony could start a movement,” Stubbs said. “Eventually, we’d like to launch Chicago as fully independent. And maybe one day in the future CO Chicago could send teams to other northern cities to start new ministries.”
To Stubbs, Dentman looks like he’s taking cues from the apostle Paul’s ministry.
“In Acts, Paul goes to large cities,” Stubbs said. “He didn’t move on too quickly. He’d go to synagogues. He knew if he could get something going in the large cities, it would spread.”
Dentman feels the same hope.
“I do believe that we’re about to see some good stuff—it’s like being in the pregnancy state right now,” he said. “People are coming to Christ left and right. People are starting to share the gospel. It’s starting to build. God is doing something with this next generation.”
The Gospel Coalition