Cloie Sandlin
News Editor

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) huddle at Mesa State College and Four Winds Coffee and Tea, located at 1235 Bookcliff Avenue, got together over the summer to plan a special back-to-school bash for Mesa State students.
The two organizations collaborated with other local businesses to provide an event that included a free steak dinner, free coffee, games and contests, which gave students a chance to socialize with each other and with the different on-campus ministries. The event took place on August 26 and 27. The highlighted event, however, was the appearance of popular Christian musician and worship leader, Charlie Hall at the Brownson Arena.
The first 200 students with identification were welcomed into the arena for free, although tickets were reasonably priced at $3 for students, $7 for general admission and $15 a person for reserved seating.
Hope Merritt, a student at MSC, helped organize the event along with Director of Campus Recreation, Michael Wells.
“We had just over 400 people at the event,” Wells said. “We decided to do this event because it hasn’t been done on this scale on campus before, and Charlie Hall is huge on college campuses.”
Hall and his band have traveled around the world to speak on behalf of the Passion movement. The movement involves many other Christian artists, and has been around since 1997 with a mission targeted in seeing spiritual awakening come to college campuses all over the world.
Hall’s band, consisting of guitarist Kendall Combes, keyboardist Brian Bergman, drummer Dustin Ragland and bassist Quint Anderson are from Oklahoma City. Mesa State was one of the band’s last stops before they travel to Brazil this week.
FCA contacted Hall’s booking company towards the end of last fall. Since touring campuses is an important thing for Hall’s ministry, the band was happy to oblige.
“I like it when there’s a unity between campus groups. That always catches our attention,” Hall said.
Wells, who is also a part of FCA said, “We have been praying about this event for around six to nine months and it met expectations in terms of a great student event to build on.”
The welcome back events continued with a special after-party at Four Wind’s Coffee and Tea following Hall’s concert. Four Winds provided the option of a free coffee or tea drink or a half price smoothie with the presentation of the ticket used to get into the event.
Many students who attended the concert expressed their excitement by asking for a similar event to take place next year.
“It’s rare to see an on-campus Christian event like this. It was a pretty awesome experience,” said junior Amelia Jacob. “It felt like I was being poured into spiritually rather than being poured out. I would love to see all the on-campus ministries to come together with events like this.”
Junior, Erika Davis said she didn’t know there were so many campus ministries and that so many people were involved.
Four Winds also hosted games, contests, drawings and tournaments for students the following day. The festivities included a Scrabble tournament and cell phone scavenger hunt, along with a drawing for free drinks and a 40 inch, flat screen TV. Western Slope American Idol audition winner Shea Bramer also performed Friday night.

Wells concluded with a pledge to try and implement another similar event in following years. “The concert was great, the kids loved it, and we hope to do one every year and build on this foundation. With this event we hoped to accomplish awareness of the campus ministries at Mesa State and to help spread God’s word and love through worship on our campus. We think we did that,” Wells said.
Four Winds Coffee and the Christ Center are both interdenominational, nonprofit organizations. Four Winds will host special events for Mesa State students throughout the school year, has Wi-Fi and is open late for students to spend time studying or praying.
MSC alumni Noelle Carson played a large part in campus ministries when she was in school. “It’s good to know that praise is still going on here and God’s name is still being lifted high,” she said. “As the campus grows, hopefully ministries are growing as well.”
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ccsandli@mesastate.edu