We’re Mark and Kaitlin Warrington and we are spending our days loving college students in the Dallas area!  We’re here with our daughter Hannah reaching out to students through the Baptist Student Ministry at the University of Texas at Dallas. We are so excited to be serving on this campus, and we are confident that this is the place God has for us!

Our heart for sharing Jesus’ love with college students started some time ago. For Mark, something happened his college sophomore year during a snowy Spring Break mission trip to Amarillo with the Angelo State University Baptist Student Ministry - he encountered a community where burdens were shared, encouragement was freely given and the Spirit of God dwelled.

This encounter stirred such a passion in his heart that he began to seek the Lord about stepping away from a path to med school to focus instead on helping form this authentic community of students seeking after Jesus wherever he went. Through this experience and a year after college serving as a campus missionary at the BSM at Amarillo College, Mark knew God was calling him to a life of vocational college ministry.

For me, a love for people and serving the Lord started in high school as I served on several mission trips to the Texas/Mexico border and began caring for my community through a middle/high school girls group at church called Acteens. This love blossomed even more for me as I got involved with the Baptist Student Ministries at Amarillo College and Texas Tech during my college days. There I learned to have a heart for my college campus and care for international students studying there as well.

About six months after the Amarillo mission trip, Mark and I met thanks to an introduction by a mutual friend (my BSM director at Amarillo College at the time). A few months after that, we started dating. Together we endured A LOT of long distance dating (living anywhere from two hours apart to six hours to half a world away while I served in South Asia for six months). But through that, our hearts grew for each other, the Lord and a path of ministry we felt He had for us.

Mark had a desire to become more equipped in the Word and ministry before taking a full-time college ministry job so he applied to Dallas Theological Seminary. He moved to Dallas the last semester of my senior year at Texas Tech. After I served in a communications/missions intern in South Asia for six months, I joined him in Dallas.

It was a crazy first year in Dallas… new jobs for us, marriage and honors Greek class for Mark. What an adventure! I got a job for the Texas Baptists communications department helping with news writing and social media. Mark continued on with seminary and began working at First Baptist Church in Richardson with the college ministry there. We enjoyed getting a chance finally to serve together in college ministry, having college students over to our apartment and learning how to walk in discipleship with them. 

Then in May 2012, Mark was asked to work part time with the University of Texas at Dallas BSM and we felt like that was the next step for him. 

The next year was a blur as I was traveling a lot with my job, Mark was finishing his last few classes at seminary and we began to pray through what came next after seminary. Through lots of praying and seeking advice from wise mentors, we made it to the other side of a decision. We felt like moving to Houston to work with the Houston Area BSMs was the next step for us.

Mark graduated from seminary (Hooray!!!), we resigned from our work positions, packed up our apartment, said our goodbyes and moved to the next chapter God has for us. We served in Houston for four years - Mark as the Director at the HBU BSM and I as the Associate Director at the University of Houston BSM, focusing on international student outreach.  

In June 2017, God opened new doors for us and made it clear it was the right time to move back to Richardson. Mark now serves as the BSM Director at the University of Texas at Dallas and I partner with the BSM as I serve as an international ministry specialist on the campus. We are thrilled to be back home at UTD and are excited to be part of what God desires to do on this campus!

Through our journey in college ministry, we are learning more and more each day to rely on our beloved Lord, let Him strip away the things in our lives that hinder our obedience and allow His love to flow through us to the college students around us who need to know that He abundantly loves them and cares for them. We love what we do and are so thankful that God has allowed us to be in ministry on the same college campus. If you are ever in the Dallas area, give us a call, we would love to show you UTD and tell you what we are seeing God up to on this campus!

- Kaitlin