Brenda Crim ‘coaches’ Alaskan college students into a relationship with Christ

By Mickey Noah

North American Mission Board collegiate missionary Brenda Crim with 21-year-old Melissa Okitkun. Crim led Okitkun to Christ and now spends time discipling her and helping her impact her college friends for Christ. Crim is one of more than 5,200 missionaries sowing gospel seeds in North America and supported by the Cooperative Program and Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions®.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – She was a Caldwell, Texas tomboy who could play tennis or volleyball with the best of the local boys. She was the product of a solid, blue-collar family, with a dad who she thought hung the Texas moon.

In the mid-‘70s, Brenda Crim took her God-given athletic ability 30 miles down the road to College Station, where Texas A&M gave her a four-year scholarship to play volleyball as an Aggie.

In a college career driven by athletics, Brenda always thought she’d one day be the coach of a college team. And she didn’t want to be just any coach, but one of the greatest woman coaches ever.

Fast-forward to mid-winter 2008. It’s 18 degrees outside with two feet of snow on the ground. Brenda Crim tools down an Anchorage, Alaska road in her silver Toyota pickup.

    Sidebar: Missionary uncovers deeper life issues facing Alaskan students

Since January 2005, Brenda’s served as director of the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at the University of Alaska-Anchorage (UAA), and as a North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary. Though she never realized her dream of becoming a sports coach, today she coaches young people in the toughest spectator sport of them all -- life.

When Brenda was back at Texas A&M 30 years ago, she made her decision to follow Jesus Christ.

“I was involved in BSU at A&M and there I was saved,” Brenda says. “I came from a good family. I had gone to church. But there was no in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit in my life. I didn’t grow up Southern Baptist.

“On the tailgate of my dad’s pickup, I poured my heart out to God and asked him to take over my life. I haven’t been the same since, and my life has been an amazing wild ride.”

Leading a young girl named “Angela” to Christ at A&M changed Brenda’s life forever.

“Leading my first person to Christ was the turning point for me, when I first knew what I wanted to do with my life. My life had been wrapped up in sports, but sports victories are short-term, ephemeral things. You win the game or the championship, and then you start preparing for the next game. The victory doesn’t last.

“When I led Angela to Christ, I realized this was something better. It was eternal. I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.” Brenda jokes that at the time, she asked herself: “Is there a way I can do this and get paid for it?”

After graduating from Texas A&M and then earning an M. Div. degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, she began her 26-year journey in campus ministry. Her path would take her through West Texas A&M, Canyon, Texas, Richland College in Dallas, the University of Texas at Austin, back to Texas A&M at College Station, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, La., and finally to Anchorage.

Compared to college towns in the Bible Belt states of Texas and Louisiana, Brenda discovered early on that Alaska would be a brand new ballgame. Even after 26 years of on-campus experience, she was not ready for what she found in Alaska.

Moving from relatively inexpensive Lafayette, La., to expensive Anchorage, Alaska was no small financial sacrifice for Brenda. She figures she took a 50 percent cut in buying power, and spent thousands of her own dollars to make the transition.

“But I knew it was the Lord’s calling and the calling really mattered to me.”

Brenda describes Alaska as actually a foreign missions experience instead of a North American missions assignment.

“Everybody speaks English but you have to know the native Alaskan culture or you can really mess up. Outside the major cities, people up here are isolated and live the lifestyle they’ve always lived. They live a village lifestyle.

“Alaskan students are awesome,” she said. “High school and college kids have a lot of depth and they are can-do people. “Up here, it’s a pioneer lifestyle. You have to be able to fix things that are broken and even make a part if you don’t have one. You have to be innovative. I like that. I grew up respecting people who can do that, like my dad.”

After she first traveled to Alaska during a mission trip in 2004, Brenda says she was drawn to the Alaska Baptist Convention- and NAMB-supported staff people already serving in Alaska. “I felt I wanted to work with them.”

Since arriving in Anchorage, one of Brenda’s prized converts and friends is 21-year-old Melissa Okitkun, the daughter of a Yupik Eskimo seal-hunter from the small west Alaska village of Kotlik (pop. 600). Yupik means “real genuine person.”

“Students in leadership positions are the best missionaries to other students,” according to Brenda. “Engaging students in leadership to reach others is a key philosophy in student ministry.”

When she met Melissa over a year ago at a Sonic Flood concert, the young woman fit the bill as a leader. Brenda recalls how much influence she had over other native students at the university.

“Every time I was with her, her phone was ringing off the hook,” said Brenda. “People were always calling to invite her to some bar or some other local student hang-out spot. A lot of her social connections were based on parties, and Melissa was party central.

“Melissa got involved in drinking, drugs and smoking. She knew better because her dad is a lay Assembly of God pastor back in her village. But Melissa came to college in Anchorage and got away from God.

“Slowly, we connected and began to forge a friendship. From the start, I thought she would be a great person to help me because she was a magnet who would draw 20 other people to a meeting. She could open doors to the other native students. She ultimately trusted me and gave her life to the Lord.”

Now, Melissa is a proud T.H.U.G. – an acronym she herself came up with that means “Truly Holy Unto God.” While “thugging” – as the pair calls it – Brenda and Melissa have led some 40 students to Christ in Kotlik, as well as 27 others in Nome, the finish line of the famed Iditarod dogsled race each March.

Melissa, now as a Christian, continues as a spiritual magnet attracting UAA students to Brenda’s “Breakaway” student worship and the “lock-ins” or overnight retreats Brenda often holds.

“My heart is different,” Melissa said. “I think differently now. I care more about people than I did before. I chose to be a better role model because there are a lot of students back at home – most of them are my cousins – who really look up to me. They say they want to be like ‘Mel’, go to college and become something, too.

“I attribute that to God because I guess without Him, I’d still be the same person.”

How long does Brenda expect to serve as a North American Mission Board missionary in Alaska?

“I expect to die here,” she says honestly. “God would have to pry me out of here. My vision is a lifelong vision, not a short-term vision. Somebody has to invest their life here.

“The stuff I want to accomplish here will take the rest of my life,” said a woman who has never lost her Texas drawl, and looks and sounds younger than her 50 years. By her own joking admission, Brenda has “narrowly escaped” marriage three different times.

“I had no clue I’d fall in love with Alaska. I loved Texas. I loved Louisiana. But Alaska is an amazing, amazing land.”

Brenda tells Southern Baptists to think of her face as they give to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®.

“You paid for this stuff and for me to be here and to have a witness here in Alaska,” she says, speaking directly to Southern Baptists everywhere.

“I am truly privileged to be your representative here. Nothing in my life has been greater than to be a missionary for the North American Mission Board.”

To view or download a video featuring missionary Brenda Crim, visit www.namb.net and click on the video gallery. You’ll find several video features about how Crim and other Southern Baptist missionaries just like her are reaching North America for Christ. Return each month for new video features.

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