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A Heart for the Campus: How a Midwestern Seminary Alumnus Is Making Disciples on the Mission Field of the University

At the SBC Annual Meeting this June, Midwestern Seminary named Dr. Jeff Dodge the 2025 Alumnus of the Year. In this story, we highlight how God has used Dr. Dodge’s ministry to make disciples and train leaders for the Church.

As a freshman at the University of Northern Iowa, Jeff Dodge envisioned a career in law. But his life turned around when a friend in his dormitory shared Christ with him.

“I didn’t even get to take a baby step toward that goal,” he reflects, laughing. “God recaptured my heart and redirected me.”

Eager to pass on the gospel he had received, Dodge started a Bible study in his dorm room a few weeks after giving his life to Christ. His hunger to learn God’s Word and lead others to know Christ continued to grow, eventually transplanting him from his home state of Iowa to seminary in Los Angeles.

During seminary, God led Dodge into college ministry at California State University, Northridge; and from there, to a life dedicated to making disciples in the place where the gospel found him—the college campus.

Raising Up Leaders

“It seemed like every place I went, the door of university ministry just kept popping open,” Dodge shared, “not because I was so deliberate about it, but because God’s providence kept pointing me in that direction.”

Eventually, Dodge’s heart for university ministry brought him and his growing family back to Iowa to lead the Salt Company college ministry at Cornerstone Church in Ames, a church plant with a mission to reach the students of Iowa State University. After 23 years in Ames, Dodge and his family joined Veritas Church of Iowa City, Cornerstone’s first church plant, and its ministry to students at the University of Iowa.

Today, Dodge serves Veritas Church as teaching pastor, elder, and director of the Veritas School of Theology, a ministry he developed to equip recent college graduates and other members of the Veritas Church community with deepened theological training for ministry.

Through Veritas School of Theology, students take in-person classes in key areas of biblical studies, theology, and ministry. Dodge, who earned his D.Min. and Ph.D. from Midwestern Seminary, teaches many of the classes alongside fellow Veritas Church pastor and Midwestern Seminary alumnus Bryan Dermody. Through the accredited program, students can earn course credit leading to a Master of Christian Studies from Midwestern Seminary.

Many of the recent college graduates in the program came to Christ through Veritas Church’s campus ministry. “These students go on to lead connection groups and lead discipleship on the campus,” Dodge shared, reflecting on the ways God has worked through Veritas School of Theology. “They are stronger theologically, better equipped to disciple, and deepened in their understanding of the Bible. So the whole church is stronger.”

He added, “Many of them stay in vocational ministry after their residency, whether here, at another church plant, or internationally.”

Dodge expressed his gratitude for Midwestern Seminary’s partnership in the ministry of Veritas. “Our local church is able to do all that we’re doing because Midwestern really believes that they’re there for the Church. We’re really, really grateful.”

The Kingdom Beyond the Campus

By God’s providence, Dodge’s heart for equipping church leaders has extended beyond Iowa’s university campuses and around the globe to rural Zambia.

A short-term mission trip with Cornerstone Church brought Dodge and fellow church leaders into contact with Zambian church planter Navice Kalunga. Partnering with Kalunga, they developed a program through the Hope Center to help train underserved local pastors and equip them with theological and practical resources for church planting in Zambia. The Hope Center’s ministry has since grown to help local churches in Zambia care for orphans by providing resources through agriculture, education, and medical care.

This fall, two medical residents from the University of Iowa will travel to Zambia to complete clinical rotations in the Hope Center’s clinic. “Those are members of Veritas,” Dodge shared, expressing his gratitude for the university’s partnership in the Hope Center’s work.

Reflecting on God’s provision for the Hope Center’s initiatives, Dodge said, “God keeps putting before us these opportunities that seem outrageous and impossible on the front end, but He keeps putting them before us and carrying us all along the way.”

For the Campus, For the Church

In June 2025, Midwestern Seminary recognized Dodge as the 2025 Alumnus of the Year.

Presenting the award before hundreds of alumni and friends, President Jason Allen said, “As we thought about the different pastors and leaders whom the Lord might have us recognize, one name rose to the top because of his track record in local church service and in training generations of young men and women for ministry service.”

Dodge pursued his doctoral studies at Midwestern Seminary to become further equipped to provide the church-based theological training and leadership development that Veritas School of Theology offers. His Ph.D. research focused on the historic relationship between churches and universities.

“When you go to most university campuses, you will see churches that form a perimeter around the campus—big, historic churches that are now mostly abandoned or have very few attendees, that have lost or abandoned the gospel,” he shared. “But you can see that there was this impulse, historically, for the church to be in partnership with the university.”

Noting the often-polarized relationship between churches and universities today, Dodge expressed the importance of churches reclaiming and investing in their gospel witness on college campuses.

“When I was a freshman at UNI who was not looking for Christ at all, the gospel came to me,” he said. “Christ came to me through the bold witness of a friend down the hall. We need to train leaders to do that. I believe in it with all my heart.”

By Michaela Classen