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Boyce education inspires missions service for Benton
August 15, 2005
By David Roach
Although Dustin Benton has long been interested in missions, his education at Boyce College cemented his resolve to consider missions as a life calling.
As Benton progressed through high school, he felt God beginning to lead him toward missions. But training at Boyce showed him the need for missions and equipped him for the task.
"Boyce has really done an amazing work," he said. "And God has really used it in my life to show me that the Gospel is not something we just sit on. It's missions centered. That is what really bolstered my call into missions and helped me develop a passion for those people outside the country that haven't heard about Christ."
This summer Benton and his wife Mary gained their first international missions experience as they led a team of 13 on a church planting and evangelism trip to the Philippines. The Bentons, both evangelism and church growth majors, cite their Boyce education as a foundation for their work in the Philippines as well as their ministry in years to come.
"The foundation that Boyce has set for me in the Bible has helped me truly not only to know these things, but to apply them in my life," Benton said. "I look back over the past few years, and God has just so worked in me. It sure has helped to be surrounded by godly professors and teachers and other brothers and sisters in Christ."
One of the most important ways in which God has laid a foundation in Benton's life is through the influence of godly professors, he said. He classified his relationship with professors as far more personal than he ever expected.
Though Benton remains uncertain precisely where God's call to ministry will finally lead him, he is contemplating pursuing graduate education and combining his love of missions with his desire to teach.
"God's calling is progressive," he said. "And it changes according to your walk with Christ and according to the positions where God places you. Right now I really do feel God is leading me to the mission field. … But if God calls me somewhere else, I'm going to be wherever He wants me to be."
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