Not everyone is willing to take a step forward without knowing whether it will land on hard ground or in quick sand. But with God, sometimes, that’s how it is.

Beth Longjohn took a step forward when she moved with her husband, Gerald, and their two sons, Owen, 11, and Micah, 8, from Elgin, Ill., a suburb outside of Chicago, to Grand Rapids, in order to continue her roles as administrative assistant to President Joseph Stowell at CU.

 “(Stowell) asked me ‘would you ever consider coming to CU,’” Longjohn said, while they were still in Illinois.

Longjohn worked three years for Stowell as his administrative assistant while he was teaching pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel before coming to CU and had never lived in any other state.

If they decided to move, she and her husband didn’t know whether they would be able to sell their townhouse and find a new home in Grand Rapids. They knew the Chicago housing market was terrible and had heard the same for Michigan.

They spent three months praying about their next move.

“We wanted to weigh whether or not we were hearing the Lord’s voice [in moving to Grand Rapids] or Dr. Stowell,” she said.

 Longjohn graduated from Moody Bible Institute in 1992 when Stowell was president. After working a year in another department, she worked four years in the Moody executive offices as an assistant to Stowell’s executive assistant.

In 1997, she quit to become a full-time mom and thought that was the end of her relationship with Stowell.

After seven years unemployed, with five of those years spent overseas in United Emirates, located between Oman and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, where her husband worked as a youth pastor, Longjohn and her family returned to the U.S in July 2004.

Before leaving, her husband obtained a job at Judson University. After 15 months living in campus apartments, they bought a townhouse. They decided to attend Harvest Bible Chapel because it had established a building in their neighborhood. As they attended, they learned that Stowell was going to be teaching pastor since resigning from Moody Bible Institute in 2005.

 “We had no idea” Longjohn said, about Stowell’s new position at Harvest Bible Chapel.

A few weeks later, she bumped into him at church.

He said jokingly, “Hey, you want a job?” She became his administrative assistant.

“He’s so easy to work with and is very personable,” Longjohn said. “He has a genuine love for people and a genuine love for God’s word. I believed so much in his ministry and I wanted to help him in any way that I could.”

After accepting Stowell’s invitation to follow him to Cornerstone University, their townhouse sold in eight days, after the first showing, and they found a home near campus in Grand Rapids.

“It was a great confirmation to us that this was indeed God’s will for us,” Longjohn said.

Because of their friendship with Dr. Stowell, his style of leadership and vision for Cornerstone and respect for the school, her husband Gerald said that that was “one of the biggest considerations” in moving to Michigan. Plus, he’s from Kalamazoo.

“We were not looking for it,” he said, “but it was an opportunity that we couldn’t ignore.”

He is also looking forward to serving together with his wife at CU as the director of ministry development in Spiritual Formation, which was formerly known as Student Development.

“My husband and I have tremendous respect for Stowell,” Longjohn said.

“My husband and I both love college students. Being able to work together with students and work with Dr. Stowell seemed like a unique opportunity.”

But she admits that she doesn’t know much about the Dutch culture.

“Moving to Michigan will be a culture shock,” she said in jest, “I’m not Dutch, my husband is Dutch. Hopefully, he can help me learn the ropes.”