About TURN Minsitries

TURN supports and launches campus retreat ministries so incoming students can connect with Christian community through local churches and campus ministries as they begin college.

Learn More

15

Campuses

7

States

1

Mission

Turn is a network of student organizations, non-profits and other parachurch ministries who all work toward the same end: getting incoming college students connected to local churches and ministries.

Turn partners with groups at colleges and universities who host a short retreat for students as they enter into their school. Turn seeks to support groups who are well established and are able to host high-quality retreats, develop groups who have the right heart and lack experience in hosting retreats at a high level and launch new groups at college and universities where no such retreats exist. To learn more about what a retreat looks like in practice, check some of them out here.

What We Value

Our Story

TURN was established in 2018 by Matt Stone, Taylor Motley, and Josh Dickens. Each founder served as a student director of a campus retreat ministry at their respective schools.

These retreats serve incoming college students by connecting them with local churches and ministries. The experiences they had while serving as student volunteers led them to become passionate about seeing the hearts of college students changed for the sake of the gospel, not only on their campuses, but at universities all across the nation.

Individual ministries are incredible at affecting the culture of their city, but TURN seeks to unite many campuses together under the goal of welcoming incoming students to local Christian community. Constructive Interference is the idea that when two identical sounds of equal volume are played together, the result is a far louder sound. The same principle applies to TURN; when we work together, the resulting effect is far greater than what we could do alone.

Josh and Matt continue to lead TURN while Taylor serves as a speech therapist in the Dallas.

What We Believe

Our Team

Board of Directors

Our board is comprised of experienced ministry leaders who guide and advise TURN Staff. They serve behind the scenes and meet quarterly to help keep the organization on track.

Our Values

Community Rooted

Retreat ministries are a model of community but should not be the primary source for spiritual development. We believe that role is for the local church. We encourage campuses to expect their staff to be fully invested into a local church.

Student Driven

Our organizational model involves one full time Executive Director whose job is to empower the students to take full control of the work and message of their ministries. By having students lead in various capacities, they learn new skills and take greater ownership in the capacity they serve.

Leadership Development

Whether in regards to Executive Directors or first year counselors, we want to provide the tools needed to equip student volunteers to function in their role with the highest degree of excellence.

Worship & Celebration

We aim to create experiences and opportunities for students to have fun while recognizing that God is the giver of all good things. Worshiping God through the things we do brings glory to His name, and we will continue to celebrate how good He is.

Read Our Story

What We Believe

God

We believe that there is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4), eternally existing in three persons (Psalm 139): The Father, the Son (Hebrews 1:1-3; Colossians 2:9), and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), and each person is fully God.

The Bible

We believe that the Bible is God's written revelation to man (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and that it is inspired, authoritative, and without error in the original manuscripts (Isaiah 40:8).

Jesus Christ

We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, death on the cross to provide for our redemption, bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven, present ministry of intercession for us, and His return to earth in power and glory (Philippians 2:5-11; 2 Corinthians 5:21).

The Holy Spirit

We believe in the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit, that He performs the miracle of new birth (1 Corinthians 12:13) in an unbeliever and indwells believers, enabling them to live a godly life (1 Corinthians 2:10-13).

Man

We believe that man was created in the image of God, but because of sin, was alienated from God. That alienation can be removed through God's grace alone by faith alone in Jesus Christ, apart from works (Ephesians 2:1-10).

Sin

We believe that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners (Hebrews 10:1-4). God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ (Romans 3:25), and He, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve (Isaiah 53:6; Isaiah 53:12; Galatians 3:13). This was a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21), so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard.