Each school year brings new faces to the campus of Andrews University. Along with new freshmen and transfer students, this year Andrews is happy to welcome a new chaplain, Patrick Murphy.

However, to say Murphy is new to the Andrews campus is not exactly accurate. Having received both his undergraduate degree and master of divinity from Andrews, Murphy has merely come back home.

Murphy graduated from Andrews with a degree in religion in 1997 before returning to his native Battle Creek to serve as a youth pastor at the Battle Creek Tabernacle Seventh-day Adventist Church. A few years later, he married his wife, Heidi, a graphic designer, and made a return to Andrews to study in the Seminary. Before coming back to Andrews as the new chaplain this year, Murphy pastored and lived with his wife in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula since 2002.

In his role as chaplain, Murphy will focus on outreach, which includes ministries such as AU-Outreach, the Easter Passion Play, Impressions drama ministry, student missions, as well as weekly chapels.

Murphy is looking forward to the “opportunity to lock arms and be shoulder to shoulder with the movers and shakers of the church—the youth.”

With a tangible passion for God and his ministry, it is Murphy’s goal that upon graduation, students will leave “on fire for God, and that within their profession, no matter what that is, they will draw others to Christ.”

Beverly Stout, University Relations correspondent