Jessica Senasack leads State Collegiate Ministry

If you’ve ever met Jessica Senasack, you know there’s rarely a time when she doesn’t have her hands full. As the University of Maryland (UMD) Baptist Chaplain and UMD Baptist Collegiate Ministries (BCM) director, Senasack juggles many responsibilities, including teaching weekly lessons, discipling students on campus, organizing retreats and other events, and, of course, strategically managing the general chaos that comes with working on a college campus.

For over 16 years, Senasack has been UMD BCM’s fearless leader, teaching, mentoring, and developing students to serve in their church, their community, and wherever God calls them to be on mission.

Earlier this year, Senasack became the state collegiate director, overseeing Baptist collegiate ministry in Maryland/Delaware.

Senasack is also married to her husband Andy and has home responsibilities. She juggles a lot, but she’s a feisty go-getter! Even as a young child, Jessica (Jess) has dealt with challenges and, with the help of God, has been and is an overcomer.

God’s Healing & Salvation

Jess shares that she decided to accept Christ as a very young child when she almost died.

“My brother and I both had Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome and spent a month in Hopkins in ICU with no chance of living. Dad prayed for us one night and said, ‘God, I know your son saved the whole world, and a drop of your blood can save them.’” God answered that prayer. “He woke up, and our kidneys had started working.

“That’s when my dad became a believer. My brother was a baby, and I was four. My mom was concerned about where I’d spend eternity if I died. She asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my life.” Senesack made that decision and told her mother, “I’m not afraid to see black (referring to closing her eyes in death). I was baptized at nine after my dad by Dale South (a former pastor of Long Green Baptist Church, where her family attended.)”

“I was called to ministry at 16 at Centrifuge Camp at Ridgecrest. I went to college knowing I was going to do ministry. People would ask me, ‘What will you do with a mathematics degree?’” But she knew how God was leading.

Jess’ first mission trip was with South in Paraguay, where Pastor Dale and his wife Celia had served as missionaries. Jess loved the trip and felt foreign missions could be her calling, but God had other plans.

In college, she was involved with and grew through the Navigators Christian Fellowship and actually tried to leave BCM. “But God kept telling me they needed me to stay,” says Jess.

After graduation, she took a one-year internship through the North American Mission Board’s Semester Missions program and served with the Annapolis BCM, primarily at Anne Arundel Community College. She lived with a family who were members of College Parkway Baptist Church in Arnold.

She never left collegiate ministry. “I stayed for four years and then was asked to come to the University of Maryland in 2007 on a two-year assignment, and I’m on year 17,” says Jess.

Looking Ahead Discussing her new position overseeing Maryland/Delaware collegiate ministry, Jess says, “My primary role is just helping us all regroup, especially after the pandemic, so that we are back to having regular staff meetings, doing events together and being back in communication. Also, turning in monthly reports so that we have a good record of all the good work God is doing through collegiate ministry.”

She is working to plant new BCMs at schools with little to no ministry activity. After the start of her term, Senasack sent one of her alumni and former BCM intern, Adriana Alonzo, to Montgomery Community College in Germantown, Maryland. Alonzo has connected with several students, teaches weekly Bible studies, and hosts fun events to build community. Her students also recently joined UMD BCM for a fall retreat at Redland Baptist Church in Derwood, Maryland.

Jess also helped plant another BCM at Salisbury University, where SU alumni Julie Fillebrown is discipling students and teaching weekly Bible studies. While Fillebrown is still working to become recognized as an official club on campus, the student turnout has been promising, with eight students coming to Bible study by week three of the fall semester.

 “There are over 50 (campuses), and when I took this role at first, we were only actively doing things on seven of them,” she says. Now, nine campuses are in the periphery for new BCMs, including Morgan State in Baltimore.

Moving forward, Jess says, “Instead of developing student leaders, I’m just going to develop campus ministers into leaders. It’s just me still being able to do the thing that I love the most and things that I’m the most gifted in, but doing it on a bigger scale,” says

While the ministry side of life has been a “good overwhelming” between a flood of new students coming to UMD BCM and the progress with starting ministries on other campuses, Jess has to be intentional to make time for rest,

She delegated some of her typical responsibilities to staff members Alan Sines and Gracie Brinsfield, who can help leverage the workload. This fall, a few of her senior students are stepping into her shoes to teach through Colossians at BCM’s weekly large group meetings. Aletheia College Park Church’s Lead Pastor, Rob Stephens has also agreed to teach a few weeks during fall semester and mentor students, which is an extension of BCM and Aletheia’s ongoing partnership to reach students in College Park.

She wants to focus more intentionally on her Maryland/Delaware role with the flexibility to have in-person meetings and visit other campuses more often, including Montgomery College and Salisbury. This may require a major change in her role at UMD so she can shift her attention to multiple campuses. However, Jess seems hopeful about passing her torch in the near future and only serving as Maryland/Delaware state director.

In her home life with Andy, Jess says. “We spend a lot of our time hanging out with college students and fixing cars for people, but when we do have free time, we enjoy going out for a good meal, relaxing while watching TV, hanging out with friends, and playing with our two crazy labs.”

To learn how you and your church can partner and be involved with campus ministry, visit bcmd.org.

Prayer List:

1. Jess’s work-life balance
2. The new campus ministers who are working to plant BCMs and figure out how to do college ministry well
3. A new staff member who will eventually take the role of UMD BCM Director

By Madison Wells-James and Sharon Mager Photo courtesy of Jessica Senasack.