From Cancer to Cross Country, Corban’s Stephen Crover Finds Purpose in the Hard Miles
Stephen Crover believes suffering is something you can practice.
As a member of Corban’s cross-country team, suffering is an almost daily part of his sport—the miles, difficult workouts, and discipline required to keep going when his body wants to stop. But for Crover, a junior ministry major, those experiences have taken on significance far beyond running.
“We suffer a lot. It’s kind of the nature of our sport,” he says. “Every day I show up to practice and I suffer. But then I get to decide where I go with that suffering. I learn from it.”
It is a lesson Crover began learning long before coming to Corban.
In fourth grade, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and spent the next six and a half months living in Randall Children’s Hospital in Portland. Looking back, Crover sees that season as formative to his understanding of both suffering and the character of God.
“I think a big part of my whole life has been understanding that suffering produces endurance that leads to character that leads to hope, like Romans five tells us,” he says. “That was a terrible chapter of suffering, but God was right there molding me and shaping me through it.”
Years later, that experience would help shape Crover’s response to another unexpected medical crisis when, following a run, he suddenly lost his peripheral vision and required emergency surgery to repair both retinas. Rather than finding himself in unfamiliar territory, Crover recognized lessons God had already taught him.
“That’s been a major theme for my life, since cancer,” Crover says, “understanding that God is constantly working in the midst of broken situations and redeeming them for His good. I believe joy is something we get to approach suffering with because of our knowledge of what it produces.”
Corban’s cross-country team has been a surprising avenue for Crover to continue practicing resilience and joy. On every early-morning run, in every team Bible study, and at every rain-soaked meet, Crover continues to grow.
“As we endure those hard workouts, we do it with joy and we do it as a team, in a community, as the body of Christ,” he says. “It’s a small way to practice so that when real life trials hit, you know where to go, how to approach it, and that it’s producing something in you.”
While running has strengthened Crover’s spiritual life, his classes have equipped him for the calling that first began taking shape during high school: ministry.
Bible Study Methods gave him new tools for studying Scripture. Classes with Dr. Gary Derickson pushed him deeper into biblical interpretation. Recently, Crover had the opportunity to put that training into practice while serving with A Christian Ministry in the National Parks (ACMNP) at Yellowstone, where conversations with coworkers regularly turned toward difficult questions about Christianity.
“The whole time, I felt like Corban had truly prepared me,” he says. “My experience at ACMNP this summer really reaffirmed that I’m in the right place, because it was showing fruit in ministry already.”
Now, back on Corban’s campus, Crover continues preparing for a life in ministry, being shaped and formed by a community who rallies to both push and support him. “I’ve been a purpose driven human my whole life,” he says, “and pursuing ministry is the most purposeful way I think I can live out my life.”
And whether that formation happens in a classroom, over difficult miles, or through circumstances he never would have chosen, Crover has learned where to place his hope.
“Finding true hope, knowing you’re not the one in control and that you have a good Father who is working all things ultimately to reconcile creation back to Him—that’s the reward,” he says. “What a beautiful thing that we get to be a part of.”
