The heavy door of the boardroom clicked shut, leaving Stan Oakes alone with his thoughts.

He had just made a major decision that day in 1996. As a staff member with Campus Crusade for Christ, he agreed to start a university for training Christian leaders. Called The King's College, the school intended to produce top-notch national leaders in the mode of Harvard or Yale.

The venture would take a lot of faith—and guts.

The endeavor was bold, perhaps a pipe dream, considering the amount of red tape and funding necessary to launch it. It all rested on Stan's shoulders. Since there were no students or faculty yet, Stan jokingly titled himself "the president of nothing."

Besides college start ups, Stan has sought many other entrepreneurial ventures over the course of his lifetime. He has made a habit of taking risks, in hopes of reaping great rewards.

In his early 20s, Stan began selling sports cars. He bought a 1967 Mustang convertible with a bad engine and torn top for $2,500—a large sum in those days. Since cars typically depreciate, the buy was risky, yet he fixed it up and sold it a few years later for $8,500—more than tripling his investment.

It was a significant endeavor for Stan. He loved being an entrepreneur, and dreamed of what lay ahead. Yet school didn't excite him—he studied classical Greek and was a self-proclaimed "underachiever."

Then something altered his life's course: He began to get involved with Campus Crusade at the University of Minnesota.

Growing up, Stan was exposed to Christianity but didn't feel connected with God. One thing that helped deepen his understanding of such a relationship was the Four Spiritual Laws, a Campus Crusade booklet. This helped propel and change Stan's thinking.

Stan began to vigorously read books like Jesus and the Intellectual. He also studied Scripture—especially the words of Jesus. Wanting to pass on such ideas to others, he became a staff member with Campus Crusade in 1972. He still had the entrepreneurial bug, but wanted to use his skills to bring people to faith in Christ.

Just before joining Campus Crusade, he met Ginger, a woman from a small town in Minnesota with an artistic aptitude, and later they married.

Together, they led Campus Crusade at Texas Christian University and later Texas Tech. They loved being around students and the fresh exchange of ideas on the college campus. But soon Stan wished for more. "I didn't want to just manage something, I wanted to start something," says Stan. "I wanted to reach people with the gospel through risk, through entrepreneurship."

Stan had been researching several universities and discovered that in the United States there were more than 600,000 professors who taught an average of 200 students per year. Their influence was colossal, but most professors were pushing Jesus out of higher learning. Stan realized that a core of committed Christian professors could help change this tide by tactfully incorporating their faith into their teaching, and winning students and other professors to Christ.

	Stan Oakes leads a busy life (pictured here meeting with faculty and student leaders).

So in 1980, Stan and Ginger, who were both in their early 30s, began to network with professors at Auburn University. They held an event where about 20 professors showed up, and the new ministry became a reality.

The effort later became known as Christian Leadership Ministries, and was recently renamed Faculty Commons. Today, there are more than 10,000 professors involved on over 1,000 campuses.

During the years of CLM, Stan went through his own intellectual transformation when he earned a graduate degree in political theory from the University of Dallas. Stan developed into an avid reader and thinker, and is now fond of quoting philosophers.

In the early 90s, Stan helped pioneer Every Student's Choice, an evangelistic media campaign for the college campus which uses newspaper ads, articles and posters to bolster discussion among students. Including topics like sex or the Resurrection, the campaign helped pave the way for Everystudent.com, which each month sees as many as 3,500 people indicate decisions to follow Christ.

Yet amid success stories, as with most entrepreneurs, Stan has had his share of failures—times when it all seemed to come crashing down.

As Stan sat alone in the boardroom that day in 1996, he wondered if The King's College would actually succeed. He clearly remembered the rocky years of Christian Leadership Ministries and hoped King's would not repeat those mistakes.

At one point, Stan had expanded the CLM ministry too quickly. He moved to Boston to pioneer a ministry at Harvard, while the headquarters remained in Texas. Leading the effort remotely proved difficult, and CLM grew financially strapped. They had to pull off of a few campuses. "It was problem after problem," says Stan. The stress weighed heavily on him, and he worried about the future of the ministry and its 100 staff members.

Years later, the disappointment of that time still stings: "God is so much closer to you in failure," says Stan.

Even during the first year of The King's College, things looked bleak. Only 17 students enrolled, and all dropped out or failed out of the college before the year ended.

Yet Stan and his team kept at it.

He fought to house the college in the Empire State Building, located in the heart of Manhattan, which boosted the school's credibility. Some big names have also come to King's, including Marvin Olasky, a syndicated columnist and journalism professor, who serves as provost.

Far from the pipe dream that it could have been, today King's is difficult for students to gain admittance to and academically challenging. "I want Christians to help lead the world, not just the church," Stan says. The 260 students study business or pursue a degree in politics, philosophy and economics.

Yet sometimes completely unexpected setbacks arise, like in May of 2007, when Stan discovered he had a brain tumor. After several rounds of chemotherapy, Stan steadily recovered, though it has taken well over a year. "Having cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to me," he now says, adding that it helped him focus on what is important, and he saw God raise up many other leaders to help King's in his absence.

Now, with his health struggle behind him, Stan continues to lead King's.

Stan Oakes chats with students during the lunch hour.

In the middle of a spring semester, a crowd of more than 100 students gathered in a lounge for Stan's talk, titled "Statesmanship, Not Just Leadership." Tall in stature and wearing scholarly spectacles, Stan is no longer an "underachiever," but a clear academic. Quoting Aristotle and Machiavelli, he delivered the material with wit and ease.

After the speech, many of the students lingered to ask questions.

Stan, who behaves more like a mentor than a college president, sometimes eats lunch in the student cafeteria. On a Tuesday afternoon, he sits in the checker-floored foyer, munching on a salad. A print of the famous photo "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" hangs on the wall. Stan chats briefly with Kurtis Cochran, a sharply dressed student.

Stan helped Kurtis get an internship with the CEO of Alltel, a top wireless company. Stan even took him shopping at Brooks Brothers to make sure his wardrobe was up to snuff. Kurtis, who now works full time for Alltel, is the type of leader Stan wants King's to produce.

King's is continuing to gain recognition and was recently listed among the 50 colleges in a prestigious publication, "A Guide to All-American Colleges." The average SAT score of students is 1880, based on the new 2400 scale.

"King's College is a start-up college, but it's quite successful," says Peter Kreeft, a professor of philosophy from Boston College who also teaches at King's. "The program they have is very well thought out."

In the future, King's plans to increase enrollment to 1,000 students, but it will take a lot of work. As it is, Stan and Ginger already put in countless hours—the necessary labor of entrepreneurship.

Ginger serves as advisor for one of the student houses, and helps with fundraising and decorating the King's premises. "For the first time," she says, "I really feel like I am operating out of all of my strengths."

As hard as Stan and Ginger have worked over the years, the irony is they don't have the monetary benefits that often come with entrepreneurship; they earn the standard missionary salary. But they believe the eternal rewards—seeing people become followers of Christ—far outweigh the temporal.

During the same Tuesday lunch hour, Stan approaches a table of students. A student named Emma Schalberg eagerly asks Stan for career advice—especially about business start ups.

"Sometimes you try out an idea and then make a fool out of yourself," Stan tells her. "Then you try another one. When it comes down to it, perseverance is the most important thing."

It's advice that Stan has lived by through his multiple ventures, and it's advice he continues to live by daily—especially as he continues to put himself on the line to make King's successful. The rewards are worth the risk.

You can contact the writer at chris.lawrence@ccci.org.

ACTION POINT - The Next Step >A theme of Stan's life is risk taking, especially to bolster the work of Jesus. What is something that God may be leading you to do to further His kingdom that is outside of your comfort zone?