How We Got Here–and How to Find God in Your Next Move: Luke and Kristina Middendorf

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FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript

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How We Got Here—and How to Find God in Your Next Move

Guests:Luke and Kristina Middendorf

From the series:How We Got Here (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:January 8, 2026

Luke (00:04):

We were walking by the river, and it came out. I said, “I need you to know I love you.” And then I was going—

Kristina:

Crickets, crickets.

Luke:

She took a little bit to say anything after that, but when she did speak, she said, “Can I get back to you on that?”

Dave:

You really said, “Can I get back to you?”

Kristina (00:21):

I don’t know if that was the phrase, but I know that I didn’t say it back.

Luke (00:25):

It was the phrase.

Dave (00:34):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:40):

And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave (00:53):

All right, as we open the new year, we get to know the President—is that what your title is?—of FamilyLife.

That’s the title, but I’m just happy to be here, Dave.

Ann (01:07):

The new president and his wife.

Dave (01:09):

This is sort of like meet the Middendorfs, right?

Luke:

Yeah.

Ann (01:11):

Oh, that’s a good one.

Dave (01:12):

Yeah, it sort of is. I mean, what a better way to start the new year.

Ann (01:15):

Luke and Kristina, welcome to FamilyLife Today.

Kristina:

Thank you.

Luke (01:18):

Thank you. We’re glad to be here.

Dave:

What’s your story? I mean, people that don’t know you, don’t know your background, so start at the beginning, not all the way back.

Ann (01:27):

And let me add this as a listener, as you’re thinking, “Okay, this is their story,” but we all have a story where God’s interacting, weaving in things that sometimes we go in directions that we’re very surprised where God takes us. And so first of all, tell us how long you’ve been married and your kids. How many kids?

Luke (01:47):

—16 years. We have two kids, Molly and Brooks. They’re 12 and 10. And Kristina was born on the west coast. I’m a Midwest boy through and through. And we actually met in college at the University of Minnesota.

Dave (02:00):

Didn’t you guys meet in something like an elevator or something?

Kristina:

We did. We met in an elevator at a Cru winter conference when we were students.

Luke (02:09):

I had been up all night, couldn’t sleep; roommates were snoring in my hotel room, first night of the conference and I just tried so hard to sleep all through the night, couldn’t do it. So I said, “I’m going to try to get out of this room at about 6:00 AM and spend time with Jesus.” So I packed up my bag, walked to the hallway, pushed the elevator button, the doors open, there she was. There was actually a full elevator of her friends. I knew some of them through mutual friends.

Dave:

You only saw Kristina.

Kristina:

I don’t think that’s quite how it was.

Luke:

The lights from the elevator ceiling were shining down just on her and I entered into the elevator and said, “Can I walk with you to the coffee shop this morning?”

Dave:

You said that?

Luke (02:53):

That’s how it started.

Kristina:

That’s not quite how it went. There was only two girls in the elevator. It was me and my friend Colleen and Luke knew her. So he got in the elevator and they’re like, oh hey. And we get to the coffee shop and it’s crowded. So my friend goes through the line, gets a table. I go through the line, get a different table because we’re going to be in the Word. We don’t need to chitchat. Luke goes through the line and there are no tables left.

Luke (03:20):

I had something different on my mind once I saw her than spending time with the Lord. I wanted to spend time with her.

Kristina (03:29):

He comes over to my table and says, “Can I join you?” And I’m thinking that I don’t really want to small talk this morning. Why would he not go sit with my friend who he already knows? Why is he here? And I don’t remember a ton about it. In my mind there were not sparks that flew that morning. I thought he was a nice guy, but I don’t—

Ann (03:49):

What do you remember, Luke?

Kristina (03:50):

I don’t remember much about it.

Luke (03:52):

I was drawn to her early on. It wasn’t that sparks flew where I knew where it would go, but there was something about her presence that drew me in and made me say, “I want to sit by her.” And we open the Word, not together but we each had our Bibles open. I remember drinking our cup of coffee and there was just something calming about that moment sitting together in this really busy coffee shop.

Ann (04:15):

Is that still true about you with Kristina?

Luke (04:21):

Sometimes. Sometimes when we’re at our best, when we’re walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, yes, absolutely. We really enjoy being together.

Ann:

That’s really sweet.

Dave (04:32):

Well, that’s how you met so did it go somewhere.

Kristina (04:35):

It wasn’t long after that I started to see those same things. That was Christmas. That January Luke moved into a house of 14 guys on campus that happened to be my good friends, so I started seeing him a lot. He stuck out to me right away. He was confident in who he was. A lot of guys in college are trying to, they’re the funny guy, the life of the party and Luke was just kind of this quiet, calm, confident presence. He knew himself. He got joked as being kind of the old man in the house. He was younger than all the guys, but he would read the real paper newspaper with his black cup of coffee in his recliner in his room, and they would all funnel through for advice like, “Oh, I’ve got this girl problem,” or “I need advice on this.” And he was kind of the sage of the house and I just thought, “Who is this young guy?” I mean he was one year younger “Who is this new guy who all these friends of mine, these godly men are looking up to?” So I took note of him pretty early on.

Ann (05:38):

How old were you guys when you met?

Luke:

21.

Kristina (05:40):

I was 21. We were both 21.

Luke (05:43):

21, yeah.

Kristina (05:44):

We’re a year apart in school, but he’s older than me, so people say I robbed the cradle. I did not.

Ann (05:51):

Let me just do a segue right here. So you were both super involved with Cru.

Luke (05:56):

Yep.

Ann (05:56):

How did that impact you?

Luke (05:58):

Changed our lives.

Ann (05:59):

Really?

Luke (05:59):

And for eternity as well. We were both helped led to the Lord through the ministry of Cru on our campus through students. Students came to our dorm room.

Dave:

So when you went to school you weren’t believers?

Kristina (06:11):

We both grew up in Christian homes where we went to church faithfully every week. Our parents were very religious, involved in church homes. I would say for me, I had the pieces of the puzzle, but they weren’t connected. And when I filled out a survey in line for dinner one night in the dining hall and this girl came to my room and she talked about leading a bible study and I went that first week and the way—she was fresh off a summer mission project and the way she described Jesus was like He was her friend, her intimate best friend. And I had never in 18 years of being in the church, I had never heard anyone talk about God like that. I just remember feeling like, what have I missed? How have I spent this much time in and around the church, knowing the right answers, knowing the stories, and yet I didn’t know there was a God who wanted to know me like that and who—she just loved to be in the Word and spend time with Him. And so I was like, wherever this girl goes, I’m going. And I was a sponge to just soak up everything that I felt like I had missed in those 18 years.

Luke (07:26):

I think when Cru is at its best, it’s been a ministry of prayer, faithful prayer, sharing the gospel and discipleship, and that’s part of both of our stories. There were people praying for us even before we came to know the Lord or interacted with Cru. Someone stopped by my dorm room one of the first weeks on campus and said, “I lived in this room last year and I’ve been praying for you”—

Ann (07:50):

Come on.

Luke (07:50):

—”before I knew it was you; that you’d be living here.”

(07:55):

Honestly, I said, “Thanks.”

Kristina:

You thought that was kind weird.

Ann:

Did you think it was kind of weird?

Kristina:

He did.

Luke:

Looking back it’s inspiring. At the moment I thought “Who is this guy? Why are you in my room? This is not why I came to college just to interact with Christians. Just like Kristina said, I did grow up in a church background, but I was not looking to walk with the Lord or grow in my faith when I went to college. And yet God pursued me through a lot of people, honestly through Cru that were living in my dorm room that helped me to grow, that prayed for me and just were consistent time after time after time when I would show a little interest but then walk away and they wouldn’t hear from me for a couple of months. And then finally my second year of college is when I surrendered my life to Christ, joined a Bible study, started to grow and it was the next year that her and I met. So we joke a lot. I say, “I’m really glad you didn’t meet freshmen Luke. You met junior year Luke when I had a little bit more growth in the Lord by that point.”

Ann (08:53):

You guys, that’s inspiring. I’m thinking of parents that are listening that are praying for their kids because Dave and I have such similar stories where we were discipled by Cru staff and we really did—

Dave (09:06):

We’re sitting here today because of that.

Ann (09:07):

Because of that, and so be praying, but also what would you encourage as parents? What’s that conversation sound like as your freshman’s going off to school or maybe you have kids in college that have never done anything like that?

Dave (09:22):

I mean you’ll be there in a few years.

Ann (09:24):

Yeah. Do you even talk about that as a parent? Because it’s kind of tricky.

Luke (09:28)

As we’ve served on staff with Cru and then Athletes in Action and now FamilyLife, maybe similar to you guys, we’ve gotten emails from parents over the years saying, “My daughter or son is about to come to your campus and I want to introduce you to them and then you can meet them,” and dah, dah, dah. And they are having a high control experience over their kids’ spiritual growth, and so I think the way we’ve approached it with parents is pray fervently for your son or daughter. You’re welcome to reach out to me. We can pray together and I can be a resource for you, but you need to let them walk into this and trust the heavenly Father to guide them into the next steps.

Ann (10:06):

It’s good.

Luke (10:07):

It is so crucial for students to meet someone who truly follows Jesus in their first few weeks on campus. And that’s again, the power of a ministry like Cru can do where there’s not just staff but there’s students faithfully walking with Christ, passionate about the Lord, that can meet them and say, “Hey, come be a part of this with me.”

Ann (10:28):

The other thought I had, maybe you thought this too, Dave, was as we go out and are interacting people in our world, in our culture, in our neighborhoods, I love Jesus so much, but I don’t know if you guys feel as sometimes, I can put a little—I hide my light. I don’t want to be the weirdo. But even as you’re saying that, when Jesus is just kind of pouring out of you and you’re so excited, that’s not repulsive, that creates curiosity. Maybe at first like, “Oh, this person’s kind of weird,” but there’s something compelling.

Kristina (10:59):

I think that’s the ticket of those college years. There’s like you go into college and you’re kind of looking to not necessarily reinvent yourself, but what is out there? They’re very open more than they’ve ever been to new ideas and new people and new relationships. And so to have Christ come across their path in a attractive way, yeah, just a way that feels like this resonates with who I am at my stage of life is such a key element because they’ve left that more high control environment of home where mom and dad dictate where I go and when I go and how long and now they get to make their own choices. And so to show them a relationship with God isn’t staunch and stingy, but it’s beautiful and He loves you and He’s in pursuit of you. That’s where the fruit is.

Ann (11:54):

Yeah, that’s good.

Luke:

I think for parents too, if you see your son or daughter growing in their faith in college, if they’re already a Christian or they come to know Christ, take a posture of learning from them. When they come back for winter break, spring break, summertime, ask them, what are you learning from the word of God? What are books that you’re reading? Could I read that too and do it together because we’re connected through the Holy Spirit and we can learn whether it’s from a 20-year-old, 40-year-old, 60-year-old. We’ve seen the power of students taking the message back to their homes of origins and actually impacting their parents, grandparents, siblings.

Ann (12:33):

That’s exciting.

Dave (12:33):

That sort of happened to us. We were impacted by Cru and really Athletes in Action in college. She was at Kentucky. I was at the amazing place called Ball State.

Luke:

The Ball State.

Dave:

The Ball State. When I first came home after really coming to Christ, my mom thought, single mom, but she thought I was in a cult. She had never heard of Cru.

Ann:

Because you were so excited.

Dave:

Back then they were called Campus Crusade. But I was sharing the gospel and telling people they’re going to hell. I mean, I was just an evangelist, and I had to learn how to have some tact. But then as she did what you just said, she started asking questions. She realized, “Oh my goodness, this is a really powerful ministry.” Then Ann and I started dating and we got on our knees as we got engaged in your parents’ living room on that little couch, and we prayed that God would use us to lead all of her family to Christ. They are good people. Her dad was my coach in high school and God did that. He led them all to Christ, over time.

Ann (13:30):

Over time, His grace, because I really did come in like, “Guys, I had no idea how to get to heaven. We are all going to hell without Jesus,” and they thought I was the weirdest wacko. So yeah, we learned. It’s a good thing we were discipled.

Luke (13:45):

And we can take a posture as we’re very excited about our faith and we’re trying to find creative ways to share that with people. Sometimes we blow it and we actually do hurt people as we’re trying to share the good news, by the way we share it or maybe they’re not quite ready yet, and that’s a way we can demonstrate the gospel to our family members, our neighbors, is we can follow up and say, “Hey, how did you experience me a couple of weeks ago—”

Ann:

Sorry about that.

Luke:

—”in that conversation. Can you give me some feedback?” Even as a Christian to maybe a non-Christian person that and say, “I’m really sorry.” How much better can we display the gospel through a moment like that than if we’re just take it, take it, take it, run with it. That’s the gospel at work.

Dave:

You don’t bludgeon anybody into the kingdom, right?

Ann (14:32):

But Dave, I can also remember Cody going to the passion conference and coming home—

Dave (14:36):

Yeah, our youngest.

Ann (14:36):

—after his freshman year, but you were like, I want to hear all the music. I want to hear everything. And you’d sit in the car with him and I remember you saying, “I just wept as I listened to this worship music,” and I know for Cody—

Dave (14:49):

Yeah, it was a song that he played—I’ll never forget—that we all know. Our God is greater—want me to get the guitar? No, but I remember that Chris Tomlin song and I’m like, “What is this? This is so good and powerful,” and it changed my life. Okay, back to you.

Ann (15:06):

Wait, I’m going to give one last tip as a parent, say less, pray more as your kids get older.

Dave (15:13):

That was good.

Ann (15:14):

Why don’t we, because we don’t—sometimes I think, “Well, Lord, you’re taking too long and I’m going to help you.”

Luke (15:19):

It’s that control, that aspect I think I can communicate better than what God could do in their life as I pray for them.

Ann (15:26):

Exactly.

Dave (15:32):

Okay, I bet you’re thinking, I would love in 2026 to help other marriages.

Ann (15:37):

Do you think people are thinking that?

Dave (15:38):

Yeah, I think they’re starting to hear I want to help our marriage, but I’m telling you—

Ann (15:41):

That’s what I was thinking. I want to help our marriage.

Dave (15:44):

Well, what people understand is the best way to help your marriage is to pour into others. Jesus said if you want to find your life, lose it in serving Him and serving others. And we’ve discovered that as we brought people into our home and we pour into their marriages, our marriage gets better and so does theirs.

Ann (15:58):

And I think the myth is you have to have a perfect marriage to be able to lead a small group. And that is not true at all. You can just say, “You guys, we are struggling. Maybe you are too, but we want to have a better marriage and maybe you do too.”

Dave (16:11):

And we have tools for you to help you help other couples. There are small group workbooks or small group kits, and they’re all on sale right now, 25% off through the end of the month, and you can pick anyone you want. It will help you and help the other couples. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com, get the one you want and go change some lives.

Ann (16:31):

Find your study at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Dave (16:38):

You fell in love somewhere.

Luke:

The first time I told Kristina—we were actually on a missions trip overseas.

Kristina:

Wait, wait, you don’t need to share this.

Luke:

We can share this.

Dave:

No, we want to hear it. We want to hear it.

Kristina:

Okay, fine.

Luke:

I had been on this long summer missions trip overseas. She actually came to visit towards the end of that because she was about to join staff with Cru and I was prepping for weeks like, “I love this girl. Is this the right time to tell her? Do I wait?” And I was just convinced the day she comes I have to tell her. I have to get this out. So she showed up. We had an hour.

Kristina (17:13):

I’m like jet lagged. I had flown from—

Luke (17:16):

She was looking great.

Kristina (17:16):

—Wisconsin to Paris by myself, got on a train to this small town in the south of France by myself. I don’t know how God got me there. It was amazing. And I show up so tired and he’s like, let’s go on a walk. I’m like, “I don’t want to go. I want to go to bed.”

Dave:

And he said you look great.

Luke (17:38):

I was focused and ready to go. We were walking by the river, and it came out. I said, “I need you to know I love you.” And then I was going—

Kristina:

Crickets, crickets.

Luke:

She took a little bit to say anything after that, but when she did speak, she said, “Can I get back to you on that?”

Dave:

You really said, “Can I get back to you?”

Kristina (17:58):

I don’t know if that was the phrase, but I know that I didn’t say it back.

Luke (18:02):

It was the phrase.

Kristina (18:03):

I didn’t say it back. Not because—I mean I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t let myself go there yet in my heart. I think I—I had never said those words out loud before and I didn’t want to be flippant with them. And so I had thought, I don’t know if that’ll come. I mean hopefully an engagement that I hadn’t let my heart get there of do I really love him? And so when he said it, I just thought the movie moment would tell me to say, I love you too. And we embrace—

Ann:

You’re in France.

Kristina:

—and it’s beautiful.

Luke (18:38):

It was the tension part of the movie where she didn’t say it back, what’s going to happen next?

Kristina (18:40):

I just had to be true to myself from that moment. And I told him, “I want to be honest, and I want it to count and matter when I say it back to you, so I need to get back to you. I need some time.”

Luke (18:51):

That’s what I love about her. There’s intentionality and a purposeful aspect to the words that she says and where she goes.

Kristina (19:00):

A few days later, when I did say it back to him, we were underneath the Eiffel Tower, and it was beautiful.

Dave:

No you weren’t.

Kristina (19:06):

I redeemed myself.

Ann:

That’s pretty beautiful though. And it does say a lot about your character, Kristina, that you are sincere, that your words matter, that you’re thoughtful in what you say and sincere in what you say.

Dave (19:18):

Is that still true?

Luke:

Well, yeah. There’s this ongoing pattern in our marriage where I tend to get a little bit or a lot of ahead of her in. I see where we need to go. I’ve prayed about it. I’ve talked with people, let’s go. And she definitely gets there, but it might take a little bit longer. But then when we’re on the same page after that moment, it was a quick next few months of dating engagement. We’re married, we’re both on staff with Cru. Here we are sitting with you today.

Ann (19:48):

Yeah.

Dave (19:48):

Boom.

Luke:

Yeah.

Ann (19:49):

Oh, we’ll have to get back to that because I bet that could create some conflict too, like Come on.

Kristina:

Oh, you know it.

Ann:

Get on the same page with me.

Luke:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ann:

Whereas you can see it as this great gift.

Dave (20:01):

Well, I’m guessing it had some conflict when FamilyLife calls. We’ll get there in a second, but get us from there to where’d you go to ministry? What’d that look like? Have kids?

Kristina (20:11):

I actually felt the call to staff really early on just it, like we said, it transformed our life, this ministry. And so I thought if we could give a few years of our life back to Cru and investing in how we were invested in let’s do it.

Luke (20:26):

Well, that was even before we were dating. When I first started dating her, I found out on the first or second date she had applied to go overseas as a missionary. And I didn’t, I wasn’t wanting that, looking for that, and so I was wrestling with should I continue to pursue her as she is planning to move overseas. We could spend the first year of dating long distance and again, through prayer, talking with some godly friends in my life, it was clear, keep going. She ended up not being able to go due to some medical things, and so God provided that next year for us to be in person.

Ann (21:03):

Kristina, let me ask you, did you ever feel like being a missionary? Because that feels like a calling to people and I’ve talked to some wives that they didn’t do that mission trip, that mission journey, and then they felt like, did I settle? Did I settle for something other than that calling? And they had this dream and it’s never taken place.

Kristina (21:27):

God has been really kind to—I feel like early on He gave me a heart for the world and I’ve just waited for this green light to go and to live overseas, and I’ve never had that green light to go in a long-term capacity, but he’s been really kind to scratch that itch in other ways, whether through international student ministry, short-term trips that we’ve taken in the summer. We got to spend two months as a family overseas in Italy, launching an Athletes in Action movement. Even the school our kids attended in Minneapolis was a Mandarin immersion school. And so it immersed us in this world of Chinese speaking families and teachers. And so God has brought the world to me in some unique—

Ann:

That’s so sweet.

Kristina:

—ways in kind of giving up of that dream, at least for now.

Ann:

For now.

Dave (22:22):

So when you got married, you came right on staff?

Kristina (22:25):

We did. We were on staff with the Campus ministry, a small school in Minnesota for three years, and then God called us to Athletes in Action, which is kind of unique in that neither of us were college athletes. That isn’t a prerequisite, but it’s pretty common. You said you were involved in AIA Dave.

Dave:

Right.

Ann (22:45):

Yeah, we both were.

Kristina (22:46):

So we did Athletes in Action for the last 12 years at the University of Minnesota, which is our alma mater, and we were living the dream. We thought we would live in Minneapolis our whole life. We’ve never—I mean, it is the city of our heart. We just love it. Loved that campus. We had family in town, friends in town. Our kids were thriving. We loved everything about it.

Luke (23:11):

It’s where we went to school. It’s where I proposed to her. It’s where our kids were born. It’s where we saw many people come to Christ and students and neighbors in our home, and then we got a call.

Ann (23:25):

And then the phone rings.

Kristina (23:27):

And then the phone rings.

Dave (23:28):

So there was a thought that you could be there a long time.

Luke (23:31):

We had no plans.

Kristina (23:32):

Yeah, forever. I’d be so happy.

Dave (23:34):

Really?

Luke:

Yep.

Ann (23:39):

I really love that we had Luke and Kristina Middendorf, the new President of FamilyLife with us today. It’s inspiring to me just to listen to their journey.

Dave (23:49):

When people step out of the boat and start walking on the water, I think it’s something you want to do. It’s like, I want to do that too.

Ann (23:59):

I do, but I don’t because I want to be comfortable. I don’t want to have pain or stress. And yet, man, it makes us reliant on Jesus.

Dave (24:09):

And we get to hear more from them tomorrow about the rest of their journey.

Ann (24:14):

Before we’re done today, I just want to remind our listeners, we know life is full of challenges and families today need biblical truth more than ever. Isn’t that true?

Dave (24:24):

That is true.

Ann (24:25):

And as a FamilyLife Partner, your monthly gift helps bring the truth into homes every single day through podcasts, events, and resources.

Dave (24:35):

So let’s make a lasting difference together. Become a partner today. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click the donate button.

Ann (24:46):

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