jennifer mckinnon
Alone at the Podium
The graduation audience sat quietly as Jennifer McKinnon turned away from the podium and placed her notes beside her folding chair. As she began to sit down, the audience stood, a cheer erupting from the filled-to-capacity high-school stadium. Jennifer smiled. And she thanked God for the greatest evangelism opportunity of her young life.
Jennifer had met Jesus when she was five. The leaders in children’s church shared the gospel with Jennifer and her friends. She knew, even then, that she needed Jesus.
She continued to attend church, but it wasn’t until high school that she started serving Him with all her heart. For three years, she led a weekly Bible study before school, interacting with all kinds of students. She ran cross-country, so she befriended the athletes in her school. She was president of the band, so she made friends with other musicians. Her desire was to share the love of Jesus with anyone in her school, regardless of his or her position or interests.
“I saw God do great things in the lives of other students,” she says. “I tried to show people that being a Christian isn’t about being a radical for rules but about being a radical for love.”
Jennifer wasn’t part of the “in” crowd when she entered high school. Still, she spent her time embracing all sorts of students, sharing the love she’d come to know. “I wasn’t a cheerleader or the quarterback’s girlfriend,” she says. “But at the end of my senior year, I was voted Best All Around by my peers. This wasn’t because I was popular or pretty or smart. I pray it was because I took time to love people as Christ loves people.”
By her senior year, Jennifer felt a keen sense of urgency regarding her classmates. She knew her graduation speech was her last chance to share the gospel with them.
Only one person knew the content of her valedictory speech before she gave it. Not even her parents knew what she was going to say. She was supposed to rehearse the speech in front of her English teacher for approval, but she knew if she did that, she wouldn’t be allowed to give it. Earlier in the school year, that teacher had quipped, “Jennifer will never amount to anything because she’s too concerned with family and religion.” In class, this teacher berated her for her beliefs and intentionally asked jarring and antagonizing questions.
It was an unlikely place to find persecution—in Nederland, Texas, a small town near the Louisiana border. But instead of discouraging her, the teacher’s criticism made Jennifer all the more passionate about sharing Christ, particularly when she stood in front of her peers on graduation night.
The salutatorian rehearsed his speech for the English teacher, a speech full of platitudes such as “Let us give thanks to a higher power, whoever that may be—Allah, Buddha, God.” When Jennifer rehearsed, she gave an alternative speech. She worried she’d be in trouble for doing that, so she submitted the entire manuscript to another teacher who did not hold her in disdain. That teacher approved.
Jennifer wanted her speech to be different—something that touched people and clearly communicated the gospel. She felt God had given her this final opportunity to share Him, as if her speech were an exclamation point to a life lived for Christ in high school. She claimed the words of Jeremiah as her own: “Then the LORD stretched out His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me, / ‘Behold, I have put My words in your mouth’” (1:9 NASB).
She spoke about her grandfather, a sharecropper, who had no education beyond elementary school. She described him as a brilliant craftsman. “Education doesn’t make you a success,” she said. “Having a purpose does.”
Standing in front of thousands of friends and family and community members, she took a breath. “If I could leave you with a message, it would be this: thank God for the blessings He’s given you, and live your life for Him.”
She ended her speech by singing “How Could I Ask for More,” a song written by Christian recording artist Cindy Morgan. When she finished the crowd was silent—until the moment she turned to see the town standing, clapping, and hollering its approval.
It just so happened that she had to pick up her diploma from the teacher who was supposed to approve her speech. Jennifer walked into the classroom and waited.
“Interesting speech.” The teacher handed her the diploma.
“Thank you,” Jennifer said. “God gave it to me.” She left the room smiling—knowing that God had given her words to speak, lives to touch.
Jennifer knew God was calling her into a life of full-time ministry even then. “Most people thought this meant I was going to marry a pastor, but I knew in my heart God was calling me to ministry. It wasn’t about the person I would marry. It was about what God wanted to do with my life.”
God continued to put words in Jennifer’s mouth, providing many opportunities to speak in college and beyond. He burned in her a deep desire to teach His truth to teenage girls. “This led me to cofound SAGE Girls Ministries while I was in college,” she recounts. Started with a little bit of change kept in a pickle jar, SAGE Ministries now reaches across the United States with the message that it’s never too early to begin serving Jesus Christ. Its mission statement reads: “To equip a new generation with the resources to develop virtuous character through intimate worship and the sharing of personal testimonies and biblical truths in a relevant, God-honoring manner.”
The heartbeat of SAGE Ministries is to reach, teach, and train young women to impact their communities and the world. “As a high school student,” Jennifer says, “I realized and witnessed firsthand that God could use me if I was willing. I want other girls to realize this same truth—that ministry doesn’t have to begin when you’re thirty or forty. They are not merely the future of the church—they are also the present church. I want to tell young girls that it’s time to stand up and make a difference today for the kingdom of Christ.”
Jennifer continues to be passionate about expanding the kingdom of Christ, traveling to Germany and Russia and sharing Him in places where people’s hearts are calloused to the truth. “In both places I have felt His presence very near as I witnessed in His name,” she says.
But it all started on a lonely platform in front of a silent audience where Jennifer dared to believe God would put His words in her mouth.
Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
(Matthew 5:16)