Holly Melton

Author, Speaker, Ministry Coach

My first summer mission trip was in 1998 to Ocean City, New Jersey when I was a junior in college. It was that summer I shared the gospel with a girl, Christy, who thought she was a Vampire. She had tried to kill herself but hadn’t died and thought she was immortal. She sacrificed animals and drank their blood. Somehow the Lord was able to give me the words to show her that, in a sense, we are immortal, sacrifice is necessary, and blood is essential…but the only real answer is found in Jesus.

Christy came to Christ that night, grasping her need for a final sacrifice found only in the blood and death of Jesus. The next day she told me that she wanted to learn how to share her faith as I had with her! So, we went out and met a boy on the boardwalk, and she shared the gospel with him, and he came to Christ! I was in such awe of how the Lord had transformed her life that I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my future but sharing Jesus with others.

After graduating from the University of Arizona in 1999 with a Marriage and Family Therapy degree, I joined staff with Cru. I was placed at UC Berkeley and ministered on the campus there for 5 years. I began to take teams of students overseas to London and then to East Asia. That is when God gave me the heart to go overseas for a longer period. I left Berkeley in 2004 and headed to East Asia for two years. Within those two years, my team saw over 1,400 college students surrender their lives to Christ, and ministries were started on 12 campuses in our city. All discipleship and training were underground, and we saw the Lord work in miraculous ways. Unfortunately, the language didn’t come easy for me, so after I raised up two nationals to take my place, I came back to the states to help give leadership to our region.

I joined the Regional Leadership Team of the Pacific Southwest in 2006 as the Campus Field National Director. In that role, I trained and coached our campus team leaders in Arizona, California, and Hawaii. I traveled to as many campuses as possible each year to encourage and train our staff and students on how to reach every student with the gospel. In August of 2014, I stepped down from this role to better care for our young children and coached teams long distance to send teams overseas. 

One of my passions has been training teams before they go overseas and coaching them while they serve there. I have coached teams that have been sent to East Asia, Europe, North Africa as well as the Middle East. I specifically train in cross-cultural ministry, how to contextualize the gospel, and how to have healthy teams while living in close quarters overseas. This has enabled me to visit 30 countries as I help teams be more effective on the mission field.

 My passion is to speak and teach others how to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit so that they can appropriately share Jesus with others. I’m the author of 6 books. My first book now has a second edition, “Follow My Lead: Experience the Extraordinary Life of Sharing Jesus with Others,” which can be used in small groups to help learn how to bring Jesus into the conversation with others. I also have a Bible study and separate devotional on Discerning the will of God in your life, a devotional on the heart called “Inside Out,” a resource for parents to pray with their kids called “Praying with Your Kids Before School,” and a discipleship curriculum with a video training series to help churches and individuals know how to disciple others called “Disciple to Disciplemaker.” I write devotionals for the Bible App and reach more people there than I ever could face-to-face. Through my devotionals, individuals write me, and I get to have personal gospel conversations. 

 I have a Masters in Theology and Biblical Studies from Phoenix Seminary. I am currently serving on the evangelistic initiatives team for the campus ministry. I write discussion guides to go along with each episode of the show, The Chosen, to help non-believers consider Jesus. I am also an evangelistic speaker with Cru, who travels the country to encourage students to consider Jesus on their Soul Quest.

My heart is to resource and train the body of Christ to be effective ministers of the gospel and to become multiplying disciple-makers. If you would like me to speak at a women’s conference or retreat, a college group, or a church training on evangelism, please email me at: Holly.Melton@cru.org. You can hear some of what I teach on my podcasts, which can be found in the link above.