The Path to Resonate & Beyond
Keith & Paige Wieser's Story
In a college football stadium in Pullman, Washington, surrounded by 20,000 fans, Keith Wieser heard God speak. It was not about football. It was about the thousands of students around him who had never heard the Gospel. “Look at all this potential,” Keith sensed the Lord saying. “I want to do something here, but you have to think bigger.”
That moment would shape the next two decades of Keith’s life and ministry, and ultimately plant churches on college campuses across the American West. Now, as Keith and his wife Paige prepare to move to Southern California to take on a new role as Send Missionary for Los Angeles, the Northwest Baptist family has an opportunity to celebrate what God has done through a movement that started with five people in the upstairs of a house in Pullman when a Texas boy, who found himself in Washington, said YES Lord.
Keith Wieser grew up in small-town Texas. After college at Stephen F. Austin State University, he married Paige, and the two headed to Vancouver, Washington, for theological training at Gateway Seminary. During that season, Paige sensed three things about where God was calling them: it would be out of the Bible Belt, it would involve young people, and something about it would be undeniably “different.”
In 2004, Keith and Paige moved to Pullman where they felt called to lead a small campus ministry that had been planted by a woman from Oklahoma nearly three decades earlier. The ministry’s Bible studies drew a handful of students. As with busy college students, the priority to show up often fell second to the demands of school or needs of friends. But through it all, Keith kept hearing the same question from the Lord: “Do you trust me?”
By December 2005, Paige’s conviction had sharpened into urgency.
“What do we have to lose if this is what we know the Lord wants us to do?”
she told Keith. The reality of eternity in heaven, or hell, the access to the peace and love of Jesus here on earth, and the brokenness of the college campus in front of them had collided into a definitive call to action.
They began gathering a core team of students, community members, and church friends to meet biweekly to dream, plan, and pray.
On August 19, 2007, the dreams, plans, and prayers made their way out of the sacred places and off of paper when Resonate Church launched at Washington State University.
The team handed out 5,000 flyers. They invited hundreds of people through social media. They rented space and set up chairs. They had become accustomed to people nicely saying yes or maybe to attending but then not being able to, so they had no idea who would actually show up.
Keith was pacing the back room, going over his notes, when Paige interrupted him. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, “but people are still arriving.” One hundred and ninety people came that first Sunday. (Dare we put into print that 190 broke the room’s fire code?) It broke every expectation they had carried.
Keith heard the Lord’s whisper again, this time gently: “See, if you just trust me.”
Keith and Paige would invite people to stick around if what they were hearing “resonated” with them. From that language, the name came naturally and Resonate collegiate church planting movement was born.
What followed was a story of relentless multiplication. Within five years, Resonate had grown to 600 people, 20 staff members, and three sites. But growth was never the goal, the goal was to send. When Keith heard God say, “Think bigger,” in that football stadium, the vision clarified: God did not see a stadium full of saved people. He saw a stadium full of sent people.
“Our vision was a stadium full of saved people, but God saw a stadium full of sent people. We just wanted to start a college church, but God desired to start a movement of collegiate churches.” -Keith Wieser, speaking at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting (Biblical Recorder, June 2017).
Resonate began sending its best leaders out. Jacob and Jessica Dahl went to Central Washington University. Teams followed to the University of Idaho, Eastern Washington University, and beyond.
Over the years, the Resonate family grew to churches spanning Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and California.
Thousands of students encountered Jesus Christ. Over 350 committed to church planting. More than 1,200 went on mission trips. A long-term team was also sent to East Asia.
Chris Routen, the current pastor of Resonate Pullman, was first met as a freshman in a fraternity house at WSU. Today he describes church planting and pastoral leadership as the “healthiest things” he and his wife Tannis have ever done for their marriage, and the “fortifier” of their family as they live missionally.
Throughout this journey, the Northwest Baptist Convention (NWBC) has been a key partner. Keith has served as a Church Planting Catalyst for the NWBC, helping discover, develop, and deploy church planters across the region. He later took on the role of Director for Send Network Northwest with the North American Mission Board, catalyzing church planting efforts across Oregon and Washington.
The collaboration between Resonate, the NWBC, and NAMB represents the kind of partnership that plants and nurtures the Gospel even on difficult soil. The Pacific Northwest remains one of the most unchurched regions in the United States. Collegiate church planting has proven to be one of the most effective ways God is using to reach it.
While Keith has been used by God in the Pacific Northwest, he now is being called to a new chapter and will be transitioning to serve as the Send Missionary for Los Angeles, bringing the same collegiate church planting vision to Southern California. He and Paige will continue their work with the Resonate Collective and hope to plant another campus in California. The Resonate network will continue to grow under the leadership team Keith has developed, with Craig Lovelace leading as Lead Integrator and campus pastors shepherding their communities.
The move to LA is thinking bigger, it is continuing the vision. From the beginning, Resonate’s heartbeat has been that it is healthiest when giving itself away. As Keith told the Resonate family during a 2023 conference:
“Fifteen years ago, five of us were in the upstairs of my house, thinking about what it would look like to plant a church that aimed to reach, train, and send the most strategic group of people in the entire world: college students. Most of you in this room are not a product of the church we planted in Pullman. You are a part of something where people have left, gone out, planted churches, and that is something significant.”
In that same 2023 message to the Resonate family at the 2023 conference, Keith shared the motto of the Moravians, the 18th-century missionary movement that trusted, waited, and prayed nonstop for 100 years. They sent workers across the globe: “The Lamb has conquered. Let us follow him.” The Moravians inspired John Wesley, John Wesley launched a campus movement at Oxford and continued on to help shape the American church. And it was on a college campus in Pullman, Washington, that God raised up another generation willing to say yes. Jesus Christ is Savior and that good news continues through the generations! During the conference, Keith put it simply: “The end is secure. The Lamb has conquered. Let us follow him.”
