Allison Wopata joined staff in March 2023 as Director of Prayer & Groups. She leads the prayer ministry, provides care and mentorship to our female leaders and helps train and equip community group leaders. She and her husband, Mark (a volunteer pastor), moved to Columbia in 2018 as members of Trinity’s original plant team. Allison has also worked at Restore Counseling and Sojourn Church. She is a graduate of Truman State and has an M.A. in counseling.

tell us about your family.

Mark and I met in college and have been married since 2013! We’ve been involved in foster care in the past, and are now expecting our first biological child, a baby boy.

What’s your favorite thing about Columbia?

I dearly love our town! On a nice day in Columbia, I’m either walking the trails or reading on the patio at Uprise.

What are your favorite books, movies, or TV shows?

It’s hard to narrow down, but some books that have been really important for me in the last few years are:

• Spiritual Life/Practices: The Gift of Being Yourself, Abba’s Child

• Fiction: Everything Sad is Untrue, Peace Like a River

• Poets: Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Langston Hughes

As for TV, I recently discovered Survivor (late to the party, I know) but I think it might be the best show ever made.

What’s one crazy thing you want to do before you die?

This is mostly just a list of all the far-flung places I’d love to explore! New Zealand and the Andes Mountains in Chile are a few of those places.

What aspect of Trinity’s vision do you love most?

I’ve been really encouraged by our vision to be a people of renewal-seeking prayer. It is a gift to seek God’s face together, asking him to move in our church, our community, our world, and seeing the Spirit move. I’ve grown in faith and bold asking as a result of praying with God’s people at Trinity!