Our Story
John Scroggins began developing the concept for the organization that would become The Baton Exchange in 2006. His vision was to develop young adults for positively impacting culture for Christ through their work. Since then, the program has evolved into a holistic approach for leadership development, with young adults from almost 20 countries and regions represented and over 30,000 people touched through various models and methods.
Soli Deo Gloria!
2006-2007
God started working on the individual pieces in our founder’s heart a whole 5 years prior to the actual idea. In 2001, after graduating with his MBA, John Scroggins had the opportunities to travel abroad and learn about Business As Missions and Marketplace Ministry from some of the contemporary pioneers on the topics. In 2005, John moved to Columbus, Ohio, to get nearer to a house church plant he was involved in. Living in a Discipleship House contributed to the community-based experience concept to the developing model of the organization. There, he recognized the importance of learning from someone who “has already been there,” forming the now-foundational idea of a mentorship component. In 2006, John started developing the name and structure of the organization, “to train young professionals to transform their workplace and marketplace for the cause of Christ, their employers, employees, communities, and nations.” The organization’s first name was the WAM House (Workplace As Ministry.)
In the next of couple years, John was privileged to make some incredible connections throughout the nation. By chance, he met a man involved with campus ministry at The Ohio State University named Howard VanCleave. Howard soon became a Board of Advisors member, connecting John to a number of 
Christian professors at the university. Later, at the InterVarsity Urbana conference, John was invited to meet with some other men who had a similar vision for an organization in San Francisco. Upon hearing the vision of the WAM House, one of the men, a commercial real estate investor, told John, “I want to buy your first house. You select it and I will finance the purchase with the understanding that you will buy it from me, for what I paid for it, within a couple of years.” John and then fiancé, Angie, did just that, and the man purchased the house. After a couple of years John and Angie purchased the house for what the man paid for it. His financing of the purchase enabled John and Angie to do something they couldn’t have at the time. To this day the buyer has not seen the house. Many divine appointments occurred at the conference, and John came away feeling affirmed in the direction he felt God leading him.
In 2007, John married Angie and they moved into the WAM House. Over time, Angie continued to influence the educational component of the program. Through the year, John continued to develop the training concept for the program, with much input from his mentors.
2008-2009
In 2008, the WAM House became a registered 501(c)(3) Non-Profit. A WAM House booth made its debut at the Annual Conservative Mennonite Conference in Berlin, Ohio, and the original website was up and running. John and key influencers continued to read, research, and pray for our first trainees. John designed the logo for WAM House, with the globe and an open door being symbolic of the vision-impact they desired.
In 2009, a local ministry called International Friendships, Inc. (IFI) (www.ifiusa.org) sent three of their ministry interns through the WAM House training program, thus initiating our inaugural year. Our first program residency trainees were from China, India, and Uzbekistan.
Since our first year, God has connecting us with local, national and internationally-known authors, leaders and pioneers in the marketplace ministry and business as missions movement. We have been blessed to have personal interactions with folks like Stanley Tam, John Beckett, Kent Humphreys, Ken Eldred and Os Hillman. Our guests at the WAM House have included former Fortune 100 business leaders and state government leaders.
Prior to starting up in the summer of 2009, John had been employed in various Business Development and Marketing Manager roles. In September, his role as Executive Director for WAM House became his full-time occupation.
2010-2011
Two of our first three participants graduated from the program in June. One of those returned home, working for a Kingdom Business in China. Another went back to her native Indonesia, and sent us a reflection on how to integrate what she learned at the WAM House through her circle of influence in the marketplace. We looked forward to commissioning four more near the end of the program year. It was exciting to see a sense of fraternity as participants sought out graduated participants, as well as to see graduates move into marketplaces around the world.
In October of 2010, the WAM House hosted the first city-wide 20-Somethings & Workplace Spirituality Forum, pulling speakers from different churches from across the city. 20-Somethings as well as seasoned workplace professionals spoke at the Forum. Among those who shared were a former NFL football player, an award-winning Scientist, a Grammy award-winning television producer, a CEO and other highly qualified professionals representing various segments of the workplace. Especially touching was the dynamic speaking of The Reckoning’s Tim Troyer, who spoke on the importance of competency, character, and Kingdom Perspective in our work. In the same year, John became a certified LaRed Business Network trainer and has extended that training to the organization’s staff.
In 2011, The Baton Exchange was launched in the marketplace, utilizing volunteers and training in the WAM House to help young adults in the marketplace. Curriculum was expanded with Career Competency Workshops, in recognition that soft skills are essential in the marketplace.
Leadership Retreats were also added to the curriculum, with our first leadership retreat being held at the lakeside cabin of a volunteer, near Senecaville, Ohio. The topic was on leading up, down, and across and
was based on John Maxwell’s book, The 360 Degree Leader. We facilitated our first Mentor Workshop, a training that came about by the feedback of a trainee who suggested we train our mentor
volunteers on mentoring.
The placement program was launched, and John was invited to present the work of the WAM House to
marketplace leaders in Cleveland, Ohio.
2012-2013
John has presented workshops on developing change agents in Houston, Texas, at the annual ACMI Conference, a special gathering of those who serve international college students. Inquiries about our training from around the world began to come in. We had our first annual fundraising banquet in Walnut Creek, Ohio, a destination with many key volunteers in the form of Christian Marketplace leaders. Mentoring curriculum was further developed and Leader Roundtables hit full force.
Enrollment skyrocketed from four in 2009 to almost 40 in 2013. This came with huge increases in staff, mentoring relationships, and countries and continents represented. A student association at OSU was launched called Campus2Career (which David Foster facilitated.) Our growth began to stretch our capacity, and the decision was made to set things in motion to hire a part-time administrative helper, our first paid employee other than John.
We also had our first Summer Leadership Camp and John presented a workshop on stewardship at the annual INK Conference, a special gathering of international students.
Near the end of 2013, the organization fully transitioned its name from the WAM House to The Baton Exchange. The spiritual emphasis of the WAM House training’s Kingdom Perspectives track was retained as “The Catalyst Track” within The Baton Exchange training. God continued to bring around us volunteers and staff of the highest quality. Our Training & Education Advisory Board was formed, consisting of world-class adult educators and trainers. Over the years we have continued to adjust and improve our curriculum.
The program had its first placement of a trainee at a collaborating organization. Westerville Area Resource Ministry (WARM) brought on a trainee into its accounting department. A win for all involved! Leader Certificate levels were also instituted, based on number of hours of training completed (Gold, Silver, Bronze), a departure from the “one size fits all” certificate that had been issued through WAM House. Over the years, trainees have volunteered serving the inner city poor. We officially
“adopted” Hilltop Christian Community Corporation, an inner city ministry we focus our volunteer efforts through.
2014
We had our 50th mentor match, matching a young man in social work with Robert Caldwell, an accomplished leader in the field. We also placed our first out of state mentor match, in Seattle, Washington.
We have a plan to scale to 100 Life2Life mentoring relationships in the next 18 months, deepen our curriculum, broaden our trainee referral base, get some of our training on-line, and expand our placements piece. Our vision continues to be global in nature, with the dream of seeing young adults from around the globe and the marketplace bringing God’s redemptive grace, hope, love, justice, societal solutions, blessing and human flourishing, to their cultures. Our cause is, simply stated, “To equip young adults to integrate their faith and vocation as change agents in the global marketplace for Christ.”
2015
We placed our second out of state mentor match, in Dallas, Texas. The Cohort program for the 2015-16 year is “closed for remodeling” while we make program improvements and focus efforts on the video project.
The campus2career on-line video project, titled “Faith, Work, Integrate!” was started. Close to 50 interviews of Christians in the workplace from ten countries and four continents brought the application piece to fifteen topical videos. The video series is designed to help Christian college students and young professionals to flourish in this transitional time of life.
2016
The cohort program of Baton Exchange was renamed Leader Incubator. Recruiting for a 2017-18 cohort began as programming remained on pause during continued development of the Online Video curriculum. Over 160 students from four universities participated in beta testing the resource. Over 80 volunteers helped as well, with local and national leaders from over 40 occupations and ten countries being interviewed for the project.
2017
The Leader Incubator was relaunched and “Fellows” were placed in professional positions at local nonprofits. We did our first out-of-state retreat for the program, in Indiana, with a side trip to Chicago. Our first African, from Nigeria, joined the program, bringing the number of countries and regions represented in the Leader Incubator program to eleven. This was the first time we had a 12-month program for the Leader Incubator. It was brutal for the staff, and we determined to shortened the next program year to 10 ½ months. We began posting our video vignettes on LinkedIn, Facebook and Youtube.
2018
Our staff worked very hard recruiting for the 2018-19 Leader Incubator year, but fell short of the minimum enrollment required to run the program. The board made the very difficult and painful decision to shut down the Leader Incubator program. A key to success for a program like the Leader Incubator is to have a critical mass referral base from which to do recruiting. The Baton Exchange lacked that and so struggled to create enough critical mass to sustain what was needed to grow. The Leader Incubator graduated three more fellows from the program before closing it. The mentoring program and online learning program were also shut down.
A bright spot for the year was when we hit over 100,000 cumulative views of our video posts through social media (LinkedIn, Facebook and Youtube.)
2019
This was a tough year emotionally and financially. We’ve always needed to rely on God to provide. There have been times in our history when we had only a few hundred dollars in the bank and wondered how we would pay the bills. Then, the Executive Director would come into the office and find a check on his desk that he wasn’t expecting, and there would be enough to run on for a few more months. Baton Exchange was subcontracted by corporate trainer Paul Kilzer to deliver leadership training to a local company, which they did jointly. This helped pay some bills in 2019.
John also mentored 5 young men through B.E.. In 2019 John began exploring collaborating with Hope City Church in Columbus. They were a young church of 300 people and no small groups. Their pastor opened the door for Baton Exchange to share about a Baton Exchange cohort for their young adults to plug into, as well as BE providing teaching and training to congregants. The cohort idea would bear fruit in 2020. The other ideas didn’t. We continued to produce video content for our media ministry. Most of the 5,000+ monthly views came through our posts on LinkedIn.
2020
Launched a Journey Group with Hope City, a predominately African American church. This cohort consisted mostly of young professionals and college students from the church, and a couple of folks from outside their church. Hope City also had two elders (Jeff Payne and Michael Thomas) and a matriarch figure (“Mother Jewel”) as part of the group, functioning as group mentors. Journey Group met in the Scroggins home weekly and ate together, going through the curriculum developed by John. The group enjoyed the warmth of relationship. COVID came onto the scene in March and we shifted to online until November, when the group reconvened in person and finished out the 12 month cycle near the end of December. John has maintained some of the relationships started in that group, meeting to mentor them individually. Jeremy Thomas, an original member of that group, would later become a BE Board member. A blessing in disguise from COVID and going online is that it forced us to learn how to do training, mentoring, and relationship-building online. This paved the way for growing our mentoring through online methods.
We also began partnering with national marketplace ministry Pinnacle Forum, sharing leads for our programming.
Baton Exchange is a marketplace ministry with a long history of mentoring and training internationals living here. Because of this, B.E. was contracted by local Christian businessman and Kingdom philanthropist Bruce Bernard to research evangelism opportunities and discipleship methods of New Americans in the workplace, the New American Workplace Ministry Project. This was an extensive research project that helped pay the bills for B.E. as well as provide insights into equipping cross-culturally. John continued working on a market research project started in 2018, Race Ready, which dug into the readiness of young adults for leadership. He interviewed and surveyed almost 230 young professionals and leaders on the leadership readiness of this generation. Focus was on their strengths and weaknesses, growth areas, and equipping best practices.
2021
Some of those from the Journey group continued to meet online in 2021. We tried unsuccessfully to grow the groups. John continued individually mentoring. We also continued to create video content for the media ministry, which received hundreds of views every month. The board decided to continue to persevere and keep Baton Exchange “open” despite a continued path of struggle. John continued his work on the NAWM and Race Ready projects.
2022
We continued an online cohort, which fluctuated with 4-10 young professionals (among them Nepali, S. Korean, Nigerian, American.) We started having the young adults facilitate the group. The media ministry had 200-400 monthly video viewers. We had four online Roundtable Forums (young professionals and guest leaders discussing a topic.)
John presented the NAWM project debrief to approximately 25 people from around the U.S. and Canada. Most of these were ministry leaders of other organizations. John’s work on the project included: 130+ Interviews of leaders around the U.S., 300+ Surveys of internationals, 200+ Resources referenced. He identified 5 Gaps in U.S. Cross-Cultural marketplace ministry, all of which mentoring could apply. The five opportunities were: Career Advancement Coaching, Gen 1.5 & 2.0, International Student Graduates, Blue & Pink Collar Workplace Ministry and Small Business Peer Roundtables.
We contracted Megan Kenny, a virtual admin. She would become a key piece for our recruiting and growth in 2023 and 2024. The media ministry continued to get hundreds of views of its videos each month. We ended the year with seven mentoring relationships.
Throughout the years there have certainly been times of discouragement for founder John Scroggins. But at the right times, God would infuse some hope with testimonials like Shaira’s, one of the cohort members, who shared “I wanted to thank you for this wonderful opportunity. It has been a pleasure being a part of the group and I got to learn so many things that have helped me in my spiritual life. 😄” Shaira Aug 20, 2022
2023
The media ministry had a volunteer team of six college students editing video equipping content for social media posts. Programming focus shifted from cohorts to one-on-one (Life2Life) mentoring. The goal was 20 active mentor matches in 2023. We had 56 people enroll in our mentoring program (though not all were matched), compared to 7 the prior year. About 50% of our mentees were college students, and 50% young professionals. Mentors and mentees in 20 States, coast-to-coast, and 10 nationalities represented in the mentees/mentor mix (USA, India, China, Thailand, Zambia, Peru, Egypt, Albania, Nigeria, Chile.) College students enrolled in mentoring programs came from: Biola University, Calvin University, Cedarville University, Hope College, Liberty University, Minnesota State University, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Taylor University, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, University of Texas, and Wheaton University.
2024
In 2024 we saw mentoring enrollment increase again, to 63, plus at least 4 Pass It On Partners, plus an additional 29 mentees and 23 mentors from another mentoring organization using our curriculum. Our impact footprint was again a national one, with mentees and mentors coast-to-coast in 19 states. The USA and folks from seven other countries (immigrants and college students) were in the mix. About 70% of our mentees were young professionals and 30% college students from seven universities from California to Virginia, Minnesota to Texas.
One of those universities promoted us to their online MBA program and two others opened the doors to Baton Exchange sharing more with their students. Summit Ministries, a national worldview ministry, began exploring ways for us to be a resource to their alumni. (Stay tuned on that development.) We launched a peer mentor roundtable and piloted Launch Prep, a process to help us improve the mentoring experience for mentees and mentors. We enjoyed seeing mentoring alumni like Francisco become mentors.
We continue to equip 50-100 people every week through our online Media Ministry. We added four new board members at the end of the year, with a goal of growing the ministry and moving the Baton Exchange board from a Founder’s board to a board governance model. 
