Christian Teacher of the Year: Gregg Preston’s dream of being a teacher, coach and evangelist finds its fulfillment in 35-year career

When Gregg Preston was growing up, he dreamed of doing everything from teaching school to playing basketball to traveling around the world telling people about Jesus. 

As with many young people, he didn’t know if he would accomplish all of his dreams, but he made a key decision: to seek Jesus first and let him order his steps, and that has made all the difference. 

Preston, who is one of 12 Teachers of the Year honored by the Herzog Foundation, has been a fixture at Hillcrest Lutheran Academy in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, for the last 35 years.  

During that time, he’s touched the ends of the earth, traveling to Europe and Central America with students to preach the Gospel and ministering to foreign students that come to the northwest Minnesota boarding school. He also coached basketball for nearly three decades and has impacted the hearts and minds of hundreds of students with his instruction in history, social studies and Bible. 

“The Lord has allowed me to really fuse my loves together there,” Preston says of Hillcrest, where he teaches grades 10-12. “I have been able to preach and teach God’s word every day, teach history, sociology, and literature, coach basketball, and take these students on evangelistic missions across the world. It’s amazing. I would have never dreamt of how (it could happen) and I love it.” 

The love is mutual, as Jeff Isaac, head of school, explains. 

“Gregg exemplifies the qualities of an exceptional Christian educator – passion, dedication, and a profound commitment to advancing the Kingdom through education,” Isaac says in his recommendation letter. Preston helps students grow spiritually, maintains high standards in the classroom and builds quality relationships, making him “a beloved figure among students and colleagues” and “a deserving candidate for this honor.” 

Hillcrest offers boarding for pupils in grades 10-12, and Preston estimates that he and his wife have had 20-25 students live in their home over the years. They had a particular impact on a young woman from a communist country who heard the gospel while at the school. 

At graduation, Preston asked her “where do you stand with the person of Jesus Christ?”  

“I’m a believer, not a follower,” she said, indicating some reluctance to openly embrace Christianity. 

Preston discovered that her hesitancy came from not wanting to disrespect her parents, who violated her country’s one-child policy to have her, losing finances, opportunities and enduring government opposition. 

The young woman then went away to college but visited the Prestons over the holidays. He asked again if she was still a “believer not a follower.”  

This time, the woman said she was now a ‘follower’ of Christ. 

It turns out, Preston says, she had met some believers from her home country on campus and joined a Bible study with them. Now she was ready to tell her parents of her decision, a potentially tense conversation. 

“My wife and I are sitting at the table with her and she’s going to make the call and so we prayed. She starts off fairly stoic, and then she’s just weeping and weeping and wailing,” he remembers observing, unable to understand what was being said. 

“She got off the phone and my wife and I are like, ‘Is everything OK?’ And she says, ‘My mom and dad said ‘yes.’ They won’t break the bond’” over her faith. 

The Preston’s continued to be part of her life.  

“Her fiancé called me for her hand in marriage before they got married,” Preston says. “My kids were in her wedding and my wife and I walked her down the aisle because their country wouldn’t let her parents come.” 

An evangelist at heart, Preston says he’s seen dozens of students come to Christ at the school through time in the classroom, mission trips he’s led to places like Albania, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, and through time in his home.  

“We do weekend activities with them. We get to know them as family and not just as a teacher in their school,” he says. 

In class, Preston challenges his students to think critically by exposing them to history written from different perspectives. 

“I walk the sophomores through, ‘How can you tell this is a secular, Marxist worldview? How is (the author) giving the narrative of American history that way?’ Then I’ll show them more of a conservative history book so they can see several different views,” he says. The goal is that “as sophomores, they’re able to take the Scriptures and then be able to dialogue about any writing that they get.” 

Preston expands to film and digital media, and takes his seniors through apologetics, reading works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, C.S. Lewis, Tim Keller and Norman Geisler.  

He wants them “to be able to look at the Scriptures and see the authenticity, the validity, and the truth of these writers that actually have the weight to live in the only way to God, through Jesus Christ. 

“My objective is to teach, train, and disciple young men and women to seek and follow Jesus Christ through teaching history, Bible, literature, leading evangelistic outreaches, and coaching basketball,” he says in his teacher of the year video submission. 

During his time as coach, Hillcrest boys’ basketball achieved a 463-198 record, winning 16 conference championships and making three state tournament appearances. In 2019, Preston was honored at Target Field in Minneapolis as a winner of the Positive Athlete award for his contributions on and off the court. 

Isaac, the head of school, calls Preston “an excellent mentor to his players, instilling in them the values of teamwork, discipline and perseverance. His dedication to mentoring extends beyond the court, as he guides his players to become skilled athletes and upstanding individuals.” 

Preston’s life is full of impact. 

David Foss, Preston’s pastor, says he was a favorite teacher of his two children. 

“Three words I would use to describe Gregg are Servant (of the Lord), Dedicated, and Talented,” says Foss. “He’s a top shelf educator who engages kids well and challenges them to think and learn. My wife is a colleague of Gregg’s, and having observed him teach, she has such respect and admiration for Gregg’s excellence as a teacher.” 

The Christian Teacher of the Year honor is part of the Herzog Foundation’s Excellence in Christian Education award series. Each of the 12 winners will attend a special professional development and recognition event in Washington, D.C.