Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misspelled Trenton Balcombe’s last name. The Texan regrets this error. 

Growing up in Dallas, finance junior Trenton Balcombe found support and love through his devoted Baptist family and congregation. When he arrived at UT, Balcombe felt an absence of spiritual guidance and struggled for months to find a place of worship with a similar community. 

It wasn’t until Balcombe applied to the Forty Acres Founders program, a scholarship program for student entrepreneurs, that he decided to pioneer his own solution: ChurchSearch. 

An online tool that matches students with churches in their area, ChurchSearch hopes to better facilitate the transition to college for incoming Christian students. Premiering this August, the website aims to streamline Google searches and provide users with information on congregation size, preaching style, environment and ministry.

Balcombe first pitched ChurchSearch to the Forty Acres Founders alumni in 2020. Less than five of 20 finalist applicants received funding for their start-ups. Not only did ChurchSearch win funding, but it also received recognition as one of 2022’s most disruptive business school start-ups by the education-centered news organization Poets & Quants.

“(Balcombe) is living proof of what the endowment fund is all about,” said Stephen Maeker, a Forty Acre mentor and donor. “After an initial talk with him I was impressed, and more importantly, fascinated with what he was trying to do. You got a young man trying to make a difference.”

Chemistry junior Cady Johnson said she faced a similar struggle to Balcombe’s when seeking a religious community at UT. Though she received dozens of flyers and cards advertising services around Austin, Johnson said she had difficulty settling on a congregation that shared her values. 

“My church needs to be affirming to the LGBTQ+ community,” Johnson said. “A website that tells you more about a group’s denomination and worship service is interesting to me. When I try to do my own research on churches, they don’t usually tell you if they’re welcoming or not. It’s scary to walk into a new environment unseen.”

Balcombe and his high school friend Preston Cook, a management information systems senior, have thus far enlisted 10 local churches for their website. Cook, who supervises the project’s digital programming and coding, hopes the business will include more student crowdsourcing and expand into different Texas cities and universities.

While Balcombe said he looks forward to seeing his passion grow, his priority remains giving back to his peers. 

“While I understand churches have goals about attendance and growing, we don’t really focus on that,” Balcombe said. “For us, it’s about the people, the community and the relationships. The biggest thing we want to do is help provide for others. If I can give just one student a sense of community, I’ve succeeded.”