This summer, more college-level students have been mobilized for ministry and mission experience than ever before in the history of the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s collegiate ministries program.
KirklandBaptist Collegiate Ministry units on some 31 college and university campuses statewide sent out 83 summer volunteers to touch and change lives with the gospel and meet human needs from sites ranging from Swaziland to Alaska to Greenwood.
Ken Owens, who is BCM director for South Carolina Baptists, called the record outpouring of summer volunteers “a God thing” resulting from a “specific emphasis on prayer for spiritual awakening on our college campuses.”
Owens said in a news article starting on page 1 of this issue that leaders of Baptist Collegiate Ministry — in former times known as Baptist Student Union (BSU) — are “humbled to see how God is working in this generation of students to call them in record numbers to give their summer to share Jesus with the world.”
Baptist Collegiate Ministry is driven by the purpose of leading college students to become lifelong disciples of Jesus who impact their world for Christ, seeking ways to empower students to know Christ, to grow in their relationship with him and to go in service and witness for him.
The summer missions endeavors are financed by BCM chapters at the various colleges and universities, along with Cooperative Program funds and money from the Janie Chapman Offering for State Missions.
This record commissioning and sending of summer missionaries comes as the Spartanburg-area schools welcome a new Baptist campus minister, Kershaw native Suzanne Bachelor. Her arrival in Spartanburg is an eloquent testimony of the influence of BCM on students at our state schools. Bob Porterfield, longtime campus minister at Winthrop University, had a big influence on her decision to become a campus minister. “He was just marvelous,” she said of her mentor.
South Carolina Baptists can, and should, take heart at the growing number of students who are hearing and responding to God’s call upon their lives. At the annual South Carolina collegiate conference “Converge” in January at Myrtle Beach, more than 800 students involved in church and campus ministries received a challenge to center their lives around a “captivating” relationship with Jesus Christ.
Birmingham pastor David Platt, author of the best-selling book, “Radical,” asked his audience: “Does God captivate you? Does God captivate your every breath?”
Platt challenged the students to be a generation captivated by God and to have God’s heart for the nations. And then he added for emphasis: “Can we just debunk the idea that the center of God’s will is the safest place to be? The center of God’s will is a dangerous place to be.”
“I want to urge you,” he closed, “to consider your life nothing. We have a Great Commission in front of us. Missions is not an optional program.”
In his presidential column, Sonny Holmes declares that while we as Baptists are preoccupied with numbers that often go down and strategies that often do not pan out, “God is using Baptists all over the world to touch human need and change lives.”
Certainly, God is using that band of Baptists from South Carolina’s colleges and universities who are giving themselves in a ministry whose impact will be measured not by months but by eternity.
The summer missionaries and the campus ministers who teach and inspire them day to day in their college settings are to be commended for their dedication and selflessness. They inspire and refresh us all as we, too, minister on our fields of service day to day. What a valuable ministry provided by South Carolina Baptists.