Six South Carolina Baptist churches and one from North Carolina joined together for an evangelistic “Teach, Reach, Beach” retreat in Charleston in late September that saw seven baptisms.
“The whole purpose is not just to retreat and get away, but this retreat is designed to equip students to share the gospel, and then actually push them to share it on Saturday,” explained Alex Smith, minister to college students and young adults at Taylors First Baptist Church. “So, we train them up and send them out in Charleston.”
About 110 college and seminary students from 22 schools participated. As a result of their witness, they experienced two salvations and seven baptisms at Folly Beach.
Retreat participants join members of Fort Johnson Baptist Church for worship.
Hosted by Fort Johnson Baptist Church in Charleston, participating churches also included Taylors First Baptist, Greer First Baptist, Town Creek Baptist in Aiken, Langston Baptist in Conway, Spartanburg First Baptist, and Life Community in High Point, N.C. Fort Johnson opened its facilities to accommodate the students, and an SCBaptist disaster relief unit provided a shower trailer. The students joined Pastor Marty Middleton and Fort Johnson’s members for Sunday worship.
“The nice thing is because it’s multiple churches, it’s not just one of us leading all the retreat sessions,” said Smith. Instead, each student minister either takes a turn to lead a session or a breakout.
“We want to teach the Word of God, and then we want to reach people with the Word of God,” he added. “What we do is kind of say, ‘What’s the best tool for evangelism?’ It’s kind of a trick question, for we tell them, ‘It’s the one that you know how to use.’”
The students are introduced to several evangelism tools and walk through some conversational approaches. “It’s just the practicality of pushing the students in the correct direction — a gentle push and nudge — to actually give them an opportunity to do this. Let’s not just go on a retreat and learn about it, but let’s learn about it and put it into practice as well,” Smith explained.
One participant, Ross Smith, an employee at an Aiken machinery company, said, “TRB encouraged me not only with the urgency of the gospel, but also how the Lord uses simple obedience to Him and His Word to lead to radical results. TRB emboldened me to not be timid about the truthful conversations the Lord was calling me to have with people close to me. I’m very grateful for a short but powerful weekend with the Lord and His church.”
Malcomb, a student who came with the group from First Spartanburg, led by Todd Williams, accepted Christ during a witness training session.
While practicing the evangelism techniques, he said he realized, “Man, I’ve been running, and I need to nail it down,” Smith recalled. Malcomb wanted to be baptized there at the beach, and a service was planned later that day.
Another salvation came during lunch. While they were at a restaurant, one team shared the gospel with their waitress, who accepted Christ as her Savior.
Friends congratulate Malcomb (center) after his baptism by Todd Williams, (right) from Spartanburg First, at Folly Beach.
When the students arrived at the beach that afternoon, it was beautiful weather. A crowd of curious onlookers gathered around the large group of students. After Malcomb came out of the water, two of his buddies who played basketball with Malcomb at Converse College embraced him. Then, from the crowd, several people requested to be baptized, too.
“This is as sweet as it gets,” Smith continued. “A boyfriend and a girlfriend in the crowd came up to Todd (Williams) and me and said, ‘We’d like to be baptized.’”
Both recently had accepted Christ, but they hadn’t found a church home yet. They had seen what was going on and began asking questions.
The woman told Smith that earlier she had told her boyfriend, “Don’t push religion on me.” But every time she would look at his Bible during the next few months, she felt like it was “drawing me and screaming at me.” So, she surrendered her life to Christ.
When they learned the couple was from Conway, Williams and Smith quickly introduced them to P.J. Cuba, college minister at Langston Baptist. Cuba since has followed up and invited them to be a part of Langston.
“It was incredible,” Smith said. “They were there on vacation that weekend. They had no intention of being baptized and no idea about what was going to happen that day. They walked away changed by a public profession of Christ as their Lord,” he added. “It was really, really cool to see that happen.”
In addition to Malcomb’s — the one they’d originally planned — six more happened that day.
Smith said he found it encouraging to see the churches come together for something different from a regular retreat. “We want young adults to see that you can rest and retreat, but also evangelize while we go,” he said.
North Greenville student Kegan Yarboro agreed, “It is so encouraging to watch other college students spend a weekend pursuing Christ, reaching others for the gospel, and growing closer to each other.”