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Ministry, networking highlight National Collegiate Summit
spiritual focus. Both sets of ministers want to see college students and young adults have vibrant and meaningful relationships with Christ and with others.
The triennial National Collegiate Summit hosted by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, met April 30-May 2 in Nashville, Tenn. A gathering of 575 collegiate leaders from Baptist Campus Ministry (BCM) groups and local church college ministries gathered for workshops and networking.
Linda Osborne, LifeWay’s national collegiate ministry director, said considering the tough economic times, she thought the large attendance was encouraging and exciting.
"We had 575 participants who were from almost every state convention," she said. "There are 705 campus ministers in the SBC, so this number is quite good – more than 75 percent of them. This tells me that our collegiate ministers see the information, workshops, networking and encouragement they receive at the Summit as important to them."
LifeWay President and CEO Thom S. Rainer told attendees that they were some of the "essential people" in the lives of young adults, referencing his book Essential Church, co-written with his son, Sam Rainer.
"The kind of people who keep these young adults in the church and bring them back after they’ve been out are real, genuine and transparent," Rainer said. "Young adults don’t want to see actors wearing masks. They want you to be real.
"I’ve never done your kind of ministry, but I know there are times of intense frustration. But, you are making a difference in the lives of these students and it is worth it."
While church and campus ministries may differ in their focuses, the desire of both groups is to reach out to college students and lead them first to a saving faith in Christ and second to an ever-deepening relationship with Him. Some students may see the campus ministry as a substitution for participation in a local church while they are in college, but this is not the intent of BCM groups.
"Absolutely! We want both to reach students," said Bruce Venable, minister of university students at First Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas. "Not cooperating is not an option."
Venable, a former Baptist Collegiate campus minister, then associate director of the state BCM staff in Louisiana, has been on all sides of ministry to students.
"As a church staff collegiate minister, I try to do what I can do aggressively, but we don’t step into what the campus ministries are doing," Venable said. "For example, take missions. The BCMs do summer missions programs. We don’t, but since they do that so well, we plug into that."
Steve Masters, campus minister at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, echoed that sentiment. "A real practical way to join with our local churches is to go together on mission trips."
Osborne added, "Back years ago when [then-called] BSU [Baptist Student Union] began, its goal was to connect the students to the local churches. Many of our BCMs have never strayed from this and have been very successful."
Dave Owen, associate pastor of college and evangelism ministries at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh N.C., said college students are looking for community. "That’s why they join fraternities and sororities," Owen said. "I did it too, but it was really pretty shallow."
He said that the success of a campus ministry can be judged on what students do when they leave college and start their adult lives.
"Train your students to find a biblical, Jesus-loving, Scripture-preaching solid church and go there," Owen said. "Tell them not to look for the best school district, not the most Starbucks or the closest Harris Teeter. Teach them to look for the best church and plant their lives in that neighborhood."
David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., led a session on helping college students become not just receivers of the Word, but reproducers, too.
"What if our Christianity isn’t all about us, but about being not just receivers, but reproducers of the Word?" he asked,
To illustrate the point, he told of a time when he was in the Sudan, teaching a group of Christians in a mud hut.
"They wrote down every word I said," Platt said. "It wasn’t because I was so profound, but because they could take what they had learned and go share it with their people."
The job as leaders, Platt said, is to take the Word and display the greatness of God.
"Less of our humor, less of our opinions, just the Word of God," Platt said. "If all we give them is our advice, when they are faced with a decision between advice and the flesh, they’ll choose the flesh every time."
Highlights from the Summit are available on a blog post at threadsmedia.com/blog/article/collegiate-summit-live-stream/ on the Threads Website. Threads is LifeWay’s ministry area focusing on young adults. For more information go to www.threadsmedia.com.
