featured people

For many years the approach to ministry with college students in the northern and western tier of the United States was to place a campus minister on as many campuses as money would allow. The salaries and benefits were not great but still very dedicated men and women went north and west taking their families with them. In many instances the primary support came either directly or indirectly from the North American Mission Board. Recently the North American Mission Board has reevaluated all of its ministries based on their interpretation of the mandate of the Southern Baptist Convention. The emphasis changed to encouraging the state conventions to focus on church planting. This basically eliminated much of the support for the local campus ministers. In some situations they were encouraged to shift to becoming church planters and for some that has worked and their support has continued. For others this has not worked and their support is drying up.

For those who felt strongly that their calling and skills were related more to focusing only on work with college students the dilemma has been how to be true to their calling and still be true to their understanding of their responsibilities to their families. The approaches to this have been varied, with some setting up foundations, others becoming mission service corp. and raising their own support. Some of these are being featured on student.org in hopes that you and others that you know will help these dedicated men and women remain working in the areas where they feel called and have been working for years.

For years I tried to teach my students the importance of the Cooperative Program but in recent years the churches have been adding more and more collections outside of the church budget. I am even getting requests to sponsor individuals participating in their church's mission trips overseas. I still believe the Cooperative Program budgeted through the church is the best way to go. What happens however when the leadership of the various boards take an approach that leads to the state conventions having to drop campus ministry in some parts of the United States where most of the students are located? I have always counted on students to come up with creative ways to solve problems. That creativity is need now if we are going to support trained campus minister who have been working in the emerging regions for years.

Here is what I would like your to do. Pick out one of these campus ministers to help support. Come up with ways you can get others to help you support that person. Don't break any of the rules of your church or your state program of campus ministry. Please don't do anything that will undermine the Cooperative Program giving of your church. Email me with stories of what you are doing to help one of these campus ministers and how it is working. I'd like to include those on this pages to give others ideas that work. With the thousands of BSU/BCM alumni and the caring people of our churches we can solve this need.