About five years ago, Zane Miles began to really see the significance of Baptist Campus Ministries and what they do on college campuses around the state.
He had been discipling three guys in his youth group at First Baptist Church Guin, and when they graduated, two of them went to the University of North Alabama, and the other went to the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
“What I had been doing in those guys’ lives, once they got connected with the BCM, it really started to produce that fruit in their lives,” said Miles, who now serves as senior pastor of FBCG.
One of those guys — Nathan Kemble — became the BCM president at UNA, and now he’s FBCG’s student pastor.
“I was blessed to baptize him about six months before he left and went to UNA,” Miles said. “He was growing spiritually, but his spiritual maturity that took place while he was there was incredible.”
That’s why Miles said he would encourage every student minister in the state to get connected with the BCMs at the colleges where their graduating seniors are going.
“These campus ministers are incredible, solid, God-fearing, Jesus Christ-centered people who genuinely love the Lord and love seeing that next generation seek the Kingdom of God,” Miles said.
By connecting with them and encouraging students to continue growing in their faith through BCM, “you’re partnering with campus ministers and saying, ‘Hey, this is Kingdom work,’” Miles said.
Next steps
Matt Daniels, campus minister at UNA, said he values that partnership and earning the trust of student ministers.
“To connect with their student pastor and build that relationship of trust with the student pastor, it communicates to those students that, ‘Hey, this is something that I believe in,’” Daniels said.
He said for local church ministers like Miles to encourage their students to connect with BCMs is like passing the baton between relay runners. They’re in this together, he said.
“I’m continuing what their church has done for these students. It’s taking them in the next step in their walk with Christ and their sanctification process,” Daniels said. “It’s saying, ‘Let’s build upon what God has done in your life and continue to shore up what you believe and why you believe it, and let’s disciple you and put you into the missional work of the Kingdom.’”
He said he would encourage student ministers to go visit the BCM in their area or at the colleges their students are planning to attend.
“If they’re in your area, get to know the campus minister face to face. Grab coffee,” Daniels said. “If they’re not, call the campus minister, send an email, reach out through social media. Build that relationship.”
He said he would love to get to know student ministers as well as their soon-to-be college students.
Miles said for him it’s been an important relationship, and he’s continued to send his students toward the campus ministers he knows.
“Hearing students speak, that freshman year of college is hard,” Miles said. “For the first time in your life, your alarm goes off and no one is going to knock on the door and make sure you’re going to class.”
BCM gives them an automatic place to plug in, get involved and “not have to hunt for friends,” Miles said.
“It gives you that connection point on campus,” Miles said. “My heart has always been to send students out to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and BCM is a launching point for that to take root.”
Alive and well
Daniels said campus ministry is alive and well in Alabama.
“I get that it’s scary as a youth minister or a parent to send your students off to college. But all that you see in the media, I’ll testify all day long that what you see is not the total story,” Daniels said. “There’s a lot more good happening than what’s being told. Students’ lives have been changed through the campus ministries across our state, and they’re being put to work for the Kingdom.”
Ben Edfeldt, director of the office of collegiate and student ministries at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said his “hope and expectation is that each church and student pastor equates the sending of their students to the college campus to the sending of missionaries to an unreached area.”
“Alabama Baptists have made it a priority to call 17 full-time missionaries in many of these unreached areas; therefore, BCM campus ministers are waiting to guide your students through college,” Edfeldt said. “Our BCM campus ministers will equip and send your students all while helping them get connected with local churches.”
For more information about BCMs in the state or helping your students connect with campus ministers, visit bcmlink.org.
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