Ben Edfeldt says when you go to an International Mission Board sending celebration, you hear a striking similarity among the stories of new missionaries.
“A high percentage of them will say, ‘While in college, the Lord called me to go,’” he said. “It’s stunning to hear how many of them say that’s where they felt their first inclination of calling.”
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That’s one reason Edfeldt, director of the office of collegiate and student missions for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, feels so strongly about sending students out for spring breaks and summers.
“We hope and deeply desire to see students have a heart for the nations,” he said. “We hope summer missions will return a yield and create the next generation of missionaries.”
This year, Alabama Baptists are sending out 103 college students to serve in 22 countries and 11 states as part of One Mission Students, Alabama Baptists’ collegiate summer missions program.
Removing barriers, preparing students
To prepare, One Mission Students held a training and commissioning weekend in mid-April at Cropwell Baptist Church in Pell City. While there, students learned about spiritual warfare, had safety training and went through an airport security simulation, among other instructive experiences.
Edfeldt said he’s grateful for the way Alabama Baptists fund the spiritual and logistical support that helps students with everything from sharing their faith to applying for visas and find the right flights.
“Every year, we have students who have never been on a plane before,” he said. “Students are paying for their trip, but Alabama Baptists have made it possible for us to remove some barriers that our students have to overcome to get to the field.”
Edfeldt said he knows he’s biased, but he would argue that the One Mission Students Weekend is the “most powerful thing we do” as Alabama Baptists.
“We have a room full of students saying, ‘We want to spend part or all of our summer proclaiming the gospel to the ends of the earth,’” he said.
And after they go, they will “be far better equipped to be engaged in their campuses and be far more passionate about it,” Edfeldt said.
He noted that it also is an opportunity for them to bless and encourage full-time missionaries on the field.
Chris Mills, SBOM student missions mobilizer, said many of this year’s student missionaries are serving alongside Alabamians who are serving in other states and around the world. Some of those students are former One Mission Students.
“The longer I’ve done this, the more students I get to see take the next steps in their journey,” he said.
Getting to see former summer missionaries now serving overseas will help this year’s student missionaries see themselves in those places in the future, Mills said.
“I’m excited to hear the stories of what God is going to do this summer,” he said. “We’re praying that God will move in a mighty way among the students as they serve and among the people that they serve.”
Spring break missions
Students from all of Alabama’s Baptist Campus Ministries also served in March on spring break missions trips in locations ranging from Baltimore to Guatemala. A number of students served with Beach Reach in Panama City, where teams logged a total of 15,000 gospel conversation with spring breakers.
Mills said these short-term trips can “radically impact the way they engage here and lead to more opportunities for them to serve in the future.”
Edfeldt agreed, saying that the students experience lostness in a new way, which creates a burden that they bring back to their campuses. They also become more comfortable with sharing the gospel.
“It becomes a really strategic week for our students,” he said.
For more information about OMS, visit onemissionstudents.org/go.
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