For almost 90 years, college and university students in Alabama could leave for school and have the opportunity to continue growing in their faith without skipping a beat thanks to Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM).
In the past, BCM primarily provided students with opportunities for worship, devotion, fellowship and moral accountability, according to Mike Nuss, director of the office of collegiate and student ministries at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
“The university was thought to be a godless institution that students needed to be protected from not necessarily [a place to be] ministered to,” Nuss said, noting that BCM has its roots in the YMCA movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“As early as 1923 in their centennial annual meeting, Alabama Baptists expressed concern that ministries to students be established on every major college and university campus in the state,” Nuss added. “Auburn University, the University of Alabama, the University of Montevallo and Jacksonville State University were among some of the first schools to have BSU/BCM work established in the early to mid-1920s.”
Today BCM — formerly known as BSU (Baptist Student Union) — has expanded its ministry “to reach students for Christ, grow faithful disciples, prepare students for Christian leadership and involve students in missions service,” Nuss said. “Today the college and university campus is seen as one of Alabama Baptists’ greatest missions fields.”
He said nearly 30,000 students are reached annually at various campuses across Alabama.
At the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Baptist campus ministers and student leaders connect with nearly 700 students annually through a conversational English ministry for international students, student-led Bible studies, various fellowship events, intramural sports and worship services. Each year, students also have the opportunity to do hands-on ministry work and take missions trips across the country during spring break to share their faith with others.
This year, 46 UAB students spent their vacation in Long Island, N.Y., leading worship, distributing invitations to an Easter service and taking “care bags” to train station commuters.
Bill Morrison, senior Baptist campus minister at UAB, said students respond positively to this ministry, which recruits extensively during new student orientations and tries to find “underreached areas” on campus. “We have 27 students on our leadership team here,” he added. “We try to meet (with) them consistently and challenge them in their spiritual walk. We work with those students to help equip them and encourage them to make a difference while they are in school.”
Meredith Burbank, a junior at UAB, was greatly affected by BCM and now serves on the leadership team.
“I grew up Baptist, and I thought I was saved at a young age,” she said. “But God just shook my world and turned it upside down. It was this past summer that I was really saved. … The BCM has been nothing but absolutely positive in helping me grow in my relationship with Christ. … I’ve really learned what it is to love people the way Christ loved the church and to have a heart for people and share the gospel of Christ.”
Jerrod Brown, a Baptist campus minister at the University of South Alabama, has seen similar results in Mobile students.
“Our mission is to reach, grow and send collegians and to help our local Mobile Baptist Association churches do the same,” Brown said. “All that we do is guided by this mission. … We have seen students reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time, we have watched as students grew and matured in their faith and we have had students discover their God-given mission as they were sent to serve.”
Brown added that training and mobilizing Christian students to engage other students each week has worked well on the campus. Each semester, the BCM hosts a weeklong outreach event featuring creative evangelism projects like “conversation tables” where students can discuss the gospel and “skeptics coffee houses” to address faith questions and share the gospel.
“These emphasis weeks help us to connect with the lost on campus and help us mobilize the Christian student to be able to boldly share their faith with others,” Brown said. “Christian students are open to living a life that means something, that has purpose. They want to live their faith out on campus and in the world. We want to help them do that.”
For more information about BCM, visit www.thestudenthub.org.
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