Alabama college students get equipped to share

More than 700 college students gathered at the Collegiate Evangelism Conference held at Eastmont Baptist Church, Montgomery, in Montgomery Baptist Association, Feb. 3–4.
   
The students came from churches and universities across the state, including groups from Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) and church collegiate ministries, hoping to walk away with tools that could change their campus for Christ.
   
“I’ve always been interested in evangelism and outreach. I wanted to get some tools on how to reach people on campus at Troy,” said Ashley Cunningham, a sophomore at Troy University.
   
Mike Nuss, director of the office of collegiate and student ministries at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said this day-and-a-half retreat, with the theme The Gospel is Urgent, Relevant and Powerful, met the needs of students like Cunningham because it focused on equipping them in multiple areas of sharing their faith.
   
“Our goal, put simply, is to motivate, challenge and equip college students for personal evangelism on their college campus. It’s important that they can share their faith,” Nuss said.
   
He added that the need is great for college students to be bold about sharing their faith. His figures show that approximately 150,000 of the 220,000 college students in Alabama do not have a personal relationship with Christ. 
   
“There are obviously a lot of students on college campuses who won’t darken the door of a church,“ Nuss said. “We can’t afford to wait until they come to church to reach out to them. We have to build relationships and gain their trust to share Christ with them. The Great Commission says go, not wait for them to come to you. We take that seriously.”
   
Times of corporate worship included drama by The Dramatic Vagabonds of Birmingham, music led by Jason Elam and Eighty-Six Eleven of Hattiesburg, Miss., and speaker David Platt of New Orleans.
   
Following the large group meetings, students had approximately 20 choices of breakout sessions on topics such as C.S. Lewis — talking about your faith intelligently, Beyond personality — evangelism for introverts, Evangelism on the beach and How to share without turning people off. All the sessions offered practical information and training on how to share one’s faith.
   
This year marked the third time for the collegiate conference, which takes place every two years in either Montgomery or Birmingham. Nuss said there was a notable difference in those in attendance this year. “This time, I saw an increased burden, a real desire on the part of the students for lost students on their campus, for family members and close friends that don’t know Christ,” he said.
   
At the conclusion of the weekend, many made commitments to share their faith.
   
“We had just under 400 of those students make some kind of personal commitment or decision to become better equipped to share their faith, to pursue holiness and purity and to live a life that would draw other people to them and allow them to share their faith” Nuss said. “It was a beautiful sight at the end of the weekend as decision cards were laid on the altar at the church.”