Students at Jacksonville State University (JSU) will have the opportunity to get in touch with the past when they celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Baptist Campus Ministry (BCM) in October.
Plans for the event include a banquet Oct. 14 and a generational get-together Oct. 15. The banquet will bring back former campus ministers Bob Ford, John Padlock and Leonard Roten. Students currently involved in BCM and alumni of what was once known as the Baptist Student Union (BSU) will be able to meet and share stories and experiences.
Ford, who retired as the campus minister in 1999, is the chair for the planning committee. He and Gary Brittain, the current campus minister, are working together to plan the anniversary events.
“We are targeting all the folks that participated in BSU, or now BCM, as far back as possible,” Brittain said.
The actual year the ministry began on campus at JSU is unclear. Brittain said the first mention of the BSU on campus is in the 1930 yearbook.
He said that before 1930, students met in churches on the edge of campus, but church history is still a little jumbled.
Its origins may be unclear but the ministry is changed. “The needs of students are primarily the same,” Brittain said. “We seek to minister to students relationally.”
Ford recalled of his years of ministry at JSU, “The most stellar accomplishment was in the area of summer missions. Jacksonville had the largest group of missionaries from a non-Baptist campus.”
Ford served as campus minister at JSU for 17 years and served a total of 30 years in Alabama Baptist campus ministry.
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