“Fill the field, not the room.”
Clint Culpepper said that was the vision when he and Kennedi Kruger became the Baptist campus minister and associate minister at Auburn University two years ago.
At that point, the school’s longstanding Baptist Campus Ministries found itself at a little bit of a crossroads. For decades, one of the BCM’s biggest ministry platforms had been its Tuesday night worship and Bible study, but after COVID and a move to a new building, that was starting to wane.
“The campus is growing the opposite way of where we’re located,” Culpepper said.
So he and Kruger began looking instead for a way to mobilize students to reach their campus — to fill the field, not the room.
Strategic access
Kruger said they started with “a very small group of 15 students who wanted to be discipled and wanted to learn how to share the gospel” and started equipping them to share their faith. Then they started sending them out into “a campus that needed to see how deeply loved it is.”
“It’s been great for both of us to be able to invest in students’ lives in that way and be able to love their campus,” she said.
Culpepper said their goal is to get the gospel to 192 places on campus, one of which is a biology classroom where they recently held a God and Science night led by a quantum chemist who is a Christian.
“People have curious questions, so we want to be able to answer those,” Culpepper said.
He said they also do Discovery Bible Studies in places on campus where the students are among their peer groups.
Kruger said that’s given them access to places they couldn’t otherwise go.
“We can’t just go in and say, ‘We’re going to hold a Bible study in this building,’ but our students can,” she said. “We try to teach students that the Lord has strategically brought you to Auburn and He has placed you in the classrooms you’re in for a purpose — what are you going to do with it?”
‘Infiltrating the campus’
In light of that, one music student shared with Kruger that she wanted to reach her classmates.
“Her heart’s just really burdened for the music building,” she said. “She’s told me several times it’s so dark there.”
The student started leading a Discovery Bible Study there with Kruger on Thursday nights, and one girl started coming.
“She was asking really intentional questions that I think most people would be too embarrassed to ask,” Kruger said. “We were walking through John … and she asked the same question Nicodemus asks in John 3 — ‘How can someone be born again?’ It was amazing to be able to explain to this girl who grew up in Birmingham with Christian friends the question Nicodemus asked. That question is still being asked today.”
Culpepper said every week, six to eight teams go out to do evangelism on campus.
“That’s where we’ve seen numerical growth is really infiltrating the campus,” he said. “We’ve put a lot of time walking through campus.”
‘They’re bought in’
They engage people in deep conversations through an outreach effort called The Great Exchange.
“I think that’s been a tremendous next step and to help people learn how to share the gospel,” he said. “Our goal is more to reach the lost. We go through very intentional questions with people from all backgrounds.”
And every day, he and Kruger are also busy with discipleship groups.
“We’ve seen tightly woven community growth — they’re bought in,” Culpepper said. “There’s exponential growth every semester. They may not be able to come in the evening because of their class schedule, but they are connected with us during the week.”
Ben Edfeldt, director of the office of collegiate and student ministries at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said he’s excited to see what God is doing through the Auburn BCM.
“Clint and Kennedi arrived at Auburn during a season of transition for the BCM … a few years after COVID, moving into a new building after not having a regular place to gather for several years, and, most significantly, several staff transitions,” he said. “Since then, we’ve seen God move tremendously at Auburn BCM — early 300% growth, mobilizing students to engage the campus every day with the gospel and dozens of students participating in missions. I believe we’re just seeing the start of a great movement of the Lord at Auburn BCM.”
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