A high-energy, amped-up, rockin’ ’n rollin’ crowd of 1,100 college students from across the state converged on First Baptist Church, Trussville, Feb. 6–7. They came together for the second Collegiate Evangelism Conference (CEC), sponsored by the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
Held every other year, the CEC is an inspirational and educational event that combines contemporary worship opportunities with informative breakout sessions to help prepare students for sharing Christ with others, particularly other students.
Although CEC ’04 was a success in terms of a smooth-running program and lively atmosphere, it will be more fully judged in terms of what occurs afterward, said Mike Nuss, director of SBOM’s office of collegiate and student ministries.
“The real measure of success is not here,” he said. “It’s back on the campuses. Our goal has been to equip and motivate the students to share their faith. Now it’s up to them to go out and do it.”
Worship speakers for the event were Allen Jackson, associate professor of youth education at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Mike Satterfield, pastor of The Church at Shelby Crossings in Shelby Association.
Worship music was led by the Dove award-winning band Big Daddy Weave. The five-member band captivated the audience with its edgy style and numbers ranging from familiar favorites to some original songs.
During the closing service, conference attendees were also treated to a soulful performance by the Afro-American Gospel Choir from the University of Alabama.
In the opening worship session, Jackson employed a storytelling style to encourage students to take a look at three “what ifs” of evangelism by studying the disciple Andrew.
“The first thing Andrew did after meeting Jesus was find his brother, Simon, and bring him to Jesus,” Jackson said. “And it had a domino effect because several of Andrew’s friends wound up being in the inner circle of Jesus. But what if Andrew hadn’t decided to follow Christ?”
Then, citing the story of the five loaves and two fish, Jackson asked the students how they supposed Andrew found the boy and his lunch.
“He was working the crowd!” he said. “What if Andrew had decided to remain quiet? What if he had decided to keep his faith to himself?”
By mingling and talking with the people who had come to hear Jesus speak, Jackson said, Andrew was not only able to share his faith, he was privileged to play a significant role in one of the most memorable miracles of Jesus’ ministry — the feeding of the 5,000.
The third “what if” Jackson posed concerned Andrew’s willingness to bring the message of Jesus to a group of Greeks in John 12.
“Back then, Greeks were out of bounds but they had asked to see Jesus,” he explained, “What if Andrew hadn’t decided that no one was out of bounds? What if you decide that no one is out of bounds?”
Students began Saturday morning challenged by Satterfield to focus their faith. Using a mixture of humor, popular culture references and hard-hitting zeal, Satterfield cited the “fishers of men” passage — Luke 5:1–11 — in characterizing God as an active God, a progressive God and a God of movement.
“God is always doing something through us if we can let go and let God,” he said. “If God is a God of movement and we want to resemble God, shouldn’t we be people on the move? But we come to a conference, get spiritually obese and then sit on our blessed assurance.
“If you are at the same place in God this year that you were last year, something’s wrong. You had better check yourself before you wreck yourself. There’s nothing about faith that sits idle,” he said.
Satterfield also encouraged students to look at their lifestyles and make needed changes. He challenged them to get away from shallow people and surroundings and to follow Jesus into deeper waters.
“When you lift up the authority of God, He will do what you cannot do,” he said. “When you obey His word, He will bless you beyond your wildest expectations.”
Saturday afternoon’ closing worship session again featured Jackson and another passage from Luke 5.
“Four friends carried their crippled friend to Jesus with the expectation that five of them would walk home,” he said. “They didn’t have any idea at the beginning of the day what they were going to do but they acted to get their friend before Jesus. But instead of figuring out how we can get someone to Jesus, we’re often busy figuring out all the ways we can’t.”
Jackson challenged the students to go back to their campuses, homes, churches and families and share what they had learned at the conference. “If what we’ve done stays in this room, it’s not worth much to the Kingdom of God,” he said.
Many of the students attending the Collegiate Evangelism Conference (CEC), held at First Baptist Church, Trussville, the weekend of Feb. 6–7, were a bit startled at the statistics they found in the program flyer:
- There are 233,962 college students in Alabama.
- Only 31 percent of those in their 20s attend church in any given week.
- Those older than 18 have a 6 percent probability of accepting Jesus Christ as their Savior.
- 58 percent of born-again Christians claim they have shared their faith with a non-Christian during the past year.
At the beginning of the weekend, the statistics simply painted an interesting, if disheartening, picture of the state of Christian evangelism on the college campuses of Alabama. But by the end of the weekend, those same statistics had become a call to action.
“I was surprised at how many college students don’t know Jesus,” said Josh Hardin, a student at Auburn University at Montgomery. “This conference has put a passion in my heart to go back to my campus and share with everybody I can.”
But as a result of the CEC, an inspired and trained army of 1,100 students was deployed to campuses across the state. Inspiration came in the form of three upbeat worship services designed to appeal to a college audience while training came in the form of 20 breakout sessions designed to prepare students for evangelism.
Covering a variety of topics ranging from apologetics to using electronic media to present the gospel, the breakout sessions were an opportunity for students to gain spiritual, issues-oriented and practical information specific to situations frequently encountered on today’s college campuses.
A lot of the information presented in the sessions was not so much “new ground” for attendees as it was a way of making students mindful of a Christian’s obligation to share Jesus at every opportunity.
“It reminded me of the tools I already have to evangelize and it reminded me to use them,” said Jessica Fike, a student at the University of North Alabama.
For example, students who attended the session “Cold Turkey Evangelism,” presented by Willie Alexander, campus minister at Alabama A&M University, were reminded that simply opening their mouths might yield results.
Cold turkey witnessing, Alexander explained, is on-the-spot evangelism or unplanned opportunities to witness that require a willingness to speak.
“Before you can be a verbal witness for the Lord, you have to be verbal,” he said. “You have to start a conversation. You can’t win people to the Lord by osmosis. You have to begin to talk. If you strike up a conversation, God will open doors.”
Other sessions, such as the one led by Craig Branch, director of the Apologetics Resource Center in Birmingham, challenged students to take a long hard look at their own beliefs and to understand why they believe what they believe.
“Evangelism and apologetics are always tied together,” Branch told the students. “Ideas are formed in college and you’re going to be bombarded with ideas foreign to Christianity. But if you have the right mindset, college can be a huge missions field for you. You can have an impact.”
Other CEC breakout sessions addressed topics such as Islam and homosexuality. The Islam session was led by Steve Cowan of the Apologetics Resource Center and the session on witnessing to homosexuals was led by Craig Hawkins, campus minister at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Both Cowan and Hawkins encouraged students to challenge without condemning and to establish relationships that might lead friends to a saving knowledge of Christ.
“Most homosexuals believe they are born that way,” said Hawkins. “I don’t know if that is or isn’t true, but it’s my opinion it doesn’t matter.
“We’re all born with a sinful nature,” he said. “God forgives through the blood of Jesus Christ, and I don’t believe there’s one sin or another that bumps you off the list.”
The CEC also featured sessions for campus ministers presented by Allen Jackson, associate professor of youth education at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Matt Kerlin, senior campus minister at the University of Alabama.
Geared toward helping ministers develop plans for effective college ministries, these sessions encouraged ministers to go beyond the methods to create a culture that would appeal to college students and at the same time lead the lost to Christ.
As the students departed First, Trussville, filled with a new passion for sharing Jesus with those around them, student Rayne Dodd of Steele summed up what many of them were saying about the CEC: “This has been more than just motivation. It’s putting feet to our faith. It’s giving us a foundation for where we need to be in our everyday lives.”
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