UAB students take on piece of Michigan partnership

I’ve never been in a place where people have no reasonable idea of who Christ is or what He’s done for them."

This was the reaction of one University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) student on a recent trip taken in conjunction with one of Alabama Baptists’ missions partnerships. But the location wasn’t Guatemala or Ukraine.

It was Michigan.

A group of 20 from the Baptist Campus Ministries of UAB — including Campus Minister Bill Morrison — traveled to southeastern Michigan in mid-March to give a shot in the arm to fledgling Baptist efforts in the area.

Morrison said the team did three two-hour shifts of survey work for a new church plant, started in the fall of 2006 with seven members. While surveying area residents, many of the students were invited into homes to discuss people’s background in Islam and Hinduism — or the fact that they had no religious history at all.

During the week, team members also worked with Baptist ministries on the campuses of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, handing out tracts, muffins and orange juice.

They closed the trip by leading Wednesday night services at a Baptist church in inner-city Detroit. Eight people made professions of faith.

"We were overwhelmed," said Will Buie, a UAB sophomore and children’s minister at Eastside Baptist Church, Birmingham, in Birmingham Baptist Association. "God took [our efforts] and ran with it and made it amazing."

Morrison agreed. "We felt like we had truly been used to make an eternal difference." (TAB)