CLARION, PA, (BRN) – The Sunday before the 2023 fall semester started, BASIC campus ministry at PennWest University Clarion participated in the university’s annual Student Activities Fair, where Freshmen can walk around and see what clubs and organizations are on campus.
Our primary goal is to make as many connections with freshmen as possible, but behind that, we try to have deeper conversations with students around their faith and beliefs.
In 2023, we used free shirts to get students to come to our table, and then from there we assessed whether they were interested in our group. However, we also asked them to take a survey, where we used Soularium to turn the conversation into a spiritual conversation.
Soularium uses pictures to help students answer questions like, “What three pictures represent your life right now?” and “What one picture represents who God is to you?” How they answer the questions shows us if they really are interested, and if we can ask our own questions to dig deeper.
One of these connections happened when Danika, one of our leaders, was talking to a student and they were interested in the survey. As this student answered each question, it became clear that she hadn’t thought much about God, but was curious what Danika believed. So they talked for awhile, and at the end, she shared with Danika she needs to think more about God and wanted to meet up with Danika to continue the conversation. Ultimately, the shirts were a great idea! We purchased 60 shirts to pass out and all of them were gone within the hour. While most students listened to our pitch and went on, or some were Christians and wanted to connect with us immediately, there were the few who cared about what we believed, and actually wanted to talk about it with us. That’s why we do what we do!
Have an outreach event you would like to host, but could use a little help when it comes to the cost? Apply for a BRN Evangelism Grant today by visiting brnunited.org/grant!
