PHILADELPHIA (BRN) – I am excited to be back in Pennsylvania after a week in Texas for two back-to-back events.
First, as part of my ongoing participation on the Evangelism Committee for the Baptist Collegiate Network (check out collegeministry.com for more info on BCNet), they sent me to the EveryCampus Summit. EveryCampus is a networking partnership of over 40 different college ministry organizations and almost 100 other groups interested in reaching the next generation.
Southern Baptists were well represented. Not only was I there for BCNet, but I was joined by Paul Worcester, National Collegiate Director for the North American Mission Board (NAMB), Troy Nesbitt and Rudy Hartman both representing the Salt Network, Manny and Sunny Kim from the Acts2 Network and Bill Noe from Texas Baptist Student Ministries.
Some of the other organizations that were present at the EveryCampus Summit were CRU, InterVarsity (IV), Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO), GradResources, Power to Change (which is CRU’s ministry in Canada), the Navigators, Filter of Hope, Fusion USA, the Asian American Christian Fellowship, Chosen People, the Jesus Film, Collegiate Day of Prayer, Stadia Church Planting, the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA), the Come and See Foundation (who are the producers of the Chosen), the author of God Is Not Dead (who is connected with Every Nation Campus) and so many more.
Besides the informal networking and fellowship, we had two important tasks. The secondary task was sharing resources that could help each other.
I was able to offer the e-book I wrote for the BCNet – The Campus Across the Street: Encouraging the Local Church to Engage the Nearby Campus – to any of the organizations that might have a use for it. The other organizations contributed many valuable resources as well. I will have continual access to these resources specifically designed to help evangelize, disciple, or mobilize students. I am currently brainstorming on how to make them available to Baptist Resource Network (BRN) churches.
The primary task of EveryCampus always revolves around seeing gospel movements initiated on campuses that have no known ministry presence.
EveryCampus has identified 1,744 campuses in the United States without a known gospel community. Many of them are smaller schools but there are at least 500 with over 1,000 students. Several of those campuses are in the PA/SJ area. Schools like Northampton and Bucks County Community Colleges and the Community College of Philadelphia.
By knowing where our organizations are already ministering, we can identify who still needs an on-campus gospel presence, and then we can encourage some of our ministries and churches to consider prioritizing launching ministries on these campuses. This is the task of EveryCampus until there is at least one gospel movement on every campus in the United States. I am so excited to be able to do my part by connecting the work of the BCNet to this endeavor.
The EveryCampus Summit was the first part of the week (Monday and Tuesday). Graciously VIA, which is a student missions mobilization network founded by Steve Shadrach, allowed us to have our summit at Central Bible Church in Fort Worth, Texas, the day before the same church was hosting their EDM ’25 conference.
EDM ’25 saw over 800 campus ministers and collegiate church pastors from all over the world join together for a time of worship and training.
I met campus ministers from California, Texas, Canada, Jordan, Ethiopia, Brazil and Taiwan. I reconnected with campus ministry friends from Drexel, Cal U, IUP, Towson, NYU and Dickinson.
I learned how to better share my faith with Muslims and nominal Catholics, how to impact community colleges, how to better mobilize older generation churches to reach students and that student ministry in Ethiopia is crazy. I hope that many of these lessons will pay dividends not only on Drexel’s campus but in the BRN as a whole!
