Springfield | “We want to challenge churches to take college ministry to the next level,” IBSA Executive director Nate Adams told messengers at the November 4-5 Annual Meeting. A year earlier, an inquiry by a messenger at a floor mic had sparked exploration of expanded ministry on campuses in Illinois. Currently IBSA supports outreach to students on four campuses.
“We can’t reach 176 campuses next year, but we can do more than we are doing now,” Adams said pointed out that Illinois has 176 institutions of higher learning and 700,000 students. Reaching them with the gospel will require partnership with many IBSA churches that want to connect with students on nearby campuses.
Adams explained that IBSA will partner with local churches that wish to field campus ministries near them. He urged messengers to contact IBSA’s Kevin Jones to start the process. IBSA budgeted $100,000 to support local campus ministry contracts, up from $60,000 in the current year.
A panel of pastors and collegiate church planters shared about their work. Paul Cooper, pastor Marshall Baptist Church, told about an unexpected campus connection.
“I used to do college ministry before I came to Marshall, (but) that wasn’t our focus. But we’ve invested in reaching kids and youth. Then God brought us a (Baptist Campus Ministry) director from Indiana State University, which is about 18 miles from us… He saw God was moving on college campuses, but a lot of these students weren’t going to be able to get to local churches.
Cooper said they saw a revival “spark up” among young people coming to Marshall. “It was blowing us away, but we felt like we still didn’t really know what we were doing.
“We partnered with a church planting network (H20) that focuses on colleges. So BCM and Marshall Baptist Church, with the help of H2O, we started a new church at Indiana State in August.” The plant reaches up to 70 students each week.
Daniel Good pastors Cornerstone Church in Savoy. They reach out to the University of Illinois Campus in Champaign-Urbana. “When I first started at Cornerstone, there were three students there. One was a grad student, an international student, and one who had graduated in May. All we could do was love those students,” he said. “Then those students started bringing their friends and bringing their friends and bringing their friends.”
Their ministry built on the principle that students reach students. Good encouraged older church members to connect with students by asking how to pray for them.
Jonah Christensen serves with Salt Church on the Bloomington campus Illinois State University. That’s a recent Salt Network church plant that connects with three campuses in the area. “We totally believe students reach students best,” he said.
He told how for two years he had reached a small group of students, but it was when a once-disconnected pastor’s kid began sharing his faith that the ministry took off. One student is leading a discussion group of about 80. Another group is taking gospel conversations to all the places students hang out. “God is continuing to raise up students who are who are sharing the gospel with their peers,” Christiansen said, “and he’s just doing an incredible work on the campus.”
Illinois Baptists can learn about how they can partner with current or future campus ministries at IBSA.org/collegiate-ministry.