Draft 1 (6 Paragraphs)

Stephen Collier

Maddie Kahl

ENC2135-142

7 February 2018

Baptist Colligate Ministry

There is an abundance of campus ministries at FSU, whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian. One notable campus ministry is the Baptist Collegiate Ministry, or BCM, here on campus. I was interested in this community because I’ve been a Baptist my entire life. Before I left for college my pastor talked to me, he told me that this would be the ultimate test go my faith and that I should be vigilant of everything going on around me. The one thing he told me that I will never forget is that I should never lose who I am. He told me about the BCM and suggested that I join them but I didn’t want to fully commit to a campus ministry without knowing what I was about to get into. I wanted to delve deeper into what their overall goal was for the campus so I asked the question, what does the Baptist Collegiate Ministry do for FSU? I had the pleasure of interviewing Lance Beauchamp who is the director for the BCM here at FSU.

The BCM isn’t necessarily a church ministry here at FSU. As Lance put it, “the BCM is kind of in the middle where we are funded by Baptist churches throughout the state of Florida. We don’t represent just one of them but we represent all of them and so I like to think of the BCM as the missional arm of the local church on the college campus.” The purpose of the BCM is to connect college students with local churches throughout the state of Florida. There are multiple BCM’s in Florida to help with this task of connecting students to a church. “BCM programs exist on 20 Florida college and university campuses. There are BCM directors on state university campuses, employed staff and volunteers throughout the state. Baptist ministry centers are located on six campuses—Gainesville, Tampa, Miami, Pensacola and two in Tallahassee.” (Denman).

There has been a drastic decline in evangelical ministries in the past few years. “Researchers from across the Christian world increasingly point to a fast-moving secularization of society in which the established church is having less and less influence. At some point down the road, they agree, the Church may simply cease to play a significant role in being a serious redeemer of a fallen world.” (Westbury). The FSU BCM hasn’t been victim to that yet since they try to equip current members of the BCM to share the gospel with their peers. Lance said, “My job is to help facilitate ministry that happens here and try to mentor students so that they are better equipped to share the gospel but we believe in the model students reaching students. We think that the best way for college students to be reached is to be reached by their peers. So, what we do is grow students in their knowledge of God’s word but also in their ability to communicate that clearly and just their confidence and their passion to reach their peers because they believe that Jesus is the way to reconcile their relationship with God the father and that if we all need that it’s in comment upon us to share that message with other people.” They’ve been trying to reach students throughout the school year using their own members to gain new members and share the gospel with others.

Not only does the BCM spread the gospel to students on campus but they help their current members with different struggles and requests. Lance recalled a pivotal moment in all his years of being the director here, “Around 2012 or 2013. It all started with a student who came up to me and asked if he could be baptized at Westcott fountain. I had a conversation with the student and said if you get your college minister or pastor from whatever church you’re involved in locally to come to Westcott and baptize you, then we’ll do that. I had 2 or 3 other students come up afterwards and say I want to get baptized and when they found out that this student was going to get baptized at Westcott, they wanted to get baptized at Westcott so after our Tuesday night service we went to Westcott fountain and had 2 or 3 different ministers from local churches come and baptize those students that went to their respective churches.” Lance didn’t want to do the baptism since the BCM technically isn’t a church. If he did the baptism he would pretty much declare that the BCM is a church since baptism and the Lord’s Supper are trademarks of the church.

The BCM contributes to the FSU community in different ways. Sometimes they do service projects and just give back to the community. Lance gave some previous examples of this, “We even do a lot of things where we just serve the campus and we don’t really have a specific spiritual thing involved but we just give out a bunch of free pancakes at finals time or during midterms and things like that; we’ll throw an appreciation dinner for the Resident Advisers on campus because we just appreciate what they’re doing and want to have some kind of small token of our appreciation that we can give them but those are just some examples.” The BCM isn’t necessarily all about spiritual things on campus but rather about just helping the community.

The BCM building is open the majority of the day “Technically its open from about 9 in the morning until about 11 at night depending on the residents. We have people who come and hangout all throughout the day between classes and a lot of activities in the evening, some official BCM, some just students hanging out.” It’s a great way to take a mental break from the day and just hang out around the BCM. “The FSU BCM building is open Monday through Friday for you to spend time with friends, study and play games. It’s a great place to hang out and meet people.” (www.fsubcm.org). The BCM here on campus wants to help fellow students like myself meet new people and build lasting friendships.