Daniel Johnson’s vision of making the Baptist Campus Ministry building at the University of Kentucky warmer and more inviting is coming to life.
The recent addition of a legacy patio and pergola is already drawing attention. More than 600 students came to the center on Friday night.
Johnson, the campus minister at UK, said they started “dreaming about it in the spring” and proposed the idea to the alumni board. They were able to raise more than $25,000 in two weeks.
‘Vision’
Construction of the legacy patio was literally a family affair for Johnson, who got huge assists from his father, Jerry Johnson, and uncle, Jimmy Johnson, along with several members of Westport Road Baptist Church who came with Jimmy to do some of the construction work.
“Churches, alumni, individual givers and parents made this happen,” Daniel Johnson said.
Better together doesn’t get any better than that.
“People bought into the vision of a legacy patio,” he said. “We’re honoring the legacy of those that came before us and what they’ve done.”
The patio is a showplace and has the vibe Johnson hoped it would. The large crowd that stopped by Friday night confirmed it. It will be a place of fellowship and gospel conversations as the months and years roll on.
‘Where community happens’
The UK BCM building, which is owned by the Kentucky Baptist Convention, needs some love on the inside, Johnson said, but he reasoned that it was more important to first get students to come to the patio.
“As I looked at the building, no one was going to see the inside if they don’t enter the building,” Johnson said. “It’s one of the only buildings on the street that’s not a sorority house. Looking at the surrounding sorority houses, they have seating outside for their sisters and members. Automatically, I look at that place and it’s where community happens by eating outside. We wanted to say, hey, this is a place where community happens, where fellowship happens and how many gospel conversations we can have in the future.”
His father, who has been a campus minister at Georgia Southern for 30 years, and his uncle joined Daniel and some other students to do some of the grunt work to save money. They were all more than willing to help.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Mark Maynard and originally published by Kentucky Today.
