A dozen Kentucky Baptists recently handed out coffee and initiated gospel conversations with college students at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College.
Tanner Royalty, campus missionary leader for ECTC, shared his passion about connecting local churches to campus ministry and the students they serve.
“I think one of the common misconceptions with students is a lot of churches are kind of afraid to even approach students because they feel as if there’s a gap between the generations,” said Royalty while discussing the March 14 outreach. “Students just want to be talked to; they want to be heard.”
Pastors, college students and recent graduates from Northern Kentucky University and lay church members who participated in the outreach event also worked to conduct a spiritual survey of the students who stopped by their table on campus.
“We’re just trying to get them to think,” said Royalty. “Students want to think critically about what they believe. They’re in that phase of life … where they’re just trying to figure things out and they appreciate being listened to.”
Intentionality
The outreach effort on ECTC’s campus was one of three evangelism events on Monday — a coordinated effort to share the gospel in Elizabethtown and surrounding areas ahead of REACH, the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s evangelism and missions conference held on March 14–15.
A second group mobilized in Radcliff to share the gospel door-to-door as a part of the Gospel to Every Home initiative. More than 130 home visits yielded two salvations, many opportunities for prayer and strengthened connections between residents and local churches.
“It reminds us of what we’ve been saying with the Gospel to Every Home from the very beginning: someone can live incredibly close to a church and yet be very far from God, and so it takes intentionality on our parts to go and be the church to our own neighbors,” said Rob Patterson, evangelism team leader for the KBC.
Another group volunteered at Mission Hope for Kids, a faith-based organization providing emotional, educational, physical and spiritual support to at-risk children and their families. Around 20 volunteers from a dozen churches toured the center, read to children, served snacks, sorted supplies and packed trauma backpacks for Send Relief.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This article was written by Tessa Redmond and first published by Kentucky Today, news service of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.
