Mississippi Baptist Student Union recently celebrated a century of ministry during its fall conference at First Baptist Church Madison.
Twice each year, the collegiate ministries department at the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board (MBCB) holds a weekend BSU conference in which students from the state’s community colleges and universities gather to worship together, fellowship with likeminded believers and hear the gospel.
A total of 725 people attended this fall’s conference, Sept. 22–23 . “We had BSUs from 29 different campuses with the singular focus of knowing Christ and making Him known on the campus, in the community, and throughout the world,” said Sam Ivy, MBCB director of collegiate ministries.
“The main goal of the conference we hold in the fall is twofold: one, is to encourage fellowship throughout all 29 campuses and BSU ministries.
“We had some new staff, so also just to encourage fellowship between our directors and their families, to give them a chance to be together, and for the students as well to be able to see, ‘Hey, I love Jesus and I want to live for Him on my campus.’ At the conference they find friends who do that on other campuses and have the same desires,” Ivy pointed out.
“Our secondary benefit to this conference is that we unveil our summer missions program. Last year, we sent 113 summer missionaries to serve in 19 different countries and 15 different continental states,” said Ivy, “so we started afresh with our new opportunities, and students had the opportunity to apply for 2024 summer missions at this conference.”
Eternal steps
The students heard personal testimonies from other students and attended a missions panel during which students who previously participated in the summer missions ministry responded to questions and shared their experiences.
Blake Newsom, director of the Caskey Center and associate professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, served as the main speaker, expositing the Sermon on the Mount.
“By doing that,” Ivy noted, “Friday night we had three students who responded by wanting to pray to receive salvation through Jesus Christ, making that first and really awesome eternal step in their lives.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Lindsey Williams and originally published by The Baptist Record.
