A college campus can be a crazy place—especially during the first few weeks of a new semester and even more especially for new students. Just imagine a hundred different people, organizations, causes, and courses all vying for your time and attention. In the middle of that chaos, BCM groups are quietly and intentionally working to simply make appointments with students who’d like to know more about BCM and our mission on campus.
We call them “Gospel appointments” because the basic premise is to introduce and talk about the Gospel to students who have never heard it or have an aversion to walking into a local church or campus ministry meeting.
One of our Baptist campus ministers put it this way:
What I like about Gospel appointments is that there is no guessing as to what we are meeting about. There is no bait and switch. When we do evangelism training we teach students that when they make appointments they are to say something like, “Hey, would you like to have lunch/coffee with me? I would love to talk to you about your faith.” It relieves the stress of trying to figure out how to move the conversation toward the gospel.
Another campus minister shared this story related to a Gospel appointment with a student from her campus:
Toward the end of the semester I received a text from her asking to meet. She had hit a low and needed someone to talk to. We met and I immediately connected her to one of our freshmen leaders. She committed to make faith a priority and began attending a local Baptist church with the freshmen leader. She also began attending BCM regularly. By spring semester, she was fully committed to her faith again and involved with a local church and BCM. I asked her about our Gospel appointment conversation last year and she told me, “If you had not texted me I probably would not have reached out at the end of the semester. I am so thankful that you reached out because who knows what my life would look like if you hadn’t.”
Pray for campus ministers and church collegiate ministers along with their students who are busy on college campuses engaging the campus and using Gospel appointments to reach students for Christ.
