The first time I recall hearing the term “reboot” – applied to something other than computers – was in the mid-2000s. Movie reboots became a thing, particularly with superheroes and other action movies.
It was a way for movie studios to continue a franchise without its old stars and without its old baggage. The old Spiderman series has grown stale? Let’s reboot it. The Star Trek actors are too old? Reboot.
As August 2021 rolls around, everyone is hoping for the campus ministry world to get back to normal.
In Auburn, Baptist Campus Ministries feels this even more powerfully as we will open the new semester in a new student center, three and a half years after moving out of our old one. (The City of Auburn purchased our previous student center and built a new facility with no debt to the State Board of Missions.)
In many ways, it feels like a reboot, starting the system afresh. But the truth is that every fall semester on every campus is a reboot. College ministry is constantly turning over, waving goodbye to our seniors (often our leaders) and saying hello to a new freshman class.
Consequently what the ministry looks like is constantly changing, and a bad year (like a pandemic) stays in the system for at least four years while that bubble makes its way through.
So as we look at this year’s reboot, we need prayer more than ever:
- prayer for our returning leaders.
- prayer that we’ll adjust after a pandemic year and an uncertain fall.
- prayer for these new freshmen to connect to ministry and to church.
- prayer for the Kingdom work of Gospel proclamation to happen.
- prayer for perseverance.
Please join us in praying as we “install updates” in the next few weeks and that this reboot takes root for the future.
State Missionary Sean Thornton serves as a Baptist campus minister at Auburn University. He previously served as Baptist campus minister at the University of Montevallo.
