College campuses may be quiet this summer, but Missouri Baptist college students have been active around the state. This summer, the Missouri Baptist Convention’s (MBC) college ministry commissioned 67 college-aged summer missionaries to serve in various ministries around the state. And this number doesn’t include the additional college students serving with the Resound Network, Sports Crusaders, Missouri Disaster Relief and Redemption Ranch—bringing the total to nearly 100 college students serving around the state this summer.
Whatever time of year it may be, Missouri Baptists shouldn’t take for granted the work of MBCollegiate, the MBC’s outreach ministry to college students. Led by MBCollegiate director Jerome Stockert, the ministry partners with 30 Missouri Baptist campus missionaries at colleges across the state, as well as 11 apprentices training for college ministry. With help from local churches and associations, these campus ministries have the unique opportunity not only to disciple young Christians, but they can also reach out to hundreds and thousands of lost young people—including many students from across the globe.
During the next month, MBCollegiate campus missionaries will be preparing to welcome students back to campus, and no doubt they could use extra prayer and encouragement. (Learn more about these campus missionaries at https://mbcollegiate.org/campus-missionaries/.)
Additionally, Missouri Baptists should never take for granted the fantastic work of our three MBC affiliated universities: Hannibal-LaGrange University, Missouri Baptist University and Southwest Baptist University. Of course, we are also fortunate to have in our state the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Spurgeon College.
As a member of Concord Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Mo., I’m blessed to sit each Sunday under the preaching of our interim pastor, Robert Matz, who also serves as the president of Hannibal-LaGrange University.
During his sermon on Sunday, July 12, Matz shared an unplanned, heartfelt appeal to parents and young people to think carefully about where they attend college:
“I’m a president of a Baptist college,” Matz said, “because I know that the point in a young person’s life where the rubber meets the road, on whether they’re going to go from their dependence on you as mom and dad to their dependence on Jesus Christ, is those years where they’re in college. That’s the time frame where, for most young people, they make the decision: Am I going to make my faith my own and live it out or not? … And God has called me to lead a Baptist school for Baptist young people and for Christian young people to go to, so that hopefully they’ll get a great education and they’ll make their faith their own. …
“Baptists didn’t start a whole bunch of colleges for no reason,” he added. “We started them because we know that their heads are made of butter, and if they go sit at the colleges of the secular world, most of them are going to melt because it’s a fire and it’s going to burn them up. And, brothers and sisters, we need to think long and hard before we send our children to (secular universities). …
“If I could beg you, I would beg you. Your faith in Jesus is so much more important, it is so much more urgent, it is so much more imperative than the career you get, than the degree that hangs on your wall. The goal of every parent should be to take their child … to absolute dependence on Jesus Christ. And some of us, in what we spend our money on, in what we value, in where we send them (for college), we’re saying, ‘Ah, that’s for Sunday morning. What really matters is how good a job you can get.’ And we’ve got the wrong priorities.”
As I listened to these words, I was proud to know that we have such great and godly leadership at each of our Missouri Baptist universities. Additionally, I was moved by the truth that Matz declared with such conviction—namely, that Southern Baptist leaders of the past labored to build multiple Baptist colleges in our state because they knew that learning to love God with all our mind, as well as all our heart, is the highest priority.
We, as Missouri Baptists, shouldn’t take this for granted. We should support our universities with our prayers and with faithful giving through our churches. And we should also support them, if possible, by sending our children and grandchildren to these universities. Of course, we should do this not primarily because we want to build up educational institutions, but—as Matz said—because we want to see our children grow up to live in “absolute dependence on Jesus Christ.” And this is priceless, indeed.
