Students transform communities through Focus Hope weekends

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Baptist Student Ministries across the state are directing attention toward meeting needs in their own communities during Focus Hope weekends.

The weekend events offer times of worship and discovery as students learn firsthand how to live out their calling through missions and evangelism, while making an impact on the world around them.

Students from the Stephen F. Austin BSM deliver Texas Hope 2010 multimedia gospel compact disks to apartments near campus during a Focus Hope weekend.

The events—scheduled in lieu of statewide or regional Focus events offered in recent years by the Baptist General Convention of Texas collegiate ministry team—are designed so each BSM group could minister to its own campus and city as part of Texas Hope 2010, a BGCT emphasis for Christians to pray for the lost, care for the hungry and hurting and share the gospel with every Texan by Easter Sunday 2010.

“When we sat down and planned the year, we knew God wanted something different,” said Joyce Ashcraft, a priority resource and regional coordinator for the BGCT Collegiate Ministry.

“We had long sensed a need as we looked at Focus, and we didn’t know what God had in store. At the time we started to ask those questions, Texas Hope 2010 was beginning, and it just seemed like a good fit to emphasize this for Focus.” 

Stephanie Gates, interim BSM director at the University of North Texas, noted her students joined with three other collegiate ministries to have a weekend of worship and ministry in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Jennifer Williams, a student at Amarillo College, hugs children at the ackyard Bible Club the Baptist Student Ministry at Amarillo College held in Eastridge, a low-income, multicultural neighborhood in Amarillo. Other members of the group painted a house, ministered at a widow’s banquet and hosted a missions awareness night as part of the BGCT Focus Hope collegiate weekends. (PHOTO/Justin Adams)

As the 60 students spent Saturday helping paint a house, working at a Habitat for Humanity store and delivering furniture to international students, many were stretched to become more vocal in sharing their faith, she said.


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“I saw one of my students who worked at Habitat who said she was amazed at how easy it was to talk to people” about the gospel, Gates said. “Some of the students were able to talk to other volunteers who were there to work off prison hours. They asked why we were there, and we were able to explain we were there because Jesus loves them. It was neat to see them discover that it isn’t hard to have a spiritual conversation with someone.”

When rain thwarted block-party plans of the BSM at Texas A&M Kingsville, students delivered the block party door-to-door.

“God changed our plans,” said Mike Cervantes, director of the Texas A&M Kingsville BSM. “We went old-school and walked door-to-door, passing out hot dogs and sharing the message of Jesus. Before we knew it, we had kids praying through neighborhoods and sharing the message of the cross. One student noticed every home they went to had people who were critically ill in some way. They quickly began to realize it was not a coincidence, but they were all divine appointments.”

The Stephen F. Austin State University BSM joined three other schools to partner with local ministries in delivering multimedia gospel compact discs that provide the New Testament in more than 300 languages.

Stephanie Williams and Justin Barrett with the University of Texas at Dallas Baptist Student Ministry help paint the interior of a house during a Focus Hope weekend. The UTD BSM joined with three other BSMs for a weekend of worship and service during Sept. 11-13. (PHOTO/ Stephanie Gates)

“I hope that they just catch a sense of getting involved and not just being complacent and content just to go to class,” said BSM Director Gary Davis. “I hope they not only see the need from other organizations and the need to go and serve, but they see ways they can get involved, help out and not just be students, but be servants as well. I think that came across, and they are trying to do that.”

Other groups saw changes internally as community was built and students refocused their relationships with Christ. Taylor Davies, director of the Amarillo College BSM, said he saw this happen in his students.

“I think they put themselves in a place where they wanted to hear God’s call for missions in their lives,” Davies said.

“I know God spoke to several of them. There were two students who joined us who weren’t believers. As they spent time in community, I think God spoke to them and showed them his heart for them, and they since have become believers.”

Brittany Vargas, a sophomore biology major at Amarillo College and one of the students who began a relationship with Christ, said her decision to follow Christ and participate in Focus Hope was partly from BSM students and staff consistently loving her and showing her how they were in love with Christ.

“After I heard about Focus Hope, I told myself that I would go there with the intention of finding something that will give me enough strength to help be become a better person again,” Vargas said.

“It wasn’t until the whole thing was over and we went back the BSM and had a mission fair that I realized I did want to commit my life to Christ and become a better person. I’ve never in my life been so in love with Christ. They have rubbed off on me. I am really in a different place now.”

Twenty-two Focus Hope weekends have been completed, and another 12 are scheduled to take place by the beginning of November. As students participate in the remaining weekends, Ashcraft hopes to see students take what they learn and transplant it into their daily lives.

“I think our No. 1 hope is that people will be served—whether that is through helping a church care for elderly members through cleaning a yard or painting, or helping a church host a block party,” Ashcraft said.

“I want college students involved in ministry to Texas. I think sometimes missions is so seen as something that happens in another country and somewhere else.

“Whether we see ourselves as missionaries or not, we need to see our responsibility as right around us. And I think that these Focus Hope weekends help with that.”

 

 


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