Denton: Hard times, hard hearts

The Baptist Student Ministry serves free lunch on Wednesdays. Each week, a different church provides the food and helps serve hundreds of students on campus.

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Some days serving at the University of North Texas are just plain hard.

It’s not the kind of morally conservative Christian campus I knew at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.

It seems most students do not care about God or want to engage in spiritual conversations—not because they don’t see the reason for believing in God, but because they really just don’t care. However, I am learning when you make the conversation about meeting their needs and hearing about their lives, the Holy Spirit moves.

denton speakerThe Baptist Student Ministry serves free lunch on Wednesdays. Each week, a different church provides the food and helps serve hundreds of students on campus. Each week, new faces come in for the first time.

I greet students at the door. So, I am the first person students see when they walk into the BSM. Truthfully, I love that I get to be the first smiling face. My goal is to make them feel welcomed, but that isn’t always an easy task. Most students at UNT are always looking for the hidden agenda. They want to know: “Why they feeding us?” or “What’s the catch?”

It never fails that I have to convince a student it’s OK—it’s just a hot dog or just a taco salad. It’s funny to think they are so scared to accept food because they might be told something they do not want to hear.

I did not understand at first, but then I remembered my life before Christ. I thought what I was being taught was crazy. I thought it was foolishness. I thought that it was not a life for me, but then I met Jesus.

In the story of the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus meets the people’s physical needs and because that need was met, they began to trust him. This trust led to conversations with Jesus and ultimately coming to know him as Savior and Lord.

Free lunch is one of the easiest and hardest days of my job. I can easily have conversations with unbelievers, but those conversations are hard. However, they produce fruit. Students are presented with Jesus each week through various ways, but first we meet their physical need. The Lord uses free lunch to bring people to himself and the students of UNT are shown Jesus.


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Lauren McKee, a graduate of the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, is serving as a campus missionary at the University of North Texas in Denton with Go Now Missions.


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