College Students Live Out the Gospel of Inclusion

Embracing our neighbors has been the cornerstone of North Carolina Baptist campus ministry for decades. It was student ministry that first engaged in summer missions back in the 1940s. The goal was to put the enthusiasm of young Christians in places where they could offer hope and at the same time put the students in situations and locales that would stretch them and help them think about a world different from the one they knew.

Years ago, I interviewed over a 100 campus ministers who had served during the years of the 1940–1980s. Time and time again I heard stories about leadership that modeled and encouraged students to think and live out a gospel of inclusion.

One of those stories concerned the integration of Wake Forest College. From the 1955 Baptist State Convention of North Carolina vote that Baptist colleges should accept students based on merit rather than race, seven years later it finally came to fruition. In the fall of 1962 Edward Reynolds, a Ghanaian student who had been nurtured by Southern Baptist missionaries in Ghana, Africa, became the first student of color admitted to Wake Forest.

That student’s acceptance made Wake Forest College the first private college in the south to integrate. While that was a remarkable feat that took years of pressure on the institutional powers, there were other pragmatic issues that needed to be addressed, like his living arrangements. With that concern on the table, the administration did not ask student services how to handle the situation. They instead went to WFC Assistant Chaplain Ed Christmas and asked him how they should proceed.

We would appreciate your prayers as we try to make important decisions about the following events we had planned for the remainder of 2020. Our Youth Retreat 2020 in partnership with “La Voz de la Esperanza Baptist Church” at Ridgecrest Conference Center that is scheduled August 7–9. And our annual Fall Ministers retreat, which is one of the essential pastoral formation events of the year.

I am thankful to CBFNC for its support offered to the Red Latina ministry. Also, I would like to recognize our leadership

It was Reverend Christman By Wanda Kidd who reached out to seven students he believed would CBFNC Collegiate Engagement Coordinator create a healthy group of students with whom Reynolds could live. Joe Clontz, a rising Junior from Charlotte, was asked to be Reynolds’ roommate. The appeal that the chaplain made to the students was based on an understanding of Christ’s teachings. Unaware of the radical transition they were ushering in, these students responded with typical young adult passion. There are a multitude of stories about inclusion and standing with students of color and other marginalized people in the history of North Carolina Baptist campus ministry. Many of those students in the 60s, became North Carolina Baptist

College Ministry Lives Out the Gospel of Inclusion

Let’s Get to Work!,

continued from page 5.

campus ministers and local pastors. They told stories of inclusion and they modeled compassion. Their leadership raised up another generation of students who saw the world through a lens of Christian kinship.

It is our hope as leaders and students of CBFNC college ministry to continue that legacy and to not just stand up for people of color and other marginalized people, but to stand with them.

As CBFNC Collegiate Ministry is being shaped, we want to embrace our neighbors, but then to go to work to help define not just our calling as beloved children of God, but to throw open the doors with no thresholds to step over.

It is our prayer that others will know that they too are beloved children of God with all of the rights and privileges afforded God’s Children. Pray with us as we live out this calling.

team: Daniel Sostaita (Iglesia Cristiana Sin Fronteras), Fortino Ocampo (Iglesia Bautista Centro Familiar), Rafael Hernandez (First Baptist Church Huntersville) and Julio de Leon (Iglesia Bautista Valle de los Lirios en Durham). I appreciate also the support of women’s leadership included by Elaine Reales, Veronica Gallegos, Emma Hernandez, Pilar Ocampo, and Irene Sostaita. Manos a la Obra—Let’s get to work!