This is a Guest Post by Jonathan Yarboro, Collegiate Team Leader in North Carolina, No Campus Left and Chair of The Planting Team of BCNet (Baptist Collegiate Network).
The Bible boldly and definitively states that not everyone who hears the gospel message will respond affirmatively by deciding to follow Jesus. But it is equally as clear on ur mandate to take the gospel message to everyone. We should be driven by a passion to give every single college student an opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel.
In 2007, I was leading a campus ministry at Appalachian State University in Boone. That was the year that people far removed from the North Carolina High Country were zealously discussing Appalachian State. It had nothing to do with me. The discussion stemmed from the shock surrounding a now-famous football game on September 1. It was the day that the App State Mountaineers beat the Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor to go down in history as one of the greatest college football upsets in history. The significance of this even guarantees that every Michigan fan reading this is considering moving on to another article right now.
It was an exciting day for those of us connected to Jerry Moore's Mountaineers. I won't deny that. But for the purpose of this article, I want to look at that day from Michigan's vantage point. Michigan fans were shocked (App fans were, too; don't let them fool you!), but they were also embarrassed. Here are some reasons why:
- It was the very first game broadcast on the then-new Big Ten Network.
- It was only the second time in history that a FCS team had beaten a nationally ranked (5th) FBS team.
- The defeat resulted in Michigan dropping out of the AP Poll altogether.
- It was the first time in history that a top five team dropped out entirely as a result of one game.
- The had doled out $400,000 to App State.
People will argue all over the place about the intricacies of the game, and I'm not going to get into all that. The primary issue is that Michigan failed to prepare. both coach Carr and the team neglected to do a reality check. App went into Ann Arbor ranked number on the FCS, with two back-to-back national championships under their belt, and a 14-game winning streak. Maybe it was a fluke; but App State was accustomed to winning and came in determined to do just that. The Wolverines underestimated the Mountaineers based on some bad assumptions.
My point is simply this: failure to look at reality, or a determination to continue in our assumptions, can lead to devastation. In our ministry context, such a mistake can lead to eternal consequences.
In an effort to face reality and eschew the possibility of misplaced assumptions, the Planting Team of Baptist Collegiate Network (BCNet) has begun an initiative to determine the Fifty Spiritually Darkest Campuses in North America. The project is designed to identify these fifty campuses based on widespread gospel accessibility. We have enlisted the help of a seasoned researcher and people group mapper to lift out what is essentially the darkest 1%. The first step in the research process is to examine all 5,000+ campuses in the U.S. and Canada to determine which ones have absolutely no gospel presence at all. The project has no prejudice of ministry model. A gospel presence can be a parachurch campus ministry, a denominational collegiate ministry, a collegiate church, or a church-based collegiate ministry. If a campus has any of these, it is immediately eliminated as we are only looking for campuses that are completely unengaged with the gospel. The project is also no respecter of classifications; we are looking at residential campuses and commuter campuses, community colleges and regional universities, state-supported universities and private colleges. Every campus has students who don't know Jesus.
Once those campuses with no gospel presence have been identified, we will then look at gospel accessibility by evaluating two variables:
1. Density: How many students are on the campus?
2. Accessibility: How many churches are within a 10-mile radius of the campus?
DENSITY
This variable simply determines how many students are on the campus. How vast is the pool of students we are studying? More students equate a greater sense of urgency.
ACCESSIBILITY
This variable determines how accessible the gospel is to the students on a given campus by recording the number of evangelical churches near the campus. This is not about measuring how effective (or ineffective) these churches are at reaching the campus; rather the purpose is simply to determine how easily a student can access the gospel message.
The initiative is one step in an effort to catalyze the strategic movement of resources traditionally hoarded by churches, denominational entities, and Christian networks in the South to the mission fields that continue to live in famine in other parts of North America. The initiative holds up a end goal of starting gospel ministry on the campuses that are currently the most gospel-destitute. The reality is that if we do not find out where the need is and, in turn, spotlight the need on those campuses, no one will go. If students are to have a chance to hear and respond to the gospel, we need missionaries to go.
Personally, I look forward to seeing the results of this study in June so that I can join the rest of the BCNet Planting Team in efforts to champion the mobilization of teams to take the gospel where it is most needed on our continent. I hope you will join me in praying for the projects and for the campuses that the project will ultimately identify as the fifty spiritually darkest campuses in North America.
Jonathan Yarboro
Collegiate Team Leader in North Carolina, No Campus Left
(The Planting Team of BCNet is Josh Hyde of The Bridge Church in North Carolina, Lucas Aube of Encounter Student Ministries in Quebec, Barry Sproles of Campus Church in Florida, and Kimberly Simpson of The Point Church in Vancouver, and Jonathan Yarboro of the No Campus Left Team in North Carolina.
The following entities have given financial gifts to make this projet possible: Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, Kentucky Baptist Convention, Ohio Baptist Convention, Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and Baptist Collegiate Network.
The Georgia Baptist Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, Lifeway, and the International Mission Board have contributed data to use as a starting place in the research project.)
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