MORE on LARGE Bible Study/Worship Events by Beverly Skinner

 My two previous Blog articles, "Recipe for LARGE College Ministries" and "What about LARGE College Ministries, Baptists, and the Future?" have generated some good discussion.  I mentioned really large worship events built around a dynamic speaker.  The two prime examples many long time college ministry pros remember were Breakaway at Texas A&M with Greg Matte and Choice at Baylor with Louie Giglio. I believe that the "first" of these super large week night Bible study/Worship events was when Dan Yeary was the College Minister/Speaker at First Baptist, Lubbock in the 70's.

Beverly Parrish Skinner was a student at Baylor when Louie Giglio was leading CHOICE and was a Campus Minister at Texas A&M when Gregg Matte was leading Breakaway.   As a result, she has good insight into them and how they relate to campus ministries like BCM.

From Beverly:

Those two ministries were/are very different than what most of us leading BCM are doing.  The only focus of those two ministries was their weekly Bible study.  They weren't trying to do weekly discipleship, missions, or really even student leadership development.  They may have had some of those things, but on a very small scale and it was never intended to include all of the students who attended their ministry.  When I was there, Breakaway hosted a ministries fair every fall to encourage students to get involved in a church and/or campus ministry because they needed more than they would get at Breakaway. (Gregg was a great partner to all of the campus ministries.)  It is much more challenging to grow a large ministry when your focus is on much more than a once-a-week Bible study.  I totally agree with the primary premise though.....it is largely dependent on staff and funding!  

The only way we will reach large campuses.....really any campus....is with staff (or volunteers) who are wholly focused on that campus.

Beverly Parrish Skinner, College Ministry Catalyst, Georgia Baptist Mission Board

Arliss Dickerson's book, Tips for College Freshmen:  124 Tips for Fun, Faith & Good Grades is at Amazon.com/dp/B09QFB9DJ9 and A College Student's Guide to Spiritual Maturity is at Amazon.com/dp/B0CXTCTNB1.