Ministry comes to campus

"I pray for my ministry to be bolder on campus and to be willing to push themselves outside of their comfort zone," Jovi, a college student, wrote on a prayer request board. As some Boston College students flocked to the hockey game on Friday night, a smaller group from across New England gathered together in worship. This weekend, Black Campus Ministries (BCM) held their 18th Annual Intercollegiate Conference on the BC campus.

The Multicultural Christian Fellowship paired with BCM to bring the conference to BC. It gathered students from campuses across New England. "We had a lot of new campuses [here] that we haven't had before," said Rev. Virginia Ward, New England director of BCM.

The conference began Friday evening in the Gasson rotunda with a worship service conducted by Kadeem Messiah, CSOM '12, and a message from Reverend Ward. Ward quoted a Bible passage from Samuel 3:1-10 that related to the theme of the conference: "Speak to my heart."

"We're giving God permission to speak to us, specifically God speaking to us regarding our campuses," Ward said. Also at the service were students who attended a national BCM conference in Atlanta in 2008. These students shared their experiences from the conference with the other attendees on Friday.

Saturday morning the students at the conference started the day off early at the School of Theology and Ministry on the Brighton campus with numerous workshops. During the first session, students attended a workshop on leadership and how to lead a campus ministry. "Two campus volunteers shared with the students, 'How do you actually lead the program?'" Ward said.

Included in the first session was a section titled "How Does Ethnic Specific Ministry Fit into God's Picture of the Kingdom?"

"Some black students don't have enough to have their own chapter and instead belong to multi-ethnic chapters," Ward said. That is, if they even have a chapter at all. At Amherst College there is no existing multi-ethnic chapter of the Intervarsity Christian fellowship.

The final workshop in the first session was one titled "Hearing God's Voice For My Life," which focused on students finding a way to see the plan that God has for their lives and how to understand that plan.

The second round of workshops included three sections as well, but one stood out in particular - "We Wrestle Not Against Flesh and Blood."

"I think the main thing that we talked about was the mind," Messiah said. "We have so much running through our mind on a regular basis that we have to take back control of our mind."

The students reviewed ways Intervarsity can help them reach out to other students as part of another workshop. "The three G's: gigs, groups, God," Ward said. Intervarsity has interactive groups that people can attend, and the purpose of these groups is to help people find God on campus.

"We really want God to move to us and speak to us and speak through us because this is going to leave a deposit of who God is and how he works on [the BC] campus," Messiah said. "Now we have some momentum." He said that his hope for this conference is that it will serve to open the minds of students and intensify spirituality on New England campuses. "We as Christians want to be a stability, and the only way that can happen is in us first," Messiah said.

The students at the conference were also included in planning for next year's BCM conference. "We don't want to sit down as adults and say this is what the students want," Ward said. "We plan to take their ideas and just make them happen."

"I think [the conference] was very successful," Ward said. The students filed upstairs and stood with other students from their respective states. The attendees were then commissioned to go back to their campuses and share their experiences. "Just walking in with the victory of Jesus Christ and now sacrificing ourselves so that this campus and the campuses in New England and across the nation can be touched by Jesus Christ," Messiah said.

Following the service was a dinner for those at the conference to sit back from intense discussion and enjoy each others' company before they returned to carry out their commissioning. "We just pray that we be right first before He does whatever He wants on our campus," Messiah said.