The challenges of campus church

This morning the North American Mission Board (NAMB) staff was on the phone live with North American missionary Mike McQuitty, a Baptist Campus Ministry (BCM) director at Syracuse University.

As the town of Syracuse fills with snow and the energy of March Madness, Mike McQuitty describes a college campus dark with an undercurrent of sin and despair.

“College campuses are the greatest missions fields in the world,” says McQuitty. But addiction and mental illness ravage many among the student body, he says. “Please pray for these students.”

Faced with the challenges of a transient mission field as students come and go, McQuitty’s job is to raise up leaders and start new works. The church McQuitty helped start is now student run and student led. 

Transience and change have turned to strengths at Syracuse University. So while bolstering and building the work at Syracuse, he’s also preparing believers who will graduate and enter the mission fields of their careers and vocational ministry.

One student he mentions became a believer through the BCM, and is now an international missionary in a closed country. Similar stories are coming out of Syracuse and dozens of BCM works throughout North America.

To learn more about McQuitty, and the work at Syracuse, visit www.onmission.com.

-Adam Miller