By Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor
BATON ROUGE – High school juniors and seniors from across Louisiana joined during Mardi Gras weekend with a Baptist Collegiate Ministries missions team from LSU.
Their destination: Mission Arlington, in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.
It was designed as a Transitions missions trip, said Steve Masters, BCM director at LSU. “Transitions” is the term used with students in their last years of high school and first years of college.
“The goal – besides spending time and sharing Christ with kids, teenagers and adults in Mission Arlington’s multi-housing ministry – is helping students connect with each other and with BCM,” Masters said. “If we can get juniors and seniors connected with BCM when they’re still in high school, we aren’t as apt to lose them in the transition to college.”
Masters said though he knew the timing wouldn’t be right for many youth groups that had already planned their Mardi Gras break activities, he invited 100 youth ministers in the state to participate in the Feb. 13-16 transitions mission trip, in what is designed to be the first of a three-year initial commitment to minister at Mission Arlington during the Mardi Gras break.
Mission Arlington includes 294 congregations in different apartment buildings in the DFW Metroplex, and a multitude of social services. Begun in 1986 as a ministry of First Baptist Church of Arlington, Texas, it grew with its kingdom vision and multiplied evangelism, discipleship and ministry to people untouched by most churches, according to the organization’s website: www.missionarlington.org.
About 35 high school juniors and seniors from four churches signed up for Mission Arlington: Ascension in Prairieville, Woodlawn in Baton Rouge, First Denham Springs, and Calvary Alexandria. They were joined by a dozen LSU BCM students.
While organized by the LSU BCM, the Transitions mission trip wasn’t just for students planning to go to the state’s largest university, Masters said. “What we’re trying to do with this Transitions missions trip is to make high school juniors and seniors aware of BCM so that no matter where they go to college, they’ll check out a local BCM.”
A recent study from LifeWay Christian Resources indicated that at least seven out of 10 students drop out of church by the time they graduate from high school, said Kevin Boles, the Louisiana Baptist Convention’s Youth Ministry Strategist. Still more students drop out after graduation, he added.
“This is a crucial and critical issue,” Boles said. “After high school, they begin to become engaged in lifestyles that are contrary to what they’ve been taught.
“From a lifestyle issue and a general citizenry issue, it’s contrary to what they’ve been taught and is detrimental to their life,” Boles continued. “What we’ve found is that those students who leave the church, not only are they engaging in non-biblical behavior. They’re at the far end of the extreme: sexually addictive, alternative lifestyles, deviant behaviors. However, mission experiences like the Transitions Mission trip prove to be very compelling in a student’s life and to begin to draw them back to the relationship with Christ they know exists in their life.”
Masters, BCM director at LSU for 19 years, has compiled lists of reasons high school graduates leave church and stay in church.
They’ll be posted in an upcoming issue of the Message, with an article about Transitions, or email Masters for them now at lsubcm@eatel.net.
“Missions to me is one of the big reasons,” Masters said. “The ones who step in and become leaders [in BCM] did mission trips in high school. Missions is one of the top reasons they stay.”
That’s just one more reason the Transitions trip to Mission Arlington is so important, Masters said.
“They’ll have a wide variety of missions opportunities and experiences,” Masters said.
“They’ll know they’re making a difference, even when they’re winning the trust of a kid they’re playing pick-up basketball with, or sitting and visiting with a stressed-out mom.”