I believe New England college campuses are the most strategic mission field in the world. It sounds hyperbolic, but it’s not. It's a fact. There are 20.5 million college students in the United States. Nine hundred seventy thousand of them attend schools in New England.
These schools are some of the best in world: Harvard ... Yale ... Brown ... Dartmouth ... MIT ... Boston College ... Middlebury College ... and the list goes on. New England is full of world-class colleges and universities that leaders around the world entrust their young people to. If we can reach those leaders while they are studying in New England, we can change the world.
It is not just internationals that are sending their students to New England, so are America’s most powerful families. Harvard and Yale have graduated more U. S. Presidents than any other schools in the nation. Just think about how that has allowed those two New England schools to impact America. Equally powerful is the reality that every single current member of the Supreme Court attended law school at Harvard or Yale (even Ruth Ginsburg, who later transferred to Columbia Law School). Let that reality sink in for a moment.
If we want to change America, we must reach our future leaders while they are in college, and since so many of them go to college in New England, that makes the New England college campus the most strategic mission field in the world.
Currently the organization I lead is working on at least 30 different college campuses. Last year our collegiate ministers impacted 9,000 different students and had hundreds of those students enrolled in weekly discipleship groups. We are thankful for other evangelical groups, like Cru, the Navigators and Intervarsity, who are also working on campuses across New England. However, according to our research, 60% of the campuses in New England are have no identifiable gospel witness. This is an unacceptable reality in light of the strategic nature of New England.
Your church can help us change this reality. Through sponsoring a campus ministry, through sending a short-term mission team, through providing scholarships for students to attend one of our two retreats each year, through prayer, through sending one of your own as a campus minister, you can help us reach students, and ultimately the world, with the Gospel of Christ. Will you stand with us?
You can find out more by contacting Andy Haynes at ahaynes@bcne.net. You can donate at http://www.bcne.net/connect/give/baptist-foundation-of-new-england/donate-to-foundation/collegiate-ministry-fund. You can pray any time, all the time, from anywhere. You can make a difference!
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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:
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