COVINGTON, Ky. (KT) – Jimmy Gilvin didn't set out to invest in college students in multiple pockets of Kentucky, but that's what happened when he advertised Baptist Campus Ministry (BCM) activities on the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) internal social media.
"What I have realized is when I push it on our KCTCS social media—where I was having meetings and what we were doing—I was having people from Winchester, some people from down around Land Between the Lakes and a few other places [were] reaching out to me asking if they could join our meetings," said Gilvin, a bivocational pastor and professor who serves as the Campus Ministry Leader at Gateway Community and Technical College in Covington.
"I didn't realize at the time that I was reaching everybody," he said.
Gilvin emailed out his lessons and followed up with those students, who were enrolled at other KCTCS schools that do not have a BCM on campus. Now, he's developed an online component to the BCM at Gateway, where any student can watch videos of his teaching, download the materials, engage with fellow students on the internal social media platform, and join weekly video meetings via Microsoft Teams.
"I started off with…how to reach the people in Covington that go to Gateway school, and if I could get three or four people to know a little bit more about God, or at least have an interest in God, that'd be great," Gilvin said. "It just kind of spiraled from there."
The BCM group that physically meets on the Gateway campus draws between five and 10 students and faculty/staff members. More students tune in online or engage remotely in different ways.
"My goal is to get students closer to God and send them to a church; that's what I want to do," Gilvin said.
Gateway is one of 12 community college campuses in Kentucky with a BCM presence, but Gilvin said the state's smaller schools are often neglected.
"I think these community colleges are often overlooked because they're non-traditional students. You can have a single mother; you can have a 65-year-old person or a high school student," Gilvin noted. "But I think it's so important that we reach these people because, honestly, the world is rough."
People are physically fed but spiritually starving, and "they need to know that there's something out there, that they could be nourished spiritually, and their souls need to be fed," he said.
There are over 35 KCTCS campuses that lack a BCM outreach, including places like Jefferson Community Technical College and Maysville Community and Technical College—both of which are represented by students who have connected with Gilvin online. Over 70,000 students currently attend KCTCS schools statewide.
Tommy Johnson, the regional campus minister group leader at the Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC), said BCM is at work on 35 of Kentucky's 130 campuses, including eight primary state university campuses and 27 other campuses where local KBC churches or associations lead the work.
"Our goal is to move to 40, then 50, and then 60 campuses with BCM work," Johnson said.
While the KBC provides a 12-month startup grant for Campus Ministry Leaders like Gilvin, Johnson said the strategy for ongoing gospel witness includes local churches and associations.
"The aim is for the church or association to continue that work through the leadership of the Campus Missionary Leader," Johnson explained. "We desire and need churches and associations to adopt a college campus as one of their mission fields."
"I would love to have people from every association working with someone at their local KCTCS college, or at the very least working with the online portion," Gilvin said. "These students are very underserved in these areas. I really would like to see this grow and thrive."
Gateway's BCM, like all campus ministries sprinkled throughout the state, needs local churches that are willing to support and invest in the ministry. That involvement can come in many forms: prayer, providing food for weekly meetings, buying Bibles and study materials, and showing up to serve.
"Churches can get involved in so many ways with BCM work in Kentucky, from prayer walking a campus to providing Bibles for ministry, bringing welcome meals for outreach events, assisting with spring break mission trips, hosting international students for a meal, and adopting a campus to help establish a new BCM," Johnson said.
