BLACKSBURG, Va. — Across the months of January and February, student leaders from Baptist Collegiate Ministries at Virginia Tech utilized the arts, interactive experiences and children’s stickers to engage their peers with the message of the transforming power of Christ.
Sophomore Jack Hughes developed a portrait that transformed weekly, moving from a dark and ominous scene to the face of Christ.
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Hokies have gathered at the BCM Center at Tech for student-led worship each Tuesday for decades, but these worship experiences took them outside the worship center and onto the campus.
For six weeks, the BCM centered its attention on various pictures of transformed life from Romans 12, such as loving enemies, finding a place in the Body of Christ and dealing with pride.
Each week involved many of the normal elements of BCM’s weekly gatherings, but students added some less conventional experiences into the mix along the way.
Jack Hughes, a sophomore from King George, developed a portrait that changed weekly, moving from a dark and ominous scene to the face of Christ. The portrait was on display each week in the worship center. For the last week in the series, Hughes shared his own testimony of the transforming power of Christ and what the experience of preparing the portrait in its various stages had meant to him.
Student leaders transformed two rooms of the building into an interactive worship experience entitled “[Re]think: Loving your enemies.” Various stations in the rooms gave students the opportunity to process at their own pace the call to love one’s enemies. Among the stations was a “Will you be the one to cast the stone?” section with verses about forgiveness and not passing judgment as well as a hanging collage of pictures that included controversial figures and enemy stereotypes paired with guided prayers.
April Uebel, Virginia Baptist Venturer and BCM staff member, said the experience exceeded her expectations in both quality and in student response.
Senior Ashley Hurst reads the “Love Your Enemies” proxy station banners.
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“The students involved in putting the experience together did an amazing job of creating a quality, substance-filled experience,” she said. “On top of that, Taylor [Terrill, the project leader] did a great job of pulling everything together to make it cohesive. Leading up to the experience I heard a lot of students express some apprehensiveness about what it was all about but afterward I had great conversations with students about it.”
Carlie Wallace, a junior from First Baptist Church of Newport News, organized two days of what students call a “proxy station,” which are interactive displays on campus designed to get discussions going about the truths of Christianity. These stations also were designed around the theme of “Loving Your Enemy.”
The display included large banners with survey questions that related to the theme. Passersby would “vote” their opinion by placing colorful stickers in various multiple choice answers and continuums.
Wallace said the displays achieved their purpose, which was “…to help Christians process sharing their faith and engaging people in conversations about faith, listening for where people are in their faith walk.”
“A lot of people liked the idea of communicating about that kind of love,” said Wallace, “but often they didn’t seem to think Christians are doing too good of a job of living out that idea. So many of them have been hurt by someone in the church, and they generalize that all people connected with churches are like their bad experience. We hoped that in these conversations we can give them hope that this is not true and that Jesus’ love has a lot to say to them today.”
Darrell Cook is Baptist campus minister at Virginia Tech.