In an effort to connect with one of the largest unreached people groups in the United States – university students – Southeastern focused on the theme “Reclaiming the Academy for Christ” during its annual Board of Visitors meetings October 15-16.

The Board of Visitors, which exists to support the institution through financial aid and other forms of support, meets twice a year to stay up-to-date with how God is working through the institution. During the recent gatherings, leaders of prominent college ministries spoke about the challenges students face today in regards to their faith. A record number gathered for the Monday evening banquet that served as the keynote for the event, with 240 people in attendance. By comparison, the banquet in April of 2007 saw 160 people in attendance.

“It is rare occasion indeed when certain people, events and opportunities converge to create a sense of ‘making history,’” said Dennis Darville, Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Southeastern. “When Southeastern gathered for its most recent Board of Visitor's meeting, virtually everyone knew a move of God was afoot. The mission to reclaim the academy for Christ far outstretched mere rhetoric.”

The biggest obstacle college students face against their Christian faith is the opposing worldview of secular humanism, said Lee Sullens, campus minister with Baptist Campus Ministries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“The predominant religion of college students is secular humanism,” Sullens said. “They say that instead of God creating man, man has created God.” He said in this worldview, everything is morally relativistic and there is no point or purpose to life. “It’s the antithesis of Christianity.”

“We’ve been silent long enough. It’s time to fight for the hearts and minds of our students,” Sullens said.

Southeastern alumnus Jeremy Chasteen, Associate Pastor and College Pastor at Crosspoint Church in Clemson, S.C., also spoke vehemently about the need to reclaim the academies for Christ. His church, situated strategically close to the center of the campus of Clemson University, said the key is to faithfully teach the Bible.

“That is our niche at Clemson,” Chasteen said, “not the bells and whistles…Theology drives our methodology, not vice versa.”

Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern, said, “We’re trying to keep together the beautiful balance of head and heart, theology and missions.”

“Our culture is largely the way it is because we’ve lost the campuses. If America is to be reclaimed it will not be apart from reclaiming our campuses,” Darville said. “There is not merely a desire to see college students come to a saving knowledge of Christ, but there is a passionate desire to see universities restored to their heritage of teaching all the disciplines from within a Christian worldview.”

David Nelson, senior vice president for academic administration, said if Southeastern were to abandon the academies, she would be abandoning the Great Commission.

“(The universities) are great big mission fields. Let me just suggest that we have an opportunity to train students to propose the gospel to the world ‘God so loved,’” he said, in reference to John 3:16.

“This is a world without the gospel. In this world they’re told there is no god, and that they are bodies with brains – not people with souls,” Nelson said.

Southeastern graduate Dave Owen also spoke about the reality of a lost world at the universities. Owen, who is the college pastor at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C., ministers to over 500 college and university students at his church.

“There’s a reality out there, and I want you to feel the weight of this reality,” Owen said. “This problem is massive and intense. So what should we do? If it’s in the Bible, we teach it. (The Bible) penetrates and collides with the secular worldviews. It destroys them.”

All hope is not lost in reaching this generation, all agreed.