Louisville—From painting the ceiling of Jefferson Street Baptist Center to installing water purification systems in the Dominican Republic, 19 Kentucky college students had anything but a typical summer.

These students were part of the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s first-ever 1:8 Leadership Experience, a summer program designed to combine missions work with leadership training.

“We wanted to take direct ownership of training student leaders across the state so that when they go back to their schools they can play key roles in their churches and schools,” noted Keith Inman, KBC’s director of collegiate and young adult ministries.

Preparing students for leadership through discipleship is central to the KBC’s approach to college ministry, he emphasized.

In prior summers, the KBC divided groups of students up into “Son Teams” for local and international missions work. Inman said the 1:8 Leadership Experience has replaced that program as a more effective way to train students and oversee their personal development.

Following the missions model presented in Acts 1:8 of taking the gospel to “Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” Inman said the 1:8 Leadership Experience is designed to prepare students for ministry at the local, national and international levels.

“We wanted to provide an intentional discipleship and leadership experience, but at the same time have students be actively involved in ministry throughout the summer,” he explained. “Many of these students are also planning on going on to do vocational ministry. This is preparation for all of that.”

Students participating in Baptist Campus Ministry programs at universities across the state were hand selected for the Leadership Experience last fall.

Nineteen students formed the inaugural group, representing Campbellsville University, University of the Cumberlands, Georgetown College, University of Louisville, University of Kentucky, Western Kentucky University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Eastern Kentucky University and Morehead State University.

The group was led by Daniel Freeman, team director for the 1:8 Leadership Experience and campus ministry intern at EKU, along with his wife, Heidi.

Freeman noted that over the course of the summer, the students served at Louisville’s Jefferson Street Baptist Center Hope Project, landscaped at Refuge in Kentucky Church in Louisville, practiced street evangelism throughout the city, helped with four vacation Bible schools at churches in the downtown area, and carried out two water purification projects in the Dominican Republic.

The group served four days at Jefferson Street, working on a variety of service projects while also engaging the guests in conversation.

“Our primary ministry there was to sit down with people and talk to them,” Freeman recalled. “We had a lot of really good conversations and a lot of our students got to pray with different people they met.”

The evangelistic and service work was combined with a variety of discipleship sessions led by ministerial, business and political leaders, Freeman noted.

Chuck Lawless, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, taught a session on evangelism and spiritual warfare. John Barron, campus minister at EKU, and his wife, Elaina, spoke on relationships and purity, while Tommy Johnson, campus minister at Western Kentucky, covered the topic of discipleship.

During the evenings of one week, the group interacted with people on the streets of Louisville in an effort to reach them with the gospel. Tyler Elam, a senior at Morehead State University, had an extended conversation with a man named David.

“There was a guy holding a sign at a stoplight and the Holy Spirit convicted me,” Elam recalled. “I got a bag of food at Wendy’s and took it out to him. He told me that he had been raised Jehovah’s Witness and I talked about Jesus with him and asked if I could pray for him.”

During a missions trip to the Dominican Republic in early July, the group installed two water purifiers, one at a church and another at a school, and also led health education classes.

Toward the end of the program, each student delivered a 10-15 minute presentation about what they learned and how they could take it back to their respective campuses, Freeman said.

By combining service and evangelistic opportunities with discipleship training from experienced leaders, Freeman explained that the 1:8 Leadership Experience is equipping students to make a difference on their college campuses.

“What is beneficial about this program is that instead of it being solely a trip that gives them fun memories and cool experiences, we are teaching them how to be leaders by incorporating ministry experience with different speakers who are giving them the tools to be able to be a good leader and take that back to their campus,” he said.