On Saturday, Nov. 8, two campus ministries, Met By Love and Kamp Love, joined together to do an evangelism training and outreach.
Met By Love (MBL) is connected to MBL worship, and members at Samford gather on Monday nights to worship and pray.
Kamp Love is another campus ministry that puts on retreats every semester that are a mix of camping, church retreats and summer camp. During the rest of the semester, the ministry continues to put on events to build and foster community.
Rylie Jones, a senior Christian Ministry major, serves on the leadership teams of both organizations and helped to organize the evangelism training. Jones is the worship lead for MBL and the spiritual director for Kamp Love.
“We talked about having a collaboration between MBL and Kamp Love and just connecting those two communities because we all have the same vision and same heart for just seeking Jesus,” she said.
Jones was able to spend her summer doing evangelism and missions through MBL and when she returned to Samford, she had friends in both MBL and Kamp Love wanting to learn more about evangelism and asking for her guidance.
“We figured doing a joint evangelism training and outreach would be a great way to unify the ministries but also meet the needs of people in those communities who want to get trained in them,” Jones said.
The training began at Jones’ house with worship and prayer. 26 people attended and after learning about evangelism and practical ways to start conversations, they split into groups of three and went out to Railroad Park in Birmingham. The groups spent around two hours evangelizing to the people in the park.
Jones’s biggest takeaway was seeing the impact it had on the students who came to evangelize, not just the people they encountered during their outreach.
“Yes, it is always beautiful how God saves and heals, sets free the people that we’re encountering on the streets, but he’s also ministering to the hearts of the people who are being sent out because he cares about our hearts too. So, I think hearing people’s personal testimonies was really marking,” she said.
Jones is hoping to continue these trainings and outreach groups and has already planned another unofficial evangelism outreach in the park for the next weekend. She’s hoping to put on the official groups about once a month.
“The community that formed from this past weekend has been a huge answer to prayer. It’s something I’ve been praying for, especially being back since the summer, of wanting guys and girls to go out with to evangelize,” she said.
In the future, MBL and Kamp Love are planning on combining to do a worship night.
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