Pursue conference aims to help students understand God’s plan, purpose

Pursue conference aims to help students understand God’s plan, purpose

The recent Pursue conference had a lot of great sessions, great music and great speakers, Chris Mills said — including Olympic diver David Boudia. The theme — “My Place in His Purpose” — was communicated well through the messages, he said.

Having conversations

But even so, the thing that Mills said got him the most excited didn’t happen in the worship center or the breakout sessions themselves.

It happened in the hallways.

“The highlight for me was getting to overhear students in their conversations with missionaries from all over the world and hearing the questions they were asking,” said Mills, state missionary with a focus on collegiate ministry for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM). “So many were asking good questions — for instance, if they were interested in videography, they were asking about ways they could use that to serve through missions work.”

Pursue, held Feb. 17–18 at First Baptist Church, Montgomery, gathered around 650 college students and young adults from across the state to explore the different ways God might be calling them to serve Him with their lives, according to state missionary Mike Nuss, director of SBOM’s office of collegiate and student ministries.

“From the beginning, our desire was to help folks at Pursue understand that God does have a plan and purpose for their lives and that their plan — who they are, what they’re studying, what they hope to become — really can sync up with God’s plan and have life-changing, Kingdom-impacting consequences,” Nuss said. “In the end it’s up to us to be willing to use our education, career plans, skills and passion for His service.”

And by the end of the weekend a number of students had followed through, completing and turning in applications to serve as summer missionaries and sending Mills texts and emails with follow-up questions.

Mobilization event

“My prayer, my desire for the weekend has been that God would use it as a key mobilization event for students around the state,” he said. “And we’re seeing that already happening even just a few days after.” (TAB)