“Everything we do spiritually starts there.” “The most powerful thing we can do is pray,” Kelley said. With gratitude, Kelley pointed to Caskey Center director Mark Tolbert’s encouragement to pray each Monday morning for opportunities that week to share and to ask for an alertness to the spiritual conditions of others. Kelley, a Leavell College student and minister of evangelism at Highland Baptist Church, Gordo, Alabama, said sharing weekly did not feel natural at first. We do the sharing and He takes care of the rest,” Kelley explained. Though Kelley’s conversation did not result in a profession of faith that day, he continues faithfully to share. Steve Kelley, a Leavell College student and Caskey scholarship recipient, logged the 50,000th conversation on September 20. “That means there are over 6,000 new believers because of this evangelism requirement.” “Each semester … we’ve seen approximately 12 percent of those conversations ending up with people coming to faith in Christ,” Farmer said. While 50,000 might seem impressive, Farmer pointed to a “more gratifying” statistic - the number who have come to faith in Christ. The Caskey Center provides resources, including a designated number of scholarships, for bivocational and smaller membership church ministers in Southern Baptist churches in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. “ don’t count conversations with believers. “We’re now over 50,000 times that students have left their comfort zones and have contended for the faith,” Farmer said. Jeff Farmer, Caskey Center associate director and statistician, said each gospel conversation is the result of students becoming intentional in sharing. The point was to lead others to faith.īut seven years into the program, Caskey scholarship recipients recently crossed the mark of 50,000 gospel conversations. Counting gospel conversations was never the end goal for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College’s Caskey Center scholarship program that requires students to share the gospel weekly.
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