The local BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministry) at Francis Marion University sponsored an event called Love Hate that was an evangelistic tool for sharing the gospel via an open discussion forum where students could talk about the important issues they face during their college years.The event lasted for a week starting on Wednesday, March 21st and ended with a big group meeting on Tuesday, March 27th. BCMers spent the first part of the Love/Hate week posting flyers around campus, putting up white boards on which people could write about what they loved/hated on various topics (including school, friends, family, Christianity, and religion), and wearing t-shirts with the Love/Hate slogan printed on them.
Heather-Grace Brown and Joedy Cook, two BCMers, said that they were able to talk with a student who is an atheist. Heather-Grace said, “He started asking us some hard questions, and even asking us why Christianity was better than Buddhism and other religions. We were able to share our faith, and tell him that Christianity was better because of Jesus. Another thing that he told us was that he did not want to serve God because he thought that God was selfish. He said that God only wanted His followers to worship Him, and never wanted them to do something for their fellow man. At that point we were able to tell him that, yes, we are called to worship God, but we worship God through a lot of the things we do. He had told us previously that he thought the Love/Hate thing was really cool, and it really helped a lot of people at the school. We were able to tell him that through things like Love/Hate, we not only help others, but those kinds of things are, in a huge way, how we worship God.”
Before the big event on Tuesday, BCM students reviewed the comments and invited other Christian students to write apologies about the things that people “hated” about Christianity. On the night of the big event, the students who had written the apologies stood up in the crowd and read their apologies in public. Jessie Rasnake, FMU senior nursing student, apologized for not being a good witness of Christ’s life. She said, “I’m sorry that most times in life I don’t follow Christ’s example for how we should live life because I choose to do it my way and continue to profess His name to the fullest and tell others to use Him as an example when I don’t always follow His example myself. I’m so sorry.” Jessie says that she wrote her apology in response to one of the statements on the Love/Hate boards that said, “I hate that you Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Jessie says, “It was the harshest one I saw, and the bad part is that I knew that I had caused statements like that in some part. I just felt so humbled to know that I sin and who am I to ask someone to follow a Christ that I don’t follow myself. Who am I to tell someone they are missing out on something so great when I don’t live like it’s that great?”
There have been many open doors to sharing the gospel with students, and even a professor, because of this event. One girl accepted Christ the night of the service and another rededicated her life to Christ. One professor who said he had grown up as a Christian but had fallen away from church, had lots of questions about various religions that he discussed with one of the BCM students.
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