{COVER SECTION}

Students prepare the soil for church planting

By Ann-Margret Hovsepian

W

hen six Appalachian State University (Boone, North Carolina) students signed up for the

Parachute Project last summer in Los Angeles, none of them were sure what to expect. Looking back now, they see an indelible mark left by the experience— not only in their own lives but in the lives of people they encountered during the trip.

Campus Minister Jonathan Yarboro was excited when he heard about the new NAMB church-

planting strategy and pulled together a team of six students he felt were ready to mobilize. “My role with Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) at ASU involves helping students view themselves as missionaries on campus while they’re here,” he says. “There are more than 16,000 students in the school, but fewer than 1,000 are connected to a ministry or church.” The Parachute Project—so called because the

idea is to equip participants and then “drop” them into strategic locations—grew out of Current, the Canadian National Baptist Convention’s existing

ON MISSION • Summer 2010 23

PHOTO BY JOHN SWAIN Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40