BCM Testimony--Denis Bergeron

Left to right: Shana, Brittany, Denis, Rebekah, Erica

My name is Denis Bergeron and I am an alumni of the BCM at USC, class of 2007. I come from a Catholic home and I am still a Catholic today. In high school I went to a Catholic church but attended youth group at a Presbyterian church more than my own church, mainly because all my friends did. I considered myself a christian, but looking back I don't think I knew what it meant to be a christian at the time. I was having fun with friends and hanging out with them, while doing missions and local work. BCM showed me what it is to be christian and that what I did through BCM was more important than the people, yet I couldn't help making friends that will be by my side all my life.

When I came to USC as a freshman, I was all but alone. I wanted to meet new people instead of just extending my high school life. I found out how easy it was to fall in with the wrong crowds. I knew I wasn't who I wanted to be and I was way off God's path for me but I was trying to fit in and like a lot of people, I made poor choices. About half way through my sophomore year I was invited to BCM by a classmate and I went a few times. I was't sure about it and felt weird going at first. But, very soon, I found myself getting involved in as much as I could. Everyone was very welcoming and normal. My thoughts before were that an organization like BCM would be full of weird and judgmental people, but I was very wrong. I was doing bible studies, ministries, outreach, sports, and making friends at the same time. I finally felt on the right track. As time went on I got into leadership at BCM. Everyone has their talents and I got the chance to use mine just like everyone there does. There is no pressure to be a leader or to be anything other than a member. Yet, I guarantee everyone who decides to give it a shot would want to be as involved as they can.

BCM helped me become the person I am today, and I can't imagine not being part of it and I am afraid of what I would have been without it. I will carry what I learned at BCM for the rest of my life, and I try to apply it everyday. I want to thank you for making BCM available to me and so many others. It isn't just some on campus club, but so much more to so many people and more to come.

Thank you,

Denis Bergeron

USC-Columbia

Class of 2007



Now, more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.


Please share your testimony with us by emailing testimony@thankyoubcm.com

BCM Testimony--Dr. Dan Morgan

To Whom It May Concern (and it ought to concern everyone)

I am a missionary in Canada. I train church planters and work on national strategy for the Canadian National Baptist Convention. We depend on God-called students, discipled and trained by BCMs to come alongside our planters to give them the extra people-power needed to advance the Kingdom through the establishing of their church. I know not all BCMs are the same, so let me clarify the kind of BCM that is essential to us.

There are BCM directors who are not concerned to just preserve a student’s loyalty to the SBC, however shallow their commitment to Christ, but they are passionate to take unbelieving students and young believing students on a journey toward Christlikeness. These BCMs help young followers of Christ learn to sacrifice for the King and band together for the extension of the Kingdom. Those ministries consistently send us teams of students that “knock it out of the park.” When a student serves in Canada, there is a some likelihood that God will call them back to us to serve as an adult. If they stay in their home state, they will enter a church as a laborer, not just a religious consumer. They are the future core groups of the new church plants we hope to start all over North America.

Beyond my area of church planting, university ministry forms the “R&D” department of the SBC. It is there that we learn how to win each new generation to Christ. It has been true for my entire ministry that some of our most effective pastors and church planters among young career professionals learned how to minister to the generation they reach by serving on a campus ministry team. It would be tragic to abandon campus ministry because it is not explicitly involved in starting new churches right now. Campus ministry that is focused on evangelism and discipleship is our investment in future evangelism, discipleship, and church planting.

Finally BCM, when rightly focused, is essential in identifying and developing rising young leaders who will carry the SBC into the future. We cannot wait until a person graduates, finds their career, marries, dabbles with other purposes and finally decides to give their all to the church. It takes a long time to raise up a godly leader, we have to start in university. Because the university is its own community, somewhat isolated from the surrounding world, the local church cannot usually do as good a job as a campus-centered ministry in reaching students and turning them into serving disciples. We need the BCM presence.

For all the above,

Thank you to the leaders who have sacrificed to make BCM what it is today

Sincerely,

Dan Morgan

Professor of Church Planting – CSBS&C

National Strategist – CNBC


Now, more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.

Please share your testimony with us by emailing testimony@thankyoubcm.com

BCM Testimony--Bobby Wood

Left to right: Bobby Wood, Todd Davis, Rob Foy, and Wright Culpepper

God used BCM tremendously in my life in college at the USC. For me college was that time in my life where I went through a questioning process of everything I believed and the motivating purposes to my life were.

Through BCM, I found a group of loving individuals and a Christ-centered leadership that helped me through that process. I was a chemical engineering major at the time thinking about making a good deal of money when I left college, but God changed that. Through BCM, I decided to do a summer missions project and got sent to Burley, Idaho. God showed me that He wanted me to devote my life to ministry.

I went to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary when I graduated college and am now a youth pastor in Layton, Utah. God used the campus ministers and BCM to GREATLY influence my life.

I'm very grateful and appreciative for BCM! I hope their ministry continues on USC's campus for years to come!

Bobby Wood

USC-Columbia

Class of 2006


Now, more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.

Please share your testimony with us by emailing testimony@thankyoubcm.com

BCM Testimony--Laura Stribling

Laura Stribling is a 2007 graduate of the University of South Carolina. Laura submits her testimony to explain how important BCM was in her life.

Now, more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.

Please share your testimony with us by emailing testimony@thankyoubcm.com

BCM Testimony--Elizabeth Thomas

Front: Elizabeth Thomas, Kendra Joyner

My name is Elizabeth Thomas and I'm an alum of BCM at USC, class of 2005. Growing up I knew BCM as BSU. You see, both of my parents were involved with BSU in the 70s and actually met through BSU. I knew from a young age that this organization was important to both of them, as they frequently (and still do) get together with people from BSU days. In fact, one of my dad's friends from BSU is more like an uncle to my brother and me than my dad's brothers.
 
Starting at USC my freshman year, I knew I'd try out BCM to see if I wanted to get involved. The first moment I walked in I felt welcome and loved. I had known who Jane was growing up as she was Woody Hammett's assistant when my parents were in school. Not only was I welcomed by Jane, but felt right at home with the other students involved. They took me in, loved me, encouraged me, trained me, challenged me, supported me and allowed my faith to grow in ways I never thought it would. I served in leadership, participated in outreach projects, missions, Bible studies, fellowship, retreats and served twice as a summer missionary, one being one week and the other 10 weeks. I feel that those four years of college challenged and developed my faith like no other experience has. My closest friends even now are from my BCM days. I learned how important it is to serve the Lord wherever you might be and how important it is to be involved with a fellowship of believers(church). I also learned how important it is to love and welcome people no matter what you think about them. I do not know, and actually am scared to think where I would be today if I had not been involved with BCM.
 
Thank you for allowing such a ministry to be available for the most formidable years of my life. And thank you for being there even back in the 1970s, allowing my parents to cross paths. Today BCM is needed more than ever to show Christ to those young adults who are searching for something to fill that hole.

Thanks,
Elizabeth Thomas
USC-Columbia
Class of 2005

Now, more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.

Please share your testimony with us by emailing testimony@thankyoubcm.com

BCM Testimony--Sarah Vick

First of all, thank you so much for starting this campaign. BSU/BCM has meant so much to my life, I cannot even fathom the thought of it being gone!

When I went to college at North Greenville I didn’t know anyone there. BSU(as we called it) became my place. I met so many wonderful people, and grew in my faith more than I ever have in my life. When I started at NGU, I was a Christian, but I was not very strong in my faith. In my hometown I didn’t have any Christian friends to encourage me. In fact, shortly before I left for school I tried to witness to my four closest friends from high school. I told them that I didn’t want to “play” church anymore or be fake. I had decided that if I was going to claim to be a Christian that it was time for me to start really living it, and stop living on the fence. I was very painfully told by each of them that they didn’t want anything to do with Christianity, and they didn’t want anything to do with me either. This was so hurtful! They had been my best friends all throughout high school, and now since I had decided to give Christ my whole life, they didn’t want anything to do with me! I will never forget New Year’s Eve that year when all of them went to a party that I knew I shouldn’t attend, and I stayed home and celebrated alone. At midnight that night, I went outside and prayed that God would send me some strong Christian friends that wanted to live for Christ, and could build me up in my faith.

Later that year I went to NGU, my first night there I went to BSU and could not believe that there were so many people my age who were praising God with their whole hearts! I had never seen anything like it. The next semester I joined a ministry team through BSU. We traveled every weekend and shared the gospel through drama. I never thought of it as a sacrifice, because I loved what I was doing so much. There was nothing else that I would have rather done throughout my years in college, than share my love for Christ with people who loved me, encouraged me, and pointed me to Christ.

Through BSU I found an accountability partner, an older woman to disciple me, and lifelong friends that are now like family to me. I did so much with BSU in college that I used to tell people that I was a BSU major.

A few years after college I had the privilege of working with Spartanburg BCM for two years. Through being a semester missionary and working with all five colleges in Spartanburg I had the joy of discipling girls, being discipled, reaching out to the community, working with foreign missionaries, and sharing Christ through the arts. Those were two more years of my life that I experienced radical growth in my life with Christ. Before I started working there I was feeling stagnant in my faith, but having the chance to serve Christ through BCM reignited my passion for my Savior.

Since then I have gone to seminary, and now I am working at North Greenville in the admissions office helping to bring more students to this wonderful school. I am also in charge of a club on campus that ministers to prospective students and their families. I love having the chance everyday to point others to Christ at this amazing university!

Without the funding of BCM I would not have had the chance to be a part of a ministry team. While working with BCM I would not have had a place to live or an income, I also wouldn’t have had the chance to help send hundreds of students out as local and foreign missionaries.

I know that finances are tight right now, but please don’t cut finding to BCM. It is a vital ministry to countless numbers of people! We will never know the full impact of it all, but I know that without it in my life I would not be the wife, mother, or Christian that I am today.

Thank you for your time.

In Christ,

Sarah N. Vick
North Greenville University
Class of 2005


Now, more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.

Please share your testimony with us by emailing testimony@thankyoubcm.com

BCM Testimony--Rob Foy

Rob Foy is a 2003 graduate of the University of South Carolina. Rob submits this testimony to explain how important BCM was in his life and how important he believes it to be to future students.

Please submit your testimony to us at testimony@thankyoubcm.com

As we have said...now more than ever, it is important that we as alumni support BCM.

Mission Statement

Thank you for taking the time to visit ThankYouBCM.com. More than likely, you arrived here today on this website because you are either an alumnus of a BCM group in the state of South Carolina, or you are here because you are currently a student in a BCM group in South Carolina.

The common thread that we all share is that we are BCMers. We were blessed with a great student ministry that cared for us when many of us moved into a new phase of our lives. We were also greatly blessed with campus ministers that acted as our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

This project has begun as a way for us to simply say "Thank You BCM." A way for each one of us to reflect the impact, a positive impact, that a student ministry such as BCM has on a young life and how God uses it for His glory and His plans.

Over the coming months, we are going to share with you the testimonies of what BCM has meant to each one of us. We are going to share with you how it has and still impacts our lives. We will share with you the lifelong friendships we made, the laughs we have shared, the tears we have cried, and the way that God has grown us and continues to grow us.

We pray that you will be touched by this project. We pray that you will feel led to share your story. We pray for BCM. 

So...whether you are a Clemson Tiger, a Lander Bearcat, a Francis Marion Patriot, a South Carolina Gamecock or anything in between we want to hear from you.

Email your submissions (video or written) to us at testimony@thankyoubcm.com

Share your photos with us at photo@thankyoubcm.com

It is more important now, than ever, to support BCM. So please consider sharing your story.

We look forward to sharing all the testimonies of how God has used, and continues to use BCM to build His Kingdom.