By Norm Miller
PINEVILLE (LCNews) – Louisiana College’s Preview Day featured Fred Lowery and Wayne Jenkins as keynoters for prospective students interested in a Missions & Ministries degree, and for students already in that track of studies.
“Love God and love people.” That was the advice from Lowery, after whom the Fred Lowery Missions & Ministries Scholarship is named. “Do that and God’s favor will be on you.”
Lowery, now retired from full-time church ministry, shared several vignettes of evangelism and their results from his career that included a 30-year stint as pastor of First Baptist Church, Bossier City.
“God plus nothing is all you need,” Lowery said, adding that “trusting God alone allowed me to do things for God beyond my wildest dreams.”
Christians “can get involved in so many things that we can forget the main thing, and that is telling others about Jesus,” Lowery added. “Do what God tells you to do and let God do the rest.”
Fred Lowery, former pastor at First Baptist Church in Bossier City, tells Louisiana College prospective students to “love God and love people.” Norm Miller photo
Jenkins said he owes “a huge debt to what Louisiana College taught me about evangelism and missions. LC shaped me and molded me, and I thank God for the missions heart planted in me there.”
Now retired from the Louisiana Baptist Convention as Director of Evangelism, Jenkins recounted a mission trip 34 years ago that “rekindled the zeal in my heart for missions that I received from LC.”
To date, Jenkins has completed 33 years of mission trips to Brazil that garnered more than 100,000 conversions to Christ and planted 65 churches.
At the LBC’s January E-CON evangelism conference, Louisiana College President Rick Brewer announced the formation of the Wayne and Martha Jenkins Center for Evangelism and Missions that will reside on the college’s campus. Fittingly, Jenkins represented the Center at the meeting.
“At Louisiana College, you will stand on some iconic Baptist shoulders of people who support you,” said Philip Caples, Vice President for the Integration of Faith and Learning and Dean of LC’ s School of Missions and Ministries.
Louisiana College retooled and renamed its former Christian Studies Division, Caples said, forming the School of Missions and Ministries, whose degree offers emphases in biblical studies, pastoral ministry, evangelism, missions, discipleship, church planting, and apologetics.
The degree will prepare the successful student “for ministry and for life,” Caples added.
Brewer told LCNews: “Jesus instructed his followers to make disciples. And our Missions and Ministries degree is one way Louisiana College not only helps make disciples of our students, we also equip them to replicate themselves as they, too, make disciples. In large part, this is the embodiment of our Vision statement: Preparing Graduates and Transforming Lives.”
