Where are they?

Forty years ago during the last week of December, 1966, churches of Christ witnessed an event in Dallas that reverberates throughout the brotherhood even today. The event was the first Campus Evangelism Seminar which brought together some 350 church leaders and students from colleges and universities across the country to learn how to share their faith on their campuses.

Student participants and seminar leaders, challenged by the seminar’s theme, “Solution: Revolution,” sought to find ways to turn traditional “holding” actions into zealously advancing Christ on their campuses. Many lives were changed during the seminar as a result of the stirring speeches about God’s grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Bible studies, and an afternoon of personal witnessing on Dallas streets, the airport, train station, and other public places.

Thousands more students from hundreds of campuses discovered their personal faith and how to share it at subsequent regional seminars from Los Angeles to Gainesville, Florida and at national seminars, the last one in 1968 attended by more than 1,500 participants.

The Campus Evangelism movement sprang to life at the 1966 seminar under the oversight of the Broadway Church of Christ in Lubbock,Texas. Jim Bevis and Rex Vermillion, co-directors of CE, were both associate ministers of the church. Charles Shelton who had been minister of the Campbell Church of Christ, San Jose, CA, joined the staff later.

Prior to 1966 Jim Bevis and Dale Hulett, a campus minister in Arkansas, had been inspired to an evangelical effort on college campuses when they attended training at the national headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ. In those days most members of churches of Christ would not have participated in such efforts outside the brotherhood; therefore, a church of Christ version was visualized.

View archival photos here.

The McGehee Foundation of Jacksonville, Florida generously funded the work of the Campus Evangelism staff which established two pilot projects, one at the University of Florida and the other at Texas Tech University.

Legendary preachers, professors, campus ministers and Bible chair directors, missionaries, and elders spoke and taught at the regional and national seminars -- among them John Allen Chalk, Wesley Reagan, K.C. Moser, Carl Spain, E.W. McMillan, William S. Banowsky, Prentice Meador, Roy Osborne, Batsell Barrett Baxter, Andrew Hairston, Jennings Davis, M. Norvel Young, Frank Pack, Rick Oster, William C. Martin, Tony Ash, Bill Bright, and many others.

Change and Orthodoxy Clash

The movement was not without its detractors, however. At the time, campus unrest was at its height. Activist students and interlopers were taking over buildings and disrupting the educational system and nationwide racial tensions were running high. Traditionalists were looking for stability and status quo.

Campus Evangelism’s emphasis on the then-little-taught doctrines of God’s grace and the Holy Spirit, the use of non-traditional worship and songs, distribution of modern language translations of the Bible, involving women in ministry, meeting in hotels and campus student union buildings, witnessing, and baptizing in the ocean and hotel swimming pools therefore raised suspicion in some quarters.

Even with the endorsement of such leaders as Reuel Lemmons, editor of The Firm Foundation periodical, and many other middle-of-the-road ministers, the leaders of the movement came under withering criticism. Having lost the backing of the Broadway Church after about four years, leadership shifted to the Burke Road Church of Christ in Pasadena,Texas. There, insufficient resources slowed the previous four years’ momentum, and the seminars and life-changing experiences so much a part of the rapidly growing movement ended.

The directors felt they had not been called to establish an ongoing organization such as Campus Crusade with all the attendant requirements to raise funds, expand staff, and the like, but rather to start a movement that would spread through God's power. Although disappointed, they accepted the changes as God's will.

Life Goes On

The students who so ardently took up the cause of Christ on their campuses 40 years ago are now in their late 50s and early 60s. Many of the leaders in the movement are elderly or have died. Life has revealed foibles and strengths in many of the leaders who survive today. Some continue in ministry while others have chosen to follow other professions. And there are those who are no longer members of the church of Christ. Some today still believe a whole generation of leadership and zeal for Christ was lost because of naysayers and detractors, while others believe that Campus Evangelism influenced much of what's happening in churches of Christ today.

The greatest enigma surrounds those thousands of students who were so inspired and were such advocates for Jesus Christ – what has become of them? Did they become church leaders and influential in congregations across the country, eventually becoming agents for change in churches of Christ now practicing and espousing the so-called new teachings they were learning 40 years ago?

Where are YOU?

So the question remains – what has become of those students and the leaders of Campus Evangelism? Where are they? What of their faith? What is and has been the influence of their lives in His church?

Most of the historical documentation of the Campus Evangelism movement has been lost; however, in 2004 the few remaining printed pieces, seminar speech tapes, and numerous photographs were placed in the care of The Center for Restoration Studies at Abilene Christian University. According to Dr. Douglas Foster, some post-graduate students are now researching the movement.

This blog has been set up in an attempt to reach participants and leaders who were active in the Campus Evangelism movement. It is hoped that many who were participants or observers will find and contribute to the blog with their own stories, comments or questions and help fill in blanks in the 40-year-old story -- a kind of cyber-reunion.

Comments

[Kerry Cox]

Thank you. You all have no idea what your story means to some of us. Thanks to Jim Bevis at the CMU Seminar, some of us have major plans underway to allow God to use us as he once did you...We love you.

Kerry Cox

[Charles Shelton]

Where are they? The last I knew, Wes Reagan was preaching for a Methodist church in the New Orleans area.

Berelyn Houston continues to live in Jacksonville and teaches classes at a Baptist church. She is an advisor to the Board of Directors of Continent of Great Cities, a para-church organization related to the Central Church of Christ in Amarillo, Texas. I happen to be a member of that church and of the board of COGC. The organization receives substantial financial support from the McGeehee (sp?) family through Berelyn. At last fall's meeting of the board, Berelyn and the McGeehee family were honored at a dinner and there were several members of the family present.

[Charles Shelton]

Thanks for setting up the blog, Rex. It will be very interesting to hear from those who were active in the movement. One of my regrets is that the story of CE has never been adequately told. I've been hoping a graduate student at ACU would write a master's thesis on it since the archives, such as they are, are deposited there. Anyone interested?

[Wes Woodell]

Thank you for posting this, Rex. It is very informative.

There are people attempting to do today much of the same things the Campus Evangelism movement did in the 60s and 70s.

Please pray for God to use us.

[Cary McCall]

I am one of the graduate students that has been researching the movement (informally). I was impacted deeply by the mission of state school campus ministry and have found the story of CE fascinating and inspiring. 2007 will mark the official founding of CE - what say you about a reunion of those who had a hand in this tremendously important historical event?

[Jim Bevis]

I would love to hear testimonies of what happened in the lives of those who attended the Campus Evangelism Conferences.