October 3, 2026
In the century since Southern Baptists began working together to establish ministries on college campuses, countless students have come to Christ, entered full-time Christian service, and prepared to live out the gospel in the workplace.
Frank H. Leavell, the visionary leader who guided the effort through its first 27 years, is credited with laying the foundation for the modern-day Baptist Collegiate Ministries.
The Foreign Mission Board, Home Mission Board, and others got behind the initiative in 1920, understanding the need to reach college students during a formative time in their lives. A committee made up of representatives from several Southern Baptist entities recommended the creation of a South-wide collegiate ministry, which in 1924 took the name Baptist Student Union.
Leavell had been chosen to lead the new ministry, beginning on January 1, 1922. Working out of an office in Memphis, Tennessee, he immediately began traveling to campuses across the South to rally support and lay the groundwork for a ministry launch in the fall.
There were four guiding principles for the new organization: It was to be distinctly Baptist. It would emphasize student involvement and leadership. It would magnify the ministry of the local church. And it would offer its students nothing but the best.
The Texas Baptist Convention had already supported campus ministry beginning in 1919. As early as 1920, students in other states had begun organizing “Baptist Volunteer Bands” under a newly created SBC Student Life Department, which would later be called the Student Commission. The new ministry would link existing outreaches and help generate support across the South.
Generating financial support was important because the South was amid an agricultural depression which only deepened during the decade.
In the fall of 1922, the new student ministry was launched. A primary tool was the publication of a new magazine, The Baptist Student. In the formative years it was largely written and edited by Leavell and published by the Sunday School Board.
A South-wide organizational meeting of new campus leaders took place in February 1923. Three rallies were scheduled to be held that same year. The ministry quickly gained momentum.
Most of the work on the campuses was conducted by volunteers and in some states part-time paid workers. In Georgia, mission giving was on the decline because of the depression and State Mission Board staff had been laid off.
Georgia Baptists didn’t secure a paid employee until David B. “Brother Nick” Nicholson came on board in 1925.
Because funding was not available to create a new staff position. Nicholson was reassigned from another area of the State Mission Board and asked to relocate to Athens.
Several existing, “Volunteer Bands” on college campuses merged under this new work and adopted the name of Baptist Student Union. In his first report to the Convention in 1926, Nicholson reported Baptist Student Union work underway on the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State Teachers College, Tift and Mercer campuses.
At this point, Leavell continued to shift his focus from organizational structure to nurturing the spiritual purpose of the work. At a BSU rally in 1926, Leavell had dubbed the college-age Christians as “The Master’s Minority.”
The concept began resonating with members of the BSUs across the South. He began receiving correspondence from students who proudly identified themselves as members of “The Master’s Minority.” It became both their spiritual purpose and identity.
During this same time frame, while on a visit to a campus where God was obviously working among the students, Leavell asked the president of the institution what the secret was. He motioned for Leavell to quietly follow him up a set of stairs to a room where he slowly opened the door revealing a room full of students who were praying.
According to Leavell’s biography the college president responded, “That’s your answer. They have made the difference.”
At a BSU rally hosted by First Baptist Church of Atlanta in 1930, Leavell challenged the students to make a covenant between themselves and God to re-examine their salvation, to keep worldliness out, to engage in personal Bible study, to maintain prayer and meditation, to maintain church loyalty, to observe the Lord’s Sabbath , to be good stewards, and to engage in Christian witnessing.
Later, Leavell wrote a book titled The Master’s Minority, describing how God had used the concept as the spiritual focus to guide the rapid growth of the BSU in its formative years.
He further shared how people across the nation and around the world, especially during the war years, had connected with others who identified themselves as a part of “The Master’s Minority.” Both laity and ministers were being used in strategic roles of ministry and service around the world. The early success of the ministry was an organization which kept its focus on its spiritual purpose.
The modern-day Baptist Collegiate Ministry is no longer confined to the South. It continues to minister to college students across the nation and beyond to disciple believers in the formative years of their lives and to reach and evangelize students away from family and church support systems.
BCM continues to be one of the most vital ministries that Georgia and Southern Baptists collectively support on the state and national level. It is venue through which God has and is still calling young people to service.
Some things have changed in the last century, and yet others never change. The challenge is still to ensure that of building “an organization without losing site of the spiritual purposes for which the organization must ever and only be a means to an end.” That end should always be bringing glory to God.
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Charles Jones is a newspaper columnist, Baptist historian, and retired pastor.
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