Beach Pioneers

Thank God for the pioneers.  It was the early 1970s.  Thousands of college students had discovered South Padre Island, Texas. Spring Break was advertised as “Sun . . .Surf . . .  Sex.” I was The Baptist campus minister at Pan America University, located an hour from South Padre.  I had a group of students who decided to add a fourth “S” to the description of Spring Break on South Padre – “Service.”   We partnered with the Texas Baptist Men who located their Mobile Medical (and Dental) Unit on the Island.  We secured a few doctors, a lot of Pan Am nursing students, and trained others in beach ministry, especially personal evangelism.  We treated  a few jelly fish stings, multiple cases of sunburn,  lots of overdoses, and shared the Gospel with hundreds. In the third year of our “service” the Texas Baptist Collegiate ministry decided to encourage a dozen or so Baptist Student groups to join us on the Island.  We made a fast tour of these campuses, doing some beach ministry training, and we hit the beach – with dozens of new service partners.  It has been fifty plus years, and this week – spring break – tens of thousands of college students will arrive at South Padre for “Beach Reach.”  All the “S” ingredients will be in place on the beach, including hundreds of Baptist students, motivated and equipped to “Serve.”   They will serve, and surely “save” hundreds.  Since “there is no more pioneering work to be done” (Romans 15:22, The Message), and since I’m a bit too old the join them, I will spend spring break in intercession and in thanking God for the pioneers.