Thank God for the pioneers. \u00a0It was the early 1970s. \u00a0Thousands of college students had discovered South Padre Island, Texas. Spring Break was advertised as \u201cSun . . .Surf . . . \u00a0Sex.\u201d I was The Baptist campus minister at Pan America University, located an hour from South Padre. \u00a0I had a group of students who decided to add a fourth \u201cS\u201d to the description of Spring Break on South Padre – \u201cService.\u201d \u00a0 We partnered with the Texas Baptist Men who located their Mobile Medical (and Dental) Unit on the Island. \u00a0We secured a few doctors, a lot of Pan Am nursing students, and trained others in beach ministry, especially personal evangelism. \u00a0We treated \u00a0a few jelly fish stings, multiple cases of sunburn, \u00a0lots of overdoses, and shared the Gospel with hundreds. In the third year of our \u201cservice\u201d the Texas Baptist Collegiate ministry decided to encourage a dozen or so Baptist Student groups to join us on the Island. \u00a0We made a fast tour of these campuses, doing some beach ministry training, and we hit the beach – with dozens of new service partners. \u00a0It has been fifty plus years, and this week – spring break – tens of thousands of college students will arrive at South Padre for \u201cBeach Reach.\u201d \u00a0All the \u201cS\u201d ingredients will be in place on the beach, including hundreds of Baptist students, motivated and equipped to \u201cServe.\u201d \u00a0 They will serve, and surely \u201csave\u201d hundreds. \u00a0Since \u201cthere is no more pioneering work to be done\u201d (Romans 15:22, The Message), and since I\u2019m a bit too old the join them, I will spend spring break in intercession and in thanking God for the pioneers.<\/p>\n
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Thank God for the pioneers. \u00a0It was the early 1970s. \u00a0Thousands of college students had discovered South Padre Island, Texas. Spring Break was advertised as \u201cSun . . .Surf . . . \u00a0Sex.\u201d I was The Baptist campus minister at Pan America University, located an hour from South Padre. \u00a0I had a group of students…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3301,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300\/revisions\/3301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}