During a March Spring Break week in the early 1970s a small group of university students from then, Pan American University, made their way to South Padre Island, where several hundred fellow college students had gathered.\u00a0 There was a difference in their purposes.\u00a0 The hundreds were there for the S\u2019s – sun, surf, sand, suds, sex. The group from Pan Am was there to minister.\u00a0 Complete with a mobile medical clinic, they cared for 150 persons \u2013 mostly sunburn, Jellyfish stings, and overdoses – and they shared the Gospel.\u00a0 They continued to return each spring break, until leaders in other campus ministry groups decided to join.\u00a0 I personally travelled to numerous campuses, teaching beach ministry methods and recruiting students.\u00a0 Soon there were hundreds of ministering students for thousands of others.\u00a0 My pastor-father once told me, \u201cNo matter what you do, someday, someone will come along and do it bigger and better.\u201d\u00a0 Sure enough, as the years went by, the ministry opportunity took on a name – \u201cBeach Reach\u201d and gained participants.\u00a0 This month, 1256 committed students from thirty-five Texas campuses plus five out-of-state campuses made their way to South Padre Island to minister to the multiple needs of several thousand others – and eventually shared the Gospel with 11,795 others.\u00a0 Two hundred seventy-six students went to the beach seeking something that started with a S, and found Salvation. Seventy-nine were baptized in the Gulf waters. I remain so very proud of those few Pan American (now University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) students who in the early 1970s began something that so many others have continued to do.\u00a0 Do your best, then cheer on those who are doing it bigger and better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During a March Spring Break week in the early 1970s a small group of university students from then, Pan American University, made their way to South Padre Island, where several hundred fellow college students had gathered.\u00a0 There was a difference in their purposes.\u00a0 The hundreds were there for the S\u2019s – sun, surf, sand, suds,…<\/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-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473","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=3473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3474,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions\/3474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}