Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
JBU Students Pour Love and Practical Service into Local Communities in Need
Students at John Brown University in Siloam Springs quickly learn that education means far more than academics, that helping people in the community in practical ways adds an incomparably rich dimension to their training. The courses they take and the volunteer opportunities and campus ministries they engage in are steeped in the school’s two mottos: “Christ Over All” and “Head, Heart and Hand.” For many students, the spirit and practice of serving those in need becomes a lifelong dedication.
A survey of several projects run by different JBU programs shows the passion both students and professors feel for their call to serve.
Nursing Program
Dr. Tina Wright, the department chair and assistant professor of nursing education, currently oversees 47 nursing students. To incorporate JBU’s Head, Heart and Hand motto, she said they “learn nursing skills (Head), have a desire to share the love of Christ (Heart) and want to serve others in our community (Hand).” Students are required to log 20 volunteer hours per semester and can choose from a variety of community ministries. “Our students see all people as God’s creation, and serving them as a nurse is a calling on their lives.” Wright recounted some of the practical ways her students have worked this year to apply these ideals:
• New Beginnings Homeless shelter in Fayetteville. Here, the nursing students provide support and health care education.
• Boys and Girls Club. The children had fun doing a health education activity with the nurses, who taught them healthy eating habits, such as tasty, wholesome snack choices, and how to properly wash their hands.
• COVID vaccination clinics at JBU and with the Siloam Springs Fire Department.
• Safe Camp in Fayetteville. On about 13 acres of city land, homeless individuals camp safely in tents and receive assistance from the student nurses, including basic wound care and COVID education.
• 7Hills Homeless Center in Fayetteville. Here, students provided basic wound care, foot care, and COVID education.
• Additional places of service include various other homeless shelters, halfway homes and the crisis pregnancy center.
Alexis Barnes, who graduated last year with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, gave an intimate description of what it meant to share God’s love through her volunteer service. She chose Kind at Heart Ministries, an outreach to home-bound elderly people. Although she had finished her requisite hours, Barnes continued to pour into her friend, the woman with whom she was originally paired. “You just go to their house and sit there and talk. For my friend, I’m the only one she talks to all week,” Barnes said. “It’s the littlest thing, but it makes the biggest impact.”
Alexis’ dedication is characteristic of the nursing students, who “are so excited to volunteer,” Wright said. “I love hearing the joyful glee as they prepare to go into the community. For them, this is not a classroom assignment — this is fulfilling their desire to care for others. When they return, they share with other students and faculty about their experience with a huge smile on their face. They love that they get to be a ‘nurse’ teaching in the community and to show kindness and compassion to those that need it most.”
Student Ministries
Opening minds, hearts and hands is what ministry is all about, as students at JBU like to say. Here are a couple of comments shared with Frank Huebert, the director of Service and Outreach Ministries: “Thank you so much for opening my eyes up to the need of refugees. I had no idea.” “I become so focused on myself that I forget there are people literally fleeing persecution.”
Huebert sees the positive effects of students using their gifts and passion “to join in the ways God is working in the world. As students engage in tangible and relational service in the community, people’s lives are impacted: children are tutored and mentored, physical needs are met in the community, the marginalized are remembered and the good news of Jesus is shared.”
The umbrella for the various ministries—between 11 and 16 of them each year – is CAUSE: Christian Ambassadors United for Service and Evangelism. All are student-initiated and student-led, and students work with faculty and staff to develop ministries. As Huebert
For them, this is not a classroom assignment — this is fulfilling their desire to care for others. Dr. Tina Wright Department chair and assistant professor of nursing education
explained, “What ministries are active is based on the passions of our students. This year we’re rebuilding after many of the student ministries experienced lack of access or other disruption due to the pandemic. Typically, we have around 150 students active in ministry each year. We’re on the lower side this fall but I have hopes that this spring we’ll see more opportunities open up.”
An overview of currently active CAUSE ministries shows a broad array of blessings and benefits students provide for so many in the Siloam Springs and surrounding region:
• Community Service Outreach – JBU students express their faith by serving the community in practical ways.
• Embrace – As an alternative to abortion, this ministry of compassion “seeks to love women and the unborn with truth and grace” while providing necessary resources for taking care of their babies.
• Nursing Home Ministry – Sharing Christ’s love through friendships with residents.
• Open Arms – Offering support and developing relationships with refugees in NWA.
• Side by Side – Students mentor local school children, particularly those whose native language is not English. • Young Life – This ministry’s mission “is to introduce adolescents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith.”
• Unveiling Ability – This ministry “focuses on loving and advocating for those of all ranges of ability” and also partners with Ability Tree to give rest for parents of children with disabilities.
Other ministries are inactive due to Covid and other factors:
• Beyond Incarceration (waiting for the jail to reopen to outsiders) — a jail ministry that seeks to remind inmates “of God’s mercy, grace and forgiveness,” and offer them friendship and fellowship.
• Colcord Community Ministries – Christ-centered mentorship of students in partnership with local after-school programs in the small Oklahoma town of Colcord, only 15 minutes from JBU. This ministry is under development.
• Watts Tutoring – Students in the Watts, Oklahoma school district receive positive reinforcement and practical help with study skills. There’s room for fun, too, as JBU volunteers spend the first 30 minutes playing games, with tutoring to follow. This program will restart in January.
• Building Villages – a ministry that provides prayer, education, encouragement and ministry to children and families impacted by foster care and adoption.
• Cornerstone – Through the construction of wheelchair ramps, the needs of individuals and organizations are met, especially those of the elderly and disabled.
Huebert mentioned a new ministry that’s operating in NWA in the current semester. “It’s a reboot of a previous ministry focused on awareness, advocacy, and support of refugee resettlement.
We’re exploring partnerships with Canopy NWA (a refugee aid organization) and Students for Refugees at U of A.”
In spite of the pandemic, students in CAUSE have found creative ways to work around those obstacles. For example, instead of weekly in-person visits to a local nursing home, students write letters to make residents feel loved and cared for.
While it’s clear that members of the college and community reap rich benefits from such ministries, the students also gain invaluable experience and personal satisfaction.
Ally Mosby is a math major who volunteers as a tutor and says that helping students “encourages me to think about a world outside college and to serve others… Seeing students grow as people in their academics and relationships is a blessing to me and helps me remember what’s really important. I also love serving alongside my classmates and peers; we grow closer as friends through Watts Tutoring.”
Chapman Campbell, a senior majoring in graphic design, is active in Young Life and says he’s learned “the value of community and being involved in a place for a long period of time. I’ve felt
empowered to share the gospel and be in students’ lives when they need a person to be there for them.”
Huebert captured the heart of JBU ministry with these words: “Our desire is that any of the work and outreach we have the opportunity to do flows out of our gratefulness to God our Father who has reached out to us in his love, Jesus Christ.”
Construction Management
Students majoring in construction management (CM) find no lack of need in the community when it comes to building for a cause. Rick Faust, an associate professor of the program, described a long list of current and past construction projects undertaken by students. They range from campus improvements to dormitories for a summer camp. “Most of our students have a high degree of appreciation that their education should be leading toward tangible abilities in the professional world,” Faust said. “Combine that with a Christian worldview and you’ve got engaged young people on a mission to glorify God creating the built environment. Building shelter is a blessing to do and to give. We’ve got great kids at JBU.” A sampling of these service projects shows the difference a band of dedicated university students can make in their community:
• Students designed and built two outdoor leadership pavilions on campus. Weather permitting, these are used as outdoor classrooms for those majoring in Outdoor Leadership Ministries. The CM students also built and designed two garage/ shop buildings, one each for two faculty members.
• A current project is conversion of a garage into an apartment for the handicapped son of a local nonprofit organization owner.
• Back in 2010-11, the construction management team built a conference center for Dr. Young-Gurl Kim, a former JBU engineering professor who started a ministry in Watts, Oklahoma along the Illinois River. At the Institute for Biblical Community Development-Conference Center, Kim who is Korean, trains missionaries in practical skills of sanitary water systems, gardening, building skills, and others. The center is a nexus for the Korean community in Watts. He also started small businesses to create jobs and income, especially for Koreans in the area.
With the help of Kim’s missionary students, CM students built a solar kiln “that quickly lowers fresh-cut wood to stable moisture contents using the magnified drying power of the sun,” Faust explained. As Dr. Kim’s ministry grew, “we also designed and built housing for all the students that were coming, especially from Korea, to meet the need.”
• The Genesis House renovation involved transforming a dilapidated residence for the new offices of this Siloam Springs Homeless ministry.
• JBU’s residential design students partnered with East Kenwood Missionary Baptist Church to design appropriate housing for the homeless to give them footing to transform “into stable jobs and lifestyles,” Faust said. In this ongoing ministry, church members “prepared themselves to care for those who would occupy the first four ‘tiny homes,’ and the community rallied with material support.”
• The CM department hosted and participated in World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse emergency shelter competitions every year from 20122019. “Schools from all over the US come to participate in this,” Faust noted. He added that his CM team won the first year they competed. “Our geodesic design withstood winds in excess of major hurricane force.”
• For the fifth consecutive year, construction management students won first place at the American Institute of Contractors (AIC) Ethics Competition. This national competition and conference, sponsored by the AIC, has a goal of providing leadership in establishing and maintaining high ethical standards in construction management. For the competition, students analyze case studies that include illegal, unethical or unprofessional situations. Judges measure their ability to apply the AIC Code of Ethics for Contractors to these studies. Faust said he included this item “because of the quality of our CM students. They serve the community because they are quality young men and women, and this competition, started five years ago, is confirmation of that. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to work with these students.”