Religion is often something that people seek to find comfort in their lives, especially during trying times such as during the COVID crisis. 

OCCC’s Baptist Collegiate Ministries is an organization that has been spreading the word of Christ and offers hope during these trying times. 

The Baptist Collegiate Ministries have been on campus since the late 1970s based on information obtained from OCCC’s website, with the purpose of reaching the OCCC community with the Gospel.

“We believe our purpose on campus is to love God and love others. So our goal is to show the love of Christ and to share the gospel to all we come into contact with,” Pauline Boren, the leader of OCCC’s BCM club, said. 

Bowen said that the BCM meets about three times a week, and they have 30 members in their ranks.

Due to COVID, the club has been meeting on Zoom and live streaming meetings for their members. Live streaming began in August 2020.  

“Because of COVID19, we were being limited to the number of people we could have in a meeting and that was when we decided to start live streaming our meetings. We started to live stream in order to reach more of the students at OCCC,” Justin Smith, BCM member said.

Smith helps to produce the live streams each week. He said that live streaming allows the BCM to be more accessible to their members and do more outreach.

Boren said that last semester they recorded some of their meetings on campus and posted them online. This semester, they are pre-recording the worship sets and live streaming them to Facebook. 

“The benefit for us doing it this way is to allow students to have access to the meeting even after we meet,” she said. 

Boren said that BCM meetings are a time of worship. 

A member leads the group in a time of singing praise songs to God and discusses specific topics or passages of scripture. 

For Bible studies, BCM members study different books of the Bible and discuss club business as needed. 

Smith said that recent club meeting discussions have been about mental health, caring for others and the community, and specific parts of scripture. 

“We feel like our purpose as a Christian club at OCCC is to love God and love others,” Smith said. 

Smith said that he was led to join the BCM through good friends of his, who had encouraged him to join. 

He has since fallen in love with the organization. 

“It means that I can grow closer to God every single day, and even when I mess up I know He still loves me,” he said. 

Boren said that her faith is important to her because she believes that Jesus Christ is the only Son of God. She puts her faith and trust in Jesus as her Lord and Savior and believes that He is the only way to heaven.

“It means that I rely and trust in God and my hope is in Him. It means that I believe the Bible is His Word and I strive to walk accordingly,” she said.

Smith said that those interested in joining the group can message them on their Facebook at OCCC BCM, Instagram at @otripbcm, or email at bcm@my.occc.edu.

“I know it’s hard to join something new or unfamiliar, but I want you to know that you will always be welcomed. We do have a place for you and would love for you to join us,” Boren said.