This week, while many in the country are bracing for even more winter weather, Panama City Beach is bracing for Spring Break. The sun and sand become scattered with college students, rowdy, reckless, and rebelling.
The locals prepare for the invasion and disruption they’ve come to know as March and quiet forces make their way south. The Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief Team links arms with college students from churches and collegiate ministries across the country for BeachReach.
BeachReach is a mission trip experience in the heart of Panama City Beach. Servant evangelism takes the form of free van rides and free pancake breakfasts. College students provide simple acts of service that open the door to life-changing conversations about the hope and love of Jesus Christ.
And here’s how it happens:
Each evening a team of students takes their place in a call center, where they receive inbound calls from spring breakers who need a ride. An entourage of 12-passenger vans, church vans, and the occasional minivan are dispatched to the Panama City Beach strip where they offer free and safe van rides in hopes of sharing the faith that compels them.
Each morning, armed with pancake mix and truck loads of syrup, “the Georgia Team” sets up a mobile kitchen in a nearby stripmall parking lot. Hungry spring breakers trickle in and are greeted with pancakes—pancakes that lead to conversations.
“BeachReach is often the experience that causes my students to share their faith for the first time. When they start a conversation, on the van or over pancakes, it opens a door in their walk with Christ” said Austin Wadlow, College Pastor at First Baptist Church, Denton, TX. “They go from not sharing their faith at all, to sharing it on the strip or in a bowling alley, to realizing they can do that anywhere. What they learn to do at BeachReach is so transferrable to what they should be doing on campus.”
[vimeo 53161880 w=630 h=350]
BeachReach // Pancakes for All (short cut) from Threads on Vimeo.
If Panama City Beach is the schoolroom for learning to share faith, it’s a rough one. BeachReachers are stretched and challenged by what they see and hear and as they learn to share their faith, they learn to extend grace to their peers. “One of the things that overwhelms me about BeachReach every year is how it takes spring breakers by surprise” said Bill Noe, BeachReach event coordinator. “They expect one thing from us and they get something that’s so much more genuine, loving and gracious than they expect. There is a temptation to be overwhelmed by the behavior and think we have to correct behavior. That’s not at all what BeachReach is about. BeachReach is offering hope through service.”
Lifeway continues to offer BeachReach as a ministry opportunity each Spring Break. “BeachReach is one of the most important ministries we do. We’re not only saving souls; we are saving lives,” said Faith Whatley, Lifeway’s Director of Adult Ministry. “As we mobilize college students to share their faith boldly, those van rides and conversations often save young women from dangerous and destructive evenings. What the students see in Panama City Beach is heartbreaking. The ministry our BeachReachers extend is life-saving.”
Last year, after two weeks of ministry, 11,186 van rides were given. Seventy-eight students accepted Christ. The 767 BeachReach participants served up 9,473 plates of pancakes over a few mornings. That stacks up to 28,419 pancakes all prepared by the hands of the Georgia Disaster Relief Team.
“The Georgia team is made up of senior adults who know that Jesus loves these spring breakers, and at some level they may feel unequipped to reach them. But they’ve found this unique way to impact these students,” said Noe. “The pancake volunteers know the students are better equipped to have those conversations, they want to see that happen, and they set them up to be able to have those conversations.” Certainly, it’s a set-up between bold college students and the senior adults who believe service and friendship will make a difference. It’s a sweet partnership, syrupy sweet.
For the next two weeks (March 7-20), BeachReach will be ministering to students and sharing the love of Christ with Panama City Beach. Please join us in praying for the teams and for the hearts of the students on Spring Break.
