JEFFERSON CITY – It’s not unheard of for a college campus to have a close-knit community with a Greek name, but Soma – the Greek word for body – is trying for something new on the Lincoln University’s campus here.
Soma is a new ministry targeting the students at the historically black college in the state capital. Leading it is Jon Nelson, until recently the pastoral intern at Concord Baptist Church here. During his two years at the church, he began making connections at Lincoln, including a close friendship with the university’s head football coach Mike Jones. (Jones is better known to most Missourians as the St. Louis Rams linebacker that stopped a Tennessee Titan wide receiver one-yard short of the goal line, preserving a St. Louis win in Super Bowl XXXIV in a play known simply as “The Tackle.”)
“The church was looking at how to leverage our influence in the city to reach across racial, socio-economic and cultural lines to expand His kingdom,” Nelson said.
Nelson began speaking to the football team on leadership and character, and things on campus snowballed from there. Now that his two-year internship is up at Concord, he felt God’s call to minister to Lincoln’s students full-time.
“So many people are scared to actually be the body of Christ in the world,” he said. “They want to go to the professional Christians: the pastors and say ‘oh they’ll get them saved.’ They don’t have the confidence to live out Christ wherever they are. We’ve become so gun shy, but we want to train students to be the body.”
Currently Soma is “just a college ministry,” but Nelson has eyes on it becoming a church with help from local congregations, the Missouri Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board as part of their “Rebuild” initiative.
“We’re on campus, but we know it’s a long runway,” Nelson said. “Jesus said ‘I will build my church,’ not ‘I will build my para-church entity.’ We will not be Concord and we’re not going to be a traditional black church. We’re going to be defined by the Kingdom.”
Nelson came to Missouri from Kansas by way of Midwestern Seminary, but his mother and grandmother both went to Lincoln so he has ties to the school. In those days it was almost exclusively an African-American school, but in the years since the student body has become more diverse with many local commuter students of all races enrolling. Right now, more than half of the 4,000-plus students are Caucasian, though in the dorms, 90 percent are African-American students and there are still cultural hurdles on campus.
Nelson repeated a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that the most segregated time in America is Sunday morning at 10 a.m.
“It’s one of the saddest things I’ve seen as a Christ-follower,” he said. “Very few times have I seen a local church look like what Heaven is going to look like. There are a lot of reasons why, and I only know some of them. But in the end, we want to strive to begin to help our church look like the body of Christ. We have white leaders, black leaders, Hispanic leaders, men, women, and if we can find anyone from any other race we’ll train them too. ”
Nelson said there are very few campus ministries of any stripe on historically black college campuses, and Soma is a “guinea pig” to test NAMB’s strategy in that context. He said most attempts have failed because the cultural differences are huge and a lot of people simply don’t know how to cross the divide.
“A white guy could do what I do,” said Nelson, a self-described “Afro-Jam-Merican,” (he split his time growing up in the U.S. and Jamaica). “But you have to know you’re dealing with different people. 43 percent of the U.S. is fatherless, but in the African-American community it’s as high as 74 percent. When we speak in our churches about a Heavenly father, that context doesn’t work. The concept of being married – even Barack and Michelle Obama being married – is foreign to a lot of students. The idea of divorce is still repugnant to them, but they never get married, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s not race issue any more; it’s culture.”
So to embed himself in the culture, Nelson eats on campus in the cafeteria, is recruiting student leaders to teach Bible studies in the dorms and speaks to the football, baseball, softball, and men’s and women’s basketball, golf and tennis teams on being a servant-leader.
“As soon as the track team is done with the busy part of their season, I’m meeting with them too,” he said. “We’re unabashed that Jesus is the ultimate leader.”
Though Soma has been received warmly by some, others on campus have given it and Nelson a mixed reception. Either way, he is continuing ahead to plant the campus church.
“It runs the gamut from a girl sitting with me on a park bench receiving Christ to the student government approving Nation of Islam on campus,” he said. “They’ve been going after my leaders and some professors and the gay pride group have not been welcoming. So it’s a mixed bag, but I’d expect nothing less. We just continue to pray, put our hands to the plow and keep going.”