Everything else is secondary: West Texas BSM director talks coming to Christ through BSM and serving at his alma mater

Before Eric Hunter was the director of the West Texas A&M University Baptist Student Ministry (WTAMU BSM), he was a freshman pre-med major at West Texas A&M University who, like students today, craved community. 

He was not raised in the church and was not pursuing Jesus upon coming to college, so after a couple of weeks of free lunch at the BSM with his friends, he didn’t return for the rest of the semester. After winter break, Hunter said a friend from the BSM “shared the gospel with me and befriended and encouraged me.” Eventually, that friend invited him to give the BSM another shot. 

This time, Hunter “started to plug in.” 

“During the second semester, I remember it was January, I was not following Christ. On the outside everyone said my life looked good, but on the inside, there was emptiness in my life,” said Hunter. “As I started coming back [to campus], I mean really God transformed my life and I came to faith in January and immediately started going to the BSM… I started going to their worship [night and] just started to plug in.” 

Breaking expectations and surrendering to ministry  

About two weeks after Hunter started going to the BSM and getting plugged in, WTAMU BSM began preparing for Beach Reach, a trip where hundreds of college students join together on spring break to share the gospel of Jesus with those they encounter as they meet their physical needs for food and transportation. Hunter was asked to join them on the trip and the mission of the trip gripped him, as he had a similar past to the ones the BSM would be ministering to on South Padre Island.

“I was like ‘That’s the lifestyle that I’m just coming out of and God has renewed me,’ so I signed up for [Beach Reach] and went through the evangelism training, and then really about two months after coming to Christ, I went on a mission trip with the BSM,” said Hunter. “[On that trip], God opened my eyes and gave me a burden for people who were apart from Christ, for people who were in the same spot I was just a couple months before.”

That trip sparked a life-long passion to share the gospel with those who need the hope and joy that Hunter had found in Christ. 

“God burnt a passion in me that week… to serve people, to share the hope that I found in Christ, the joy I found in Christ with other people. And really the work that started in my heart, like, twenty-something years ago during that mission trip, it’s never stopped,” said Hunter. 

The summer after his freshman year, WTAMU BSM was encouraging students to go on summer mission trips with Go Now Missions, another ministry of Texas Baptists that sends college students on short-term mission trips throughout the year. With his newfound love for missions and evangelism, Hunter signed up for a trip. 

“The summer after my freshman year, the BSM said ‘Hey we have all these spots [and] this summer, we need missionaries,’ and I just felt the Lord impress on me to go and sign up for missions and so I ended up serving on a summer-long mission trip where I served as a summer youth pastor at this church and during that summer really felt the call of God on my life to serve in ministry,” said Hunter. 

Hunter said the initial surrender to God’s calling was difficult because of the expectation and desire that had been ingrained in him growing up: to attain worldly success. Despite this, he took the necessary steps to tangibly surrender his life to ministry. 

“I came back my second year, changed my major from pre-med and then all throughout college, continued to serve in different ministry aspects and then graduated college, and then after college, [my family has] lived, really all over the world as college ministers, church planters,” said Hunter. 

Depending on God to transform lives 

In 2022, Hunter and his family moved back to Amarillo. Center for Collegiate Ministry leadership reached out and asked him to apply for the WTAMU BSM director position, as it was becoming available. Hunter accepted the role to lead the very same BSM that saw him come to Christ years before. Because of how God transformed and redeemed his life in college, Hunter said he can see that “the harvest is ripe and people are so open to have [gospel] conversations.”

“I came to Christ because of BSM, so I know that, in college, it’s just a unique time in a person’s life where they’re probably more open to spiritual things than any other time in their life, and so, it’s a really strategic time as people are questioning things and making life decisions… to share with people,” said Hunter.

Hunter said another quality of college students today that resonated with him during his time at WTAMU BSM is the longing for friendship.

“Some of my best and life-long friends are friends that I made in BSM, so as a director now, I see the same thing,” said Hunter. “If you ask our students ‘What is the thing you love most about BSM?” Most people are gonna say ‘the community that I find here.’ So, like I said earlier, college students are always looking for community, they’re looking for friends, they’re looking for a place to connect and more and more of our students are finding that, even non-believing students are finding community, finding friendships through the BSM.” 

Hunter said his role as director has challenged and caused him to be more dependent on God to change lives at West Texas A&M. 

“The way that we’re seeing God move in our ministry and seeing the amount of people come to faith, the amount of believers that are being bold and sharing, that’s nothing that I could produce out of my own ability or power and so [being director has] really helped me to have more of a dependence on God for wisdom, direction and discernment and decisions that really impact the heart and soul of students on our campus,” said Hunter. “[I know] that I need to be transformed by Christ… so that I can be an effective leader so that the gospel can go out.” 

Christ is the only constant 

Hunter said he would encourage college students pursuing their faith that, out of all the life decisions they have to make, Christ is the only thing in life that is constant. 

“[I’m] hoping college students realize [that] in life, the most vital and the most consistent thing is Christ and that apart from Christ, we’re never going to experience the hope, the fulfillment, the purpose that we’re longing for,” said Hunter. “[Pursuing Christ] is the main thing and everything else in life is kind of secondary. Our jobs, our families, everything else is secondary and if we neglect our relationship with Christ, all of those other things are not going to be as good or as sweet or as meaningful apart from Christ.” 

The WTAMU BSM is currently raising funds to build a new BSM building to fulfill its vision to love, lead and launch students who will form community, hear and respond to the gospel, and become equipped and mobilized as disciple-makers.

To learn more about Texas BSM and other Texas Baptists collegiate ministries, visit txb.org/collegiate.