NATIONWIDE — Cassandra Hoai says she wants to help plant a church when she graduates next year from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Hoai is one of about 12,000 students at 33 universities in 16 states who are being discipled and trained to do the same.

“We want all our students to consider helping us plant a church after they graduate,” Troy Nesbitt told Baptist Press. Nesbitt, president of The Salt Network, was speaking of The Salt Company, a local church collegiate ministry. Each Salt Company is the college ministry of a Salt Network church, most of which were church plants.

Four hundred universities across the United States have at least 9,000 students. Salt leaders envision a time when there will be a Salt Company and a Salt Network church at each of those.

“From a little thing in Iowa, to see a vision for God to do this at every university in the country is pretty exciting,” Nesbitt said. 

The Salt Company often starts with an unengaged unbeliever, or in Hoai’s case, a Christian freshman looking for friends. Students start by attending a small group Bible study and midweek large group worship service. In time, students can apply to be a Salt Company leader to help reach their peers with the gospel. Eventually, the prayer is that they become part of a church planting team.

At each step, the student receives specific training and direction to grow in their walk with the Lord and in their ability to lead others in discipleship and Christian maturity.

“I was trying to find a campus community, saw their kickoff and got plugged in,” Hoai said about her introduction to The Salt Company. “Intentionality is my favorite thing about Salt, how people pour into others. It’s very evident in Salt. They actually care about walking with you in your faith and in life, in gospel friendships.”

Hoai, in a small group of seven as a freshman, applied to be a small group leader when she was a sophomore. Today she leads 27 young women in a small group. 

“They just keep coming,” Hoai said. “We meet at my house Tuesdays, talk about what we’re grateful for and the message from last Thursday.

“The focus of my year so far is dependency,” Hoai said of her personal walk with the Lord. “We can prepare well but it’s who God brings to us. It’s not about us at all. It’s about how He is going to work through the ones He sends us.”

Nesbitt started The (first) Salt Company in 1987 at Iowa State University. For 23 years there was just the one Salt Company, but 32 additional Salt Companies have emerged since 2010.

“The fact that God has blessed this is pretty unbelievable,” The Salt Company founder Nesbitt said. “We are super grateful and blessed just to be a part of what God is doing.”

There are several collegiate ministries, including Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as Cru, and Navigators. At least two are Southern Baptist: the time-honored Baptist Collegiate Ministries/BCM, a para-church ministry, and in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada, Resonate, which starts churches on college campuses. 

The Salt Company is a ministry of a local church, one where a steady progression of discipleship and training is provided for students who want to grow in their faith as well as those who catch a vision for an expansion of what students simply call “Salt.”

Usually a church is started at the same time a Salt Company is started, with church and campus leaders who previously graduated from Salt Company elsewhere. They move to the new city to start their career there as they help start and lead The (new) Salt Company and Salt Network church. Community ministry grows as the church attracts more people from the community.

“My understanding of the Scripture is that the best context for making disciples is in a multi-generational local church,” Nesbitt said. “We believe churches that lose focus on reaching the emerging generation lose their ability to transfer the unchangeable truths of Scripture to those students.”

Today’s college students are much different from those in the mid-1980s, when he started as a BSU director, Nesbitt said.

“At this time students are more confused yet more hungry, more open to conversations about Christ,” Nesbitt continued. “It’s the first time in years and years the number of ‘Nones’ is going down. Yet of the 18 million college students in the United States today, we see fewer than 5% are engaged in anything Christian.

“The cultural moment is that we have an opportunity to reach this generation like never before. On every campus we have seen extraordinary things. Last year in our network of churches we baptized over 2,000 for the first time.”

About 26,000 people gather each Sunday at The Salt Network churches. Some are majority college students, some are 50/50 and some are more people from the community.

Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa, today is about 70% from the community. It was 23 people from the community and 200 college students when it was started by Nesbitt in 1994. Today Mark Vance, a Salt Company alum, is pastor.

Cornerstone Ames averages more than 3,000 people for Sunday morning worship with “just about everything in terms of local mercy, compassion and justice” ministries, Vance told Baptist Press. “Really, cradle to grave.”

“We need a fresh missionary encounter in North America,” Vance said. “Not only on colleges and universities. Every place we go there are vastly more non-Christians than Christians. We desperately need to plant more churches and minister on more college campuses. A healthy godly local church offers stability to college students, and college students offer energy to the local church.” 

Nesbitt’s daughter Trisha in 2009 earned a basketball scholarship to the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Seeing a need for his daughter’s spiritual nourishment, Nesbitt asked Mark Arant, on Cornerstone’s staff as The Salt Company Director, to move to Iowa City to start Veritas Church and The University of Iowa Salt Company.

Arant in 2010 took six of the seven full time staff at Cornerstone to start a Salt Company and Veritas Church in Iowa City. This jumpstarted the current practice of equipping this year’s crop of Salt alumni to lead the next.

“After some success in Iowa City we started looking at Cedar Falls, the University of Northern Iowa, in 2013,” Nesbitt said.

Mark Vance, then The Salt Company director at Cornerstone Ames, in 2014 suggested a winter break conference for The (then-three) Salt Companies. The 10th annual “conference” — an intensive Bible teaching and worship event that takes place in Des Moines — drew almost 6,000 students this first weekend in January. (See related article here).

“It’s not that we started with a beautiful plan,” Vance said. “You can see the pattern: We always were working backwards, noticing what God was doing.”

The growth has come, and students see the difference God makes in their lives.

“If Salt Company Madison wasn’t here I don’t know where my faith would be,” Hoai said. “It’s impacted me tremendously. I wouldn’t be where I am in my faith without Salt Company, and because of it I want to help plant a church to impact other college students and to share the gospel.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Karen L. Willoughby is a national correspondent for Baptist Press.)