Drew Lewis started as the new director of Baptist Student Ministry on Jan. 5, 2026, at TJC. Lewis comes from a background in foreign missions in Kenya, working with college students and has a passion for helping others discover God’s calling in their lives.
What did you do before you came to TJC BSM?
“I was a missionary in Kenya, so my wife and I primarily worked with college students, trying to help them see the Great Commission and find their role in it. Kenya is a very Christian nation, but surrounded by places with little to no access to the gospel. Our heart was to help mobilize the church and college students to share the gospel in these other countries around them.”
(The Great Commission refers to a passage in the second half of the Bible called the New Testament where, in the book of Matthew 28:19, Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”)
How did you come to know Christ?
“I grew up in church, but kind of in a very ‘You go to church because that’s what you’re supposed to do,’ type of way. I didn’t necessarily know Christ or have a relationship with Christ. Slowly, as I went through middle school and high school, got older, started asking more questions and I started seeing God as someone who’s just fulfilled with a bunch of rules that I didn’t want to necessarily follow. As I was in high school, I started going to church less and kind of doing all of the things you’re supposed to do less because I didn’t find meaning in them. Then my junior year of high school, we had a youth pastor who came to our school and everything, and he was always like, ‘Man, like, I would love for you to come to church camp with us.’ I was like, ‘No, bro, I’m good, and I don’t really do that.’ Then just several times, ‘Man, I would love for you to come to church camp with us.’ I was like, ‘No, bro.’ Finally, I just told him, ‘Hey, if you stop asking, I’ll go, like, stop annoying me,’ basically. Through that church camp I really understood the love of God, understood that it’s not about the rules, it’s not about anything like that. It’s just about God wants a relationship with you, and so I put my faith and trust in Jesus that week. The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and faith really became mine, and I just really started pursuing God and running after him.
What made you want to do this here at TJC?
“When my wife knew that we were going to move from Kenya, and that God was calling us away from there, we just started asking, ‘OK, where do we go next?’ I’m from the Tyler area; all of my family’s here. God just started laying it on our hearts: ‘Go back to Tyler.’ I was like, ‘No, I think we need to go somewhere else. God, you’ve got it wrong.’ Over time, God was really putting it on our hearts. ‘No, it’s Tyler.’ Then basically, I was like, ‘OK, but I don’t really think that you can work with college students in Tyler. I know there’s TJC, I know there’s UT Tyler, but I don’t think that’s really an option, and that’s what I love to do.’ I started looking at jobs, and I was like, ‘Wait, BSM? That does very similar things to what we’ve done, what we’ve been doing, and has a very similar philosophy of ministry, and all of these things.’ We’re like, ‘Well, that could work out.’ There was an opening. I saw that basically the old director was leaving. They were trying to hire someone to start in the fall. And I was like, ‘Look, I can’t start until. January.’ And I kind of thought that would close the door. But my boss, who was the interim last year or in the fall, Joe, was like, ‘Hey, we think you’re a good fit. I’ll be the interim for the fall, and then you come in in the spring.’ So, it just kind of worked out in a really cool way that, like you can see that God is definitely in it for sure.”
Do you feel like God has called you into ministry/missions?
“Yes, I kind of described it when I first understood God was calling me into ministry as, like, you know when you walk a dog and the dog clearly doesn’t want to walk, and you kind of have to drag them? It felt like, in a lot of ways, God was calling me in that way.A big part of my testimony is that I was saved the summer between junior and senior year. Senior year, I was being recruited to play college baseball and heading down that path, and God, over time, made it clear to me, ‘No, you’re not supposed to play.’ I’d already signed my letter of intent to play at LSU, Shreveport, all this kind of stuff. And then God was like, ‘No.’ My youth pastor at the time, told me, ‘At some point, you’re going to hang up baseball, stop playing, to be in ministry.’ God made it clear to me, ‘No, you’re going to start now.’ I decommitted, and didn’t go play. While I was in college, I was involved in just several different ministry areas. I interned at a church. I interned for a mission organization. I worked at a camp. I was kind of seeing and just really found a sweet spot and a passion for sharing the gospel with college students and discipling college students, and just found the areas that God has gifted me, and the ways God’s working in my heart is really focused toward specifically being on college campuses, sharing the gospel. My first internship started in January 2020, so I’ve been doing college ministry ever since, so I guess it’s six years now.”
How did you first get started in missions?
“I did the typical short-term trip with my church the summer after my senior year and I was like, ‘Man, this is really cool,’ but didn’t really understand why we do missions. Then, when I was a freshman in college, I did a Bible study with a guy who was disciplining me. We basically looked from Genesis to Revelation, and we see that God has a desire to reach people from every tribe, tongue and nation, like all people. We can see that all throughout the scriptures. But when we look at the world and there’s, I think the latest statistics I saw, was there’s over 3.4 billion people who live with little to no access to the Gospel. God wants to reach all people, but there’s still over a third of the world who don’t even have a church in their area, or even have someone who they could ask about Christ, and that’s hard for us to understand here, because we have churches on every block, right? There’s entire towns and villages that they couldn’t know about Jesus, even if they wanted to, because no one speaks their language who knows about Christ. That really broke my heart, and God just used that in a lot of ways to help me see there is such a great need. Even in Matthew 9:37, Jesus is clear that ‘the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few,’He says, ‘Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.’ God is doing a great work across the world, and I just wanted to be involved.”
(Genesis is the first book of the Bible and Revelation is the last book. The statistic Lewis mentioned, “over 3.4 billion people who live with little to no access to the gospel,” was based on the Joshua Project’s unreached people groups data. The full number is estimated to be around 3.58 billion unreached people.)
How did you get started with leadership?
“This is my first role as director of a ministry. Before this, I was under a team leader, and before that, I was an intern under a team. I think God has equipped me in various leadership roles and just used various seasons in life to help equip me.
What has been different from what you expected about working here?
“I knew this would happen, but not to the same extent, we just get to have fun on campus. I don’t know if you’ve seen, but when we have free lunches on Wednesdays, we go out in costumes, and say we’re having. TJC is just such a fun campus that we can just go out and have fun with students. Of course, we want them to know Jesus. We want to share the gospel with them. But, we start that with building relationships and serving the campus. There’s a lot more of that fun aspect that really excites me and that I really love, but more than I expected.”
What do you see as the purpose of BSM being here on campus?
“Our main purpose is to help every student we encounter take their next step closer to Jesus. So for some, they have experienced church hurt, and because of that, they’re mad at God and they feel like God’s done them wrong. So, we just want to help build that trust back where we can be a light in a community where they can say, ‘Man, those are like people who are truly living out Christ, and I can trust them.’ And for some, they’re heavily involved in church. They love Jesus, and we want to help them go out with the gospel and share the gospel with others. The way I see it, if we have a relationship with God, everyone is in a different part or aspect of that relationship. And so how can we help each person take the next step? For some, it’s literally being kind to them and giving them a snow cone and telling them, God loves you. And for some, it’s going with us on our spring break mission trip.It’s just varying with different people, but ultimately, we want to connect people with God so that they can know that they’re loved and seen by God.”
What are some of your goals for BSM and the students that come here over the next year?
“A lot of students don’t necessarily know about the BSM, and so some of what we’re doing right now, and our goal is to re-help people know, ‘Hey, we’re here. Here’s what we have: Bible study, we have free lunch, we have all that kind of stuff.’ Some of our goals are re-getting our name out, and re-helping students know this is a safe place where we can come and ask questions. Like, you don’t have to be Baptist. You don’t even have to be Christian to come to the BSM, but it’s a safe place where people can ask hard questions about God, because I think that’s what’s so important about this generation specifically, is students have grown up and like, ‘This is what you should believe,’ and kind of left it there. Our heart here at the BSM is to say ‘Yes, we do want you to believe in God, but we want you to understand why you believe in God, or if you don’t believe in God, we want you to understand why you should believe in God.’ I kind of like to think of it as helping believers think, so helping followers of Jesus know this is the faith that I follow, but then also helping thinkers, meaning people who are intellectual, who are trying to seek what is out there, or what is the meaning of life, believe in God. We want the BSM to be a place where people can come and know that they’re loved by God, but also know that they can say,’ Look, this has been hard and like, I’m mad at God for this,’ or ‘I don’t understand why God would do that.’”
What are some other ways y’all are trying to reach students on campus?
“We do snow cones, because today’s hot, and it’s hot to walk in between classes, and some days, we have done coffee, because it’s cold. We want to serve physical needs on campus. Another way we do that is by doing free lunch on Wednesdays. We want to meet people where they need and be able to serve the students. We also want to be able to serve students spiritually. If they have biblical questions, we’d love to help walk through those. We have Bible studies that are happening all over campus that are student led, like I’m not there, none of our staff’s there. It’s all student led. But then we also have our Thursday night Bible study, where it’s more traditional like worship music, and then a teaching. Then we have discussion after, so like, basically like our heart is to meet both spiritual needs but also physical needs as well. Like I said in the beginning, we also want to have fun.”
Is there anything you would like TJC students to know?
“I think the biggest thing is I just want people to know they’re welcome here and that we want to meet students where they are and we just want to help. That’s our biggest heart is we want to help students, because college is a pivotal time for people and direction in life is ‘OK, now I’ve maybe moved out of my parents house, and now for me, I have to understand do I truly believe in Christianity or do I want to go down another path?’ We want to help people know what they believe, and we want to just help shepherd people so that they can know and understand the goodness and the love of God in a deep and meaningful way.”
(Some minor edits have been made to this interview for the sake of readability and clarity; however, the meanings remain the same.)
