La Tech ABS

09/30/2026

Stop and listen to this message today. There is no better message on the Gospel and the biblical call to Missions.

Podcast Episode · Capitol Hill Baptist Church · September 27 · 1 sec

09/22/2026

RUSTON UPDATE

Greetings, brothers and sisters in Christ, and to all the churches. I pray you are all doing well in your service to Christ and are committing yourselves to the task of making disciples of all nations. We have had a very active month here in Ruston, and we are thankful for the opportunities the Lord has given us to serve here.

As far as the Association of Baptist Students (ABS) is concerned, we enjoyed a great time of fellowship with our ABS board as we updated them on the ministry and the ongoing needs we have as we seek to minister to the students at Louisiana Tech. We were able to show them the new flooring that was installed in July and rejoice together in how the Lord continues to provide for us financially. We also talked about our plans for the upcoming school year and how grateful we were that the start of the fall quarter was just around the corner.

As I mentioned last time, we fed the Resident Assistants (RAs) at the ABS on the last Monday night in August. We served grilled chicken breast, baked potatoes, and salad, and the students were tremendously grateful for the home-cooked meal. Our church pitched in by helping bake plenty of potatoes and assisting with serving the meal.

Then, a few days later, we began our move-in week lunches and had great participation Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We did not keep track of the number of students who came through, but we fed more students this year than in the past. THANK YOU to all of you who sponsored a meal or gave to help us cover the costs. Ministry is never cheap, and it always comes with a cost. Sometimes that cost is in time and effort, and sometimes it is monetary. However, it is never cheap and should never be done cheaply.

Our last event for Welcome Week will be Friday, September 11th, when we will host a “Wings and Trivia Night.” Prayerfully, by the time you read this, that event will have gone well, and we will have started our regular Tuesday and Thursday night gatherings. Please continue to pray for those meetings and for the opportunities God gives us to share the Gospel with the students.

One story I want to share that shows the importance of these meals and of the ABS overall involves a new freshman student who walked in to eat and almost immediately explained to me that he was there because he had questions about Christianity and the Christian faith. He wanted to know what Baptists believed. We had a great conversation, and I was able to clearly explain the Gospel to him and encourage him to come back to our weekly meetings. I gave him the book What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert, and I am praying that he continues to read it and that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he will be converted and believe in the glorious saving work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Our church plant work continues to see God bless our efforts here as well. We welcomed a new family into our membership at our last members' meeting, and we continue to have visitors with us weekly. We had five students visit our service this past Sunday following our lunches, and that encouraged our people greatly. We also had a great time with our “Back to School” Bash in August and were pleased with the number of people who came and enjoyed the fun, food, and fellowship.

I had the privilege of filling the pulpit for Calvary Baptist Church in Warren, AR. Because I was going to be out of the pulpit, I was able to invite my great friend, Joseph Henderson, from Ellisville, MS, to preach in my absence, and it was a great experience for our church. Joseph helped me in our church-planting efforts in Mississippi and is now the pastor of that church. He continues to serve there faithfully.

Please pray for continued faithfulness and dedication to the work that God has called us to in Ruston. Pray for Jessica and our children as they labor alongside us and help with both ministries. May the Lord use our efforts for our good and His glory, and may He grant us all strength until His bodily return.

In Christ,
Jason Goodwin
ABS-LATech

09/02/2026

09/02/2026

Movie-In Week Free lunch Schedule:
9/3 Thursday 11-1
Chicken Patty Sandwiches, chips, and cookies
9/4 Friday 11-1
Nacho Bar!!!
9/5 Saturday 11-1
Build Your Own Sub (BYOS)!!!

ABS - 505 W. Alabama

08/14/2026

We have been blessed with an incredible opportunity to feed the RA’s at Tech and provide 2650 flyers for them to include in the residents “welcome bags”. If you would like to send an extra donation to help offset the costs of these unexpected, but exciting, opportunities for the ABS, that would be greatly appreciated!

07/22/2026

Ruston Report

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

I pray that all of you are staying cool during this summer heat and enjoying the many blessings our Lord showers upon us each day. Summer has been a wonderful season of planning and preparation for the Association of Baptist Students (ABS).

Jessica and I recently purchased new signage for our display table that we use during each summer orientation session. We believe it has greatly improved the appearance of the ABS booth during the organization browse, where incoming students first have the opportunity to meet us. These orientation sessions have been especially encouraging because we often meet Louisiana Tech alumni who are grateful that the ministry of the ABS remains active on campus. They also give us the opportunity to connect with incoming students and share the activities and opportunities we have planned for the beginning of the fall quarter.

This is also a good time to remind you that we will once again provide lunch for students during move-in week in early September. Jessica and I believe this is one of our most important outreach opportunities of the year because it allows us to introduce ourselves and the ministry of the ABS to students as they begin settling into life at Louisiana Tech. Since the cafeteria is closed during move-in week, we are able to provide students with free food, fellowship, and a warm welcome to campus.

If you, your Sunday school class, or your church would like to sponsor one of these lunches, we would be deeply grateful. The cost is typically around $250 per lunch, which allows us to provide enough food for the students moving into the residence halls.

Since we invested in new signage and display materials, we also traveled to Norman, Oklahoma, to attend the SOAR Conference. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with many of our BMA students and share the importance of college ministry. We thoroughly enjoyed the conference, reconnecting with lifelong friends while also making many new ones. Our daughter, Hattie, especially enjoyed visiting the various booths and making friends with many of our associational partners.

One of the greatest blessings of serving within the BMA is the genuine sense of family that characterizes our meetings and gatherings. I am incredibly thankful to serve as both a ministry director and church planter in our association. It is my prayer that God would continue to raise up men who are willing to answer His call to serve—whether on a college campus, in a local community, across our nation, or around the world—by planting and strengthening faithful, biblical churches.

After returning to Ruston, we hosted our third orientation session of the summer and were able to meet another group of incoming students while making valuable contacts for the fall quarter. It was encouraging to meet students who expressed genuine interest in the ministry and mission of the ABS. Please pray that the Lord will continue to use us to make an eternal impact on the campus of Louisiana Tech. Also pray for the many new students who will be moving to campus during the first week of September.

On the maintenance side of our ministry, we will be hosting a mission team from Immanuel Baptist Church in Greenbrier, Arkansas, July 22–26. They will be helping us install new flooring at the ABS, reorganize several storage areas, repurpose one of our rooms into a nursery for our church plant, and prepare the property for the busy fall semester. Please pray for this team as they travel and serve, and pray that the Lord will allow us to accomplish all that we hope to complete during their visit.

Ruston Baptist Mission has also had a very encouraging summer. Over the past couple of months, two new families have joined the church. On the last Sunday of June, we had more than fifty people in attendance, with several additional families visiting our services. Throughout the summer, we have been working through the Psalms together on the Lord's Day, and the series has been a great encouragement to our congregation.

Our men's group has also begun meeting on Monday evenings to study J. C. Ryle's classic work Holiness, while the ladies gather each Wednesday night to study the book of James. We continue to stand amazed at what God has accomplished in such a short period of time here in Ruston, and we look forward to celebrating the one-year anniversary of our Lord's Day gatherings on the first Sunday of August.

Please continue to pray for God's blessing and provision upon both the ABS and Ruston Baptist Mission. Pray that the Lord would continue to open doors for the gospel, bring more students and families into our ministries, and help us faithfully proclaim Christ throughout Ruston and on the campus of Louisiana Tech.

Thank you for your faithful prayers, generous support, and continued partnership in the gospel. May God richly bless you and your churches as you seek to honor and glorify the Lord of lords and King of kings.

In Christ,
Jason Goodwin
ABS-LATech

05/30/2026

Ruston Update

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am thankful for the opportunity each month to update you on the work that God has called us to do here in Ruston. I hope that the churches and individuals who read this update each month are encouraged by the work we are doing and remain faithful to pray for us after receiving these updates.

By the time you read this, we will have begun a long summer here in Ruston. School will have finished, and most of the students will have headed home or left for summer internships. That does not mean our summer will be boring. We plan to use this time to update our website and social media, as well as personalize the equipment we use to engage new students during summer orientation.

We are also planning to host a church group in July that will help us work on the ABS building. Their help will hopefully allow us to maximize storage space and update our flooring. In addition, we are hoping to improve our parking lot area and have new lines painted. There is always work to do, and I am grateful for those who are willing to come and help us accomplish as much as possible during the summer months.

If you have any desire to help with some of these projects, please contact me. We will be hosting a group July 22–26, and if those dates interest you, we would love to have you join us as we work on these projects together.

On May 4th, I also had the privilege of speaking to the District Brotherhood at Walnut Road Baptist Church in Springhill, Louisiana. That same weekend, I had just finished speaking at a youth retreat in Russellville, Arkansas. In addition to my regular Sunday preaching responsibilities, I had also spoken at the Judson Association Brotherhood meeting at Cross Roads Baptist Church in Warren, Arkansas, a few weeks earlier.

For most of these gatherings, I spoke on discipleship and missions, and one particular passage greatly ministered to my heart as I preached and ministered to others: 2 Timothy 2. If you attended the BMAA National Meeting, you likely heard portions of this text referenced several times there as well. I believe this passage is incredibly important for our churches to consider in light of our need for men to pastor churches and go to the mission field.

When I preached from this text at the Brotherhood meetings, I wanted it to serve as both an encouragement and a challenge.

It is encouraging because God’s Word clearly reveals His plan for ensuring that faithful men continue the work of pastoring, discipling, and taking the Gospel to the nations. The plan is men teaching men who will teach other men. There is no secret formula and no Plan B. The work is accomplished through men faithfully teaching Gospel truth to others who then devote themselves to teaching those same truths to the next generation. We must continue through difficult times and refuse to drift from the mission. There are no shortcuts in the process, and the work is never finished until the Lord calls us home. We keep our hands to the plow and do not look back.

At the same time, the text is challenging because the temptation to pursue easier methods or supposedly “better processes” is always before us. We do not naturally like long processes. We despise waiting, especially when we believe there may be a streamlined method that could shorten the time it takes for someone to become a faithful disciple who is prepared to disciple others.

But being a disciple of Christ takes a lifetime.

This is one reason I often respect the dead more than the living, because the dead have the advantage of having finished their race and, Lord willing, having endured faithfully to the end. Seeing pastors or well-known Christians fall publicly is heartbreaking, but it also reminds us of the sinfulness present in all of us. At the same time, it deepens my respect for those faithful men and women who ran their race well to the very end.

Not perfectly, of course, because none of us meet that standard—only Christ does. Yet we must continue to run the race set before us, knowing that our Savior Himself has marked out the course. Therefore, follow His example and remain patient. The race is long and difficult, but it is completely worth it.

As Paul tells Timothy:

“So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”
(2 Timothy 2:22–26, ESV)

May the God of all grace help us faithfully make disciples of all nations and train faithful men who will train faithful men who will train faithful men until Christ returns.

In Christ,
Jason Goodwin
Director - ABS La Tech
BMA Church Planter

04/07/2026

February/March Update

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that everyone who reads this is doing well and rejoicing in the goodness of our Heavenly Father.

Spring is already showing signs of life—flowers are blooming, trees are coming to life, and pollen is covering everything! It’s also the start of the Spring Quarter at Tech, which means that for many of our students, this is the final quarter of the school year. We have a couple of seniors who will be graduating in May, so please pray that their final quarter will be their best one yet.

Classes for the Spring Quarter began on March 11. The Tuesday before that, we hosted a fun “Welcome Back Impact” for our students. This time of year also marks nearly two years since I began serving as the new ABS director here at Tech—time has truly flown by!

Another event to look forward to this spring is Time Out for Tech, a preview day for high school juniors and seniors to visit campus. This gives us a wonderful opportunity to introduce our ministry to prospective students and to prepare for Summer Orientation, which will be happening soon. If you know of any students who will be attending Tech next fall—or even visiting this spring—please let us know so we can meet them and share more about the ministry of ABS here at Tech.

Our church plant effort continues to be a great blessing from the Lord. On the first Sunday in March, we had the privilege of baptizing a young man into membership. This was especially exciting because he and his wife have been faithful attenders of our church plant from the very beginning. We continue to be amazed at the work the Lord is doing and the partnerships He is providing along the way.

A church in Arkansas has contacted me about planning a mission trip here this summer, and we are prayerfully considering how we might partner with them. Other churches have also reached out, and it’s incredibly encouraging to see so many people interested in supporting our efforts to plant a church in Ruston.

As we become more known in the community, we want to be intentional in our work. Our goal is to make disciples, because that is the purpose of the local church. We also want to clearly communicate the church’s essential role in the disciple-making process. The church is not an optional part of God’s plan—it is His master plan for disciple-making.

We strive to be a church that values membership, church discipline, and corporate worship—marks of a healthy, faithful congregation. Our desire is to help everyone who attends understand why these elements are vital to the life of believers, and to communicate that truth with love and clarity.

Please pray for us as we plan and prepare to engage and evangelize those around us. Pray that God would give us clear vision for reaching people in our town who remain underreached or unengaged with the Gospel. Pray also for our members and those who regularly attend with us.

In all things, give thanks to God for His incredible blessings upon us and upon His churches that faithfully preach the true Gospel and seek to make disciples of all nations.

02/23/2026

January/February Update
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that all of you reading this have thawed out from the winter weather for the time being and are living faithfully and obediently in the goodness of God. We in Ruston are doing well—thankful that we maintained power during the ice and sleet and praising God for His continued blessings on our work here.
Louisiana Tech had an unexpected week off after the accumulation of sleet and freezing rain, and next week (Feb. 16–20) students will have another week off for Mardi Gras. Despite these interruptions, we have enjoyed our time together on Tuesday nights and have been grateful for opportunities to reflect on our calling on campus and how best to engage others with the Gospel.
Each week, I invite the students to put forward questions for discussion. I have been both surprised and impressed by the way they are thinking through the Bible, current social issues, and how to apply what they are learning. No topic or question is off the table, and we seek to thoughtfully engage the matters they raise. Please pray that these young people will continue to seek truth and understanding as they grow, and that they would learn at all times to rely on the Word of God for all of life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
This past week (Feb. 9–13), we also experienced some “excitement” on campus when a Charismatic group from southern Mississippi came to engage students. While I will not speak directly about this group or their motives, I will say that their presence opened the door for many spiritual conversations. I pray that these conversations will bear good fruit. It served as a helpful reminder that many voices are competing for attention, and we must not ignore what people are saying—even when we disagree with their doctrine or methods. Young people are listening, and they are searching for truth. We may not always understand what God is allowing, but He may use even unexpected circumstances to draw people to Himself through hearing and believing the true Gospel.
Please continue to pray for your ABS ministry here at Louisiana Tech, and for the hearts and souls of the students.
As for the church plant, I had the opportunity to be with our sending church, FBC Magnolia, AR, on Sunday night, February 1, for their quarterly members’ meeting. It was a joy to update them on what God is doing in Ruston and to express our appreciation for their support.
We have seen attendance of nearly 50 or more in recent weeks. Even when we had to delay services because of winter weather, we were able to gather that Wednesday and enjoy sweet fellowship together. We have also begun receiving tithes and offerings from our members, and God has already blessed us with resources that, I pray, will help prepare this work to endure well into the future.
Your support continues to play a vital role in our ability to build and sustain a healthy, Bible-believing, disciple-making church here in Ruston that will last for generations to come. Thank you for your faithful partnership.
Please pray for us as we labor here. Pray for our church plant, and pray for those who are serving alongside us to see this mission accomplished.

02/12/2026

Forgot to post our previous update! Better late than never, right?

ABS / Church Plant Updates
December–January
Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that each of you enjoyed a wonderful Christmas season with family and friends and that the New Year has been a joyful and refreshing time as well. Hopefully, you are still keeping your 2026 resolutions and staying on track with your Bible reading plans.
The New Year began with the ABS traveling to Louisville, Kentucky, to attend CrossConference, joining approximately 12,000 high school and college students from across the country. We departed Ruston on December 31 with a small group of Louisiana Tech students, then picked up additional students in El Dorado, along with Wyatt Baptist Church’s pastor, Adam Thomas, who graciously served as our second van driver. Our final stop was in North Little Rock, where we picked up a student from Central Baptist College before continuing on to Louisville. In total, our group included more than 20 people, including my entire family. The trip went smoothly—like most trips that include a stop at Buc-ee’s!
CrossCon26 was an excellent conference featuring faithful preaching, powerful interviews with missionaries serving in difficult places, informative breakout sessions, and a clear call for students to consider giving their lives to the mission of God. During the final session, two students from our group stood with hundreds of others and publicly committed to pursuing missionary service. That alone made the entire trip worthwhile. Please pray for these students, as well as for the others who attended, that God would mobilize them for the spread of His name among all peoples. The church of God has been entrusted with the gospel of God to send people for the glory of God, making known the name of God—and we must take this calling seriously. This is why I value this conference so deeply and plan to continue taking students each year as long as I am able. Next year’s conference will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, and I am hopeful we will be able to take even more students.
Our return trip included some unexpected challenges, including a church van breaking down and our arrival back in Ruston at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. Even so, it was all worth it. The church plant was incredibly gracious in allowing me to preach on very limited rest, and I am deeply grateful to everyone who helped make this trip possible. This highlights why supporting the ministry and work of ABS is so important. Our work is all about helping students to create lifetime habits of being connected to gospel-preaching, gospel-teaching churches where they can serve faithfully for decades to come. Conferences like Cross help students catch that long-term vision and purpose for their lives.
Church plant work continues to progress very well. We currently have interest from two additional families who are considering becoming covenant members, and the fellowship within our group continues to grow. We also have three families expecting babies this year, and, Lord willing, we look forward to ministering to and supporting them in every way we can. Please pray for safe deliveries and healthy babies.
Additionally, pray for us as we seek to reach more people here in Ruston. Much of our growth thus far has come through word of mouth and personal relationships, but we desire to be more intentional with outreach and engagement opportunities in the coming year. Pray that God would grant us wisdom and discernment as we pursue these efforts.
May the God of all grace and peace bless you and your churches in this New Year as you seek to serve and honor Him faithfully.eer