NATCHITOCHES – Brother Bill Collins is retiring after 37 years as director of Northwestern State University’s Baptist Collegiate Ministry. Collins and his wife Phyllis, his partner in ministry, will continue their work as he pastors Cypress Baptist Church south of Natchitoches and serves as president of the Paisano Baptist Encampment in the Pecos region of Texas near Alpine.
Collins will hand the reins over to Austin McCurry, a Haynesville native and 2016 NSU graduate who was a leader in the BCM and interned there after graduation. Haidyn Brossett of Natchitoches, a 2023 NSU graduate who will graduate from seminary in May, will serve as assistant director.
Bill and Phyllis will be honored with a reception from noon-2 p.m. Saturday, April 11. The retirement coincides with the BCM’s 100th anniversary at Northwestern with a celebration planned for later this year.
Collins grew up in Houston and attended Louisiana College (now Louisiana Christian University) in Pineville where was active in the Baptist Student Union, as BCM was then known. He spent a summer doing mission work in the northwest Arctic region of Alaska working with the Native population and felt a call to ministry.
After graduating in 1982, he and Phyllis both enrolled in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, where he pursued religious education and she enrolled in the social work program. Both graduated with master’s degrees in 1985 and moved to Jamestown, North Carolina, where Collins served in a church as minister of education to youth. In the spring of 1989, the Louisiana Baptist Convention contacted him about serving as BSU director at NSU upon the retirement of Myra Gulledge, who had been in that position since 1951. Collins visited Natchitoches that spring for six weeks of planning. The couple moved that summer to begin work on June 12, 1989, with Phyllis serving as administrative assistant.
Speaking to a colleague just before NSU’s spring break, Collins reflected on the 37-year journey that allowed him to minister to, mentor and support three generations of college students.
“We had our last worship service last night and I was thinking, ‘I really should be torn up over this,’” he said. “But then looking over my shoulder, I was thinking, ‘We’ve had a good run with thousands of students coming through here being a part of our program. We’ve got thousands that are out there that are dedicated lay people in churches, serving as Sunday school teachers and we’ve got a lot of professional teachers out there, physicians and nurses and others that are serving. This doesn’t get any better.’
“What I’ve always seen as our purpose here has been this: we are told that Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and man, which basically means He grew in a balanced way, spiritually, socially, physically and mentally. The university really has a lot going for it for the physical and mental and even the emotional but when it gets into the spiritual world, that’s our area of expertise. We try to teach them that you’ve got to grow in a balanced way because if you don’t, you become unbalanced, and life gets off balance.”
As one of the largest student organizations on campus, BCM welcomes students of other faiths and engages them in many forms of service, including disaster relief with teams serving in New Orleans, Bay St. Louis, Lake Charles and other cities affected by hurricanes over the years.
“The philosophy is that students can come here to the Baptist Collegiate Ministry and learn how to do ministry. Some of their first opportunities to do something in a leadership role is here at the BCM. I see what we do as the laboratory experience for them to learn things and to test things out, to fail, but not to fail miserably.”
During their tenure, Bill and Phyllis built a sense of family with students.
“No family is without its dysfunction, but we have a lot of strength as a family. We want you to have a family away from home,” he said. “We have alumni that stop by and we get to see their kids. We’ve had a number of students that got married here and then they sent their kids here. We call those our grandchildren and we’ve had upwards of 12 grandchildren in any given semester. It’s been tremendous to see that the some of the students we had that were faithful and raised families and then are sending them to us.”
In 2000, Collins earned a second masters’ degree at NSU in Student Personnel Services, now called Student Affairs in Higher Education, for the classroom experience and to gain knowledge in the workings of a college campus. Support from area churches in the district was invaluable to the BCM and he says he couldn’t have done it without Phyllis.
“Phyllis doesn’t get enough credit,” he said. “I wouldn’t have lasted two years here without her and her skills. She stayed engaged in the semester we were in, and I tried to stay a semester and a half ahead because of planning and direction, seeing where we were going. Between the two of us, with her being present and me being forward-looking, I think that was the key. But I would never have lasted here without Phyllis.”
Collins is confident about the future of NSU’s BCM.
“Austin is going to come in here and take things to a level that I was losing energy to do. The gospel of Jesus Christ will not change but some changes need to occur because students have changed. Austin is going to do tremendously well, and words cannot describe Haidyn’s abilities. She can help these young ladies in so many ways and does already. It is a phenomenal thing to watch her work.”
When Collins arrived at NSU, the Baptist Student Union was housed in a building on University Parkway – then called College Avenue – across from Watson Library. In 2009, the BCM moved to a spacious new building on NSU’s Organization Row near Prather Coliseum.
“We have a cornerstone on our building that has listed where our locations have been and there’s also a cornerstone that that gives a kind of a philosophical theological background. It’s talking about helping students know Christ and making them know how to expand their walk with Christ and find their place of service in Christ’s Kingdom. That’s what we want them to find: what they’re supposed to do in life to serve the Lord.”
Collins concluded the conversation as the buses were loading for the long trip to Paisano, where he annually takes a group from the BCM. He will continue to serve as chaplain for the Demon football team and remain available to answer questions about the BCM building as needs arise.
“I jokingly tell people I’ve got to get rid of this fulltime job so I can get my other stuff done. I’m not going to lack for things to do and I’m not going to lack for ministry opportunities. Baptist ministers don’t retire. They just put us in a pine box and put us on the ground when we’re done. I’ll always remain a minister and there’s always things to do.”
Information on NSU’s Baptist Collegiate Ministry is available at https://www.nsulabcm.com.