CAMPUS MINISTER RESIGNS TO TAKE POST AT FRUITLAND COMMUNITY CHURCH

A Southeast Missouri State University campus minister has resigned to serve as pastor of a new church in the Fruitland, Mo., area.

Mike Parry, who has served as the campus minister at the Baptist Student Center on the university campus, resigned at the end of May. He will continue to work at the BSU through December until a new campus minister is hired.

Parry has been a campus minister for 19 years.

Parry also serves as pastor of the Fruitland Community Church, a new church work near Fruitland. He has served as pastor there for eight months. The church is affiliated with the Missouri Baptist and Southern Baptist conventions.

"I love what I've been doing," Parry said. "I've just felt God's leadership in helping start a new church and God has blessed that. It's kind of a bittersweet thing -- I'm leaving something I love to do what God wants in the next step of my life. I'm excited about the future and the new church and watching how that's going to grow."

Fruitland Community Church is also sponsored by the Cape Girardeau Baptist Association and Lynwood Baptist Church.

Members from Lynwood committed to meeting together in the Fruitland area to help start the church. About 50 members of the congregation opted to move their membership to the new church, which began meeting at North Elementary School last fall.

Lynwood purchased nearly $50,000 worth of portable equipment designed just for the task of church planting. It is used solely by Fruitland Community Church.

"It was a step of faith to have Lynwood lend us the money," Parry said last fall.

The equipment fits on a 24-foot trailer and is set up and dismantled at the elementary school each Sunday. Fifteen crates filled with speakers, video screens, coffee makers, plants and even children's toys roll off the trailer and into the school's cafeteria or classrooms for setup.