By Corrie Coleman | Reporter
Baylor’s Christian Business Leaders are sponsoring a food drive this week to collect canned goods for Shepherd’s Heart Food Pantry. From Monday to Friday, collection boxes will be placed near the main entrances to the Paul L. Foster campus.
Christian Business Leaders was established at Baylor in the Spring of 2016. The organization seeks to empower business students to remain rooted in their faith as they enter a primarily secular workplace. They sponsor events throughout the year such as service projects, guest speakers and prayer meetings.
Shepherd’s Heart, the organization that will be receiving the food, is a nonprofit that works to serve the Waco community by providing resources such as a food pantry and a clothing resale shop. According to their website, one in four children in Texas do not know where their next meal will come from. Shepherd’s Heart works to change these statistics, assisting over 2,500 food-insecure families each month.
Plano junior Kyle Taylor is a chairman for the Waco Outreach Committee of Christian Business Leaders. He explained that this committee works to help Baylor’s business students serve the people of Waco. The food drive is a new tradition that the Waco Outreach Committee began last year.
“We’re all about service and growing in Christ,” Taylor said. “We want to be a positive Christian influence on the business school and on Waco.”
Spring senior Rebecca Rodriguez, president and founding officer of Christian Business Leaders, hopes that the food drive will show Baylor students that they can make an impact on their community.
“We really want to empower the business school in seeing that they can make an impact in our community and the importance of reaching out and serving our neighbors,” Rodriguez said. “[The food drive] is a tangible way to do that.”
“The mission of Christian Business Leaders is to develop and equip a Christ-centered community of business students dedicated to embracing their call as Christian leaders with business as their vocation,” the organization’s website says.
Rodriguez said that, to her, the purpose of Christian Business Leaders is to redefine what success looks like in the business world by developing Christ-centered leaders that are marked by their love and service for others.
Christian Business Leaders will be hosting events throughout the semester that are open to all students. Every Thursday morning at 7:30, they host a prayer meeting on the second floor of Foster. They will also be hosting lectures from business professionals and faculty about what it means to be a Christian in the business world.
