General Assembly

The General Assembly passed the resolution to re-establish a stand alone Office of Collegiate Ministries and to develop a higher education strategy to be presented at the 2012 GA. There was an outporing of support for Collegiate Ministries which was encouraging and affirming.

The committee discussed and debated the overture and its dilebration  turned out to be the the current state of collegiate ministry thought in microcosm. I wish it had been archived. It would have been a wonderful teaching tool.

The only really negative part was the attitude and action of some of the Louisville staff. They weren't interested in discussing the overture with the advocates, and made it clear that congregational ministries were important, and that they would sacrifice collegiate ministry in a heartbeat.

In 1998, the Lutherans conducted a big survey concerning Lutheran church-related schools. One of the big shockers of that study concerned the perceptions of different groups on the effectiveness of a church-related college experience. Guess which group undervalued church-related education the most? Church bureaucrats! More so than even non-churched adults. Perhaps by extension we might say that church officials would undervalue collegeiate ministry.

How can we change this? We have to find better ways to let the church know what collegiate ministry is doing. Perhaps a full-time staff member can help with that, but the collegiate ministry community has to be more PR proactive. How do we do that??