Graduate Student Ministry

Graduate and professional students are an often under served population on campus. They don't usually want to participate in the undergrad fellowship, and they often have time and family constraints.

Some specific facets of a grad school outreach might include:
English conversation, especially for families
Child care
Transportation for spouses
Assistance with food, clothing (especially for seasons not present at home), and furnishings
Groups which meet at unusual times for Bible Study and support
Job training for spouses




Many of these needs would be applicable to immigrant communities, and are volunteer intensive.
Wouldn't this be a good ministry for some volunteers to spearhead?
Retirees in local congregations might be a good source of support. Even those in congregations which aren't near campus might feel called to help with transportation or English conversations.

Even small congregations near campus, who feel as if they don't currently have the energy or resources for an undergraduate campus ministry, might be able to provide some graduate student ministry.

The Graduate Studies Administration on campus would be a good place to begin in trying to identify needs and locations of the graduate students.

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Here's a model of a grad student ministry practiced by at least two Presbyterian congregations:
Meet after worship for lunch provided by the congregation (usually pizza or something simple ordered in) and use five questions as discussion starters ("What struck you in the sermon?", "Did anything in worship  move you or seem especially appropriate today?", etc.) Child care might be provided, based on the attenders. The group eats and talks for a while. They end with prayer, and leave after about an hour total.

It's an easy way to start.

Professional Organizations With UKirk

The PC(USA)'s collegiate ministry professionals are moving to three organizations. The Presbyterian College Chaplains Association, PCCA, will remain unchanged, and continue to function as it currently does. PACHEM's roles will be divided into two groups. The Office of Collegiate Ministries Advisory Board will function as its name implies, and will work on long range strategy. (Part of that long range strategy may include some student organization or event.) The majority of PACHEM will be folded into UKirk. The website, resources, newsletters, conferences, and Collegiate Ministry Locator will migrate to www.ukirk.org in the next few months. PACHEM members, and those who already receive newsletters, will be seamlessly transferred to UKirk (we hope!)

UKirk (as even the name implies) holds up congregational based college ministry as its standard model. According to the 2012 Collegiate Ministry Strategy, congregations near campuses will be identified and helped/ encouraged to develop a campus ministry mission.

So what about those doing collegiate ministry but who are not congregation based?

The UKirk branding will be useful to those stand-alone Presbyterian Campus Ministers. Ecumenical ministries may be able to work UKirk in somehow, perhaps when they list the seals of the various denominations supporting them. The ecumenical ministries would be included in the Ministry Locator.

What about PCUSA congregations near a campus who currently support an ecumenical ministry on campus? Can they work in tandem, both being UKirk Ministries? Can there be numerous UKirk chapters for a single campus? More thinking is needed in this area.

As for chaplains, perhaps a few church-related institutions will be able to use the UKirk brand /logo for their own Presbyterian fellowship group on campus. Most chaplaincies, because of their charge to the entire campus, will not.

The hope is that the UKirk  emphasis will stimulate the chaplains to encourage the local PCUSA church to step up the church's college ministry. The hope is that the congregations and the chaplaincies will work better together to" reach, love, and teach" the college students.

One of the underlining UKirk assumptions, I think, is that the churches near our colleges have mainly assumed that the chaplains are doing the campus ministry for the congregations, while at the same time the churches don't understand the ramifications of the multifaith component of the chaplains. Many chaplaincies and local congregations have cordial relations, but not the level and spirit of cooperation UKirk implies. By stimulating the congregations to be active doing campus ministry while working with the chaplains, the chaplains will feel more support from the congregations. The end result is that more students will get connected.

I don't have a good feel for how the denomination's "worshiping community" concept will be a part of all this. The Chaplaincies have their own worshiping communities, most with strong Reformed overtones. Will the denomination take credit for them? Will chaplains be treated as congregational pastors instead of second class Presbyters? Might not a congregation have a worshiping community of college students, while the chaplain also has one (and with some students involved in both?)


This is an exciting time for collegiate ministry, fraught with potential. And hope springs eternal.....

A New Vision

A new vision for Collegiate Ministry in the PC(USA) was launched  this week at General Assembly. The center of this vision is a new organization, UKirk Ministries. This will be a "brand", a Westminster Fellowship for the Twenty-first Century, as well as an organization which will encourage, support and advocate for college ministries in the denomination. This "brand" is not proscriptive, that is, no campus ministry will have to call themselves a UKirk ministry. The hope is that the existing ministries with good name recognition might include somewhere in their literature that the ministry is "a UKirk Ministry."

UKirk - for "University Church" - seems appropriate for this time. It has a strong congregational tone, and the logo has a steeple. "Kirk" has historical Presbyterian /Church of Scotland connections. One comment in the past decade was that no student had any idea what "Westminster" had to do with a church. Perhaps many students will not know what a Kirk is (besides Starfleet's youngest Captain). Prebygeek students will get the Presbyterian connection. The "UKirk" combination has a current, edginess to it.

An initial UKirk.org website has been developed. The website also includes an introductory video.  PACHEM and pachem.org will shortly be folded into UKirk.

Student Care

How should denominations relate to students? Currently the PCUSA has no specific ministry to college students. Yes, the Office of Collegiate Ministry supports collegiate ministers who then support students. Yes, there are some connections possible through NNPCW, REYWT, and the YAV program, but where is the care and support for students as students? There is nothing.

The recent Task Force for a Collegiate Ministry Strategy did not include a student on the Task Force by choice, and there was no public way for students to have input into the strategy. The strategy did not address student issues, but only those of college ministry.

The 2010 General Assembly Worship service had college student ministry as one of the beneficiaries of the offering. To my knowledge those monies have never been released!


What does a student do at a college where there is no PCUSA presence, and no local congregation? What if the nearest congregation is not interested in college students? (Shocking, but true! Every year a few students contact pachem.org asking for student connections or campus ministry programs. I send them information about the nearest congregation and send the congregation an e-mail - or letter since a goodly portion don't have e-mail. [also shocking but true!] In perhaps the last 15 contacts, I have received two responses from the churches saying that they will contact the students. I have not done any follow-up in the last five years, so I don't know how successful those connections have been. I am not hopeful.)

How could the PCUSA help college students?

Couldn't the PCUSA have a social media presence so that Presbyterian College students could connect with one another? PCUSA Young Adults have a FaceBook page, why not one specifically for college students?  What about a site where students could get some resources and connect with PCUSA students at other isolated campuses? How can we help those students feel connected?

Well, why don't they form a community themselves? Why hasn't someone already done it?

Perhaps because the transition to college is pretty overwhelming, and they have already tried to locate a campus ministry and local church where they feel comfortable. Perhaps because starting an online community would take time before the word got out and a critical mass of students joined. If there was an on-going group already started, perhaps searching students would join. Establishing and maintaining such a community could easily be administered by the denomination with some (lowly) paid student moderators.

But maybe the time has passed for denominational connections..... What do you think?

Commencement

I think almost every college ministry has some marking of the graduation of the ministry’s seniors. Recognition during worship, dinners, gifts of mugs or books (which books do you give? Share, please) We do something to commemorate their life in our worshiping community and their commencement into a new life away from the campus.

What do we do to help them in transition? Have there been bible studies, discussion groups, or programs for graduating seniors that deal with finding community in a new location, job search or new job pressures, or living with your parents as an adult? Are we contacting congregations in the cities where they will be living, informing the staff of the arrival of one of our students?

How often do we complain that the youth pastors of local congregations don’t do a good job in preparing their high school seniors for college? How often do we wish that ministers would give us the contact information for their parishioners who are starting college at our institutions?  I’ve heard campus ministers talk about how congregations were “dropping the baton” and not passing on their high school graduates.

So now it’s the time of the year for collegiate ministers to be “passing the graduates” to the worshiping communities in the locations of the next phase in their lives.

College Placement Offices do a Senior Check-Up, where they invite seniors to come in and discuss their resumes, job search strategies, and reframe their undergraduate experiences in light of a potentially new career. Should we be doing Senior Faith Check-Ups, to help our seniors process their undergraduate faith journey and give them some tools to help them transition to the full-time work force?

Is there a FaceBook group for your college graduates to join for campus ministry alumni? How will you check to see that they are looking for and have found a worshiping community.

How are you helping your graduate commence the new chapters in their lives? Will you share those with us, please?

Millennials: Civically and Politically Disengaged?

Jean Twinge, Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University, is in the news again. You remember her as the author of GenerationMe: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- andMore Miserable Than Ever Before. 

In the past few weeks she has been mentioned in USA Today and Psychology Today and has published a study  on “Generational Differences in Young Adults' Life Goals, Concern forOthers, and Civic Orientation, 1966–2009.”

She maintains that the Millennials are ” more “civically and politically disengaged, more focused on materialistic values and less concerned about helping the larger community” than either Generation X (born 1962-1981) or Baby Boomers (born 1946 to about 1961) when studied at the same age.

The idea that this generation of college students is more engaged is incorrect, she says. Even the rise in volunteering must be due to “school requirements.”

I even learned a new word: “slacktivist”. It’s a contraction of “slacker” and “activist” and describes the feel good actions such as liking a FaceBook cause.

A rebuttal of her finds comes from Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America

Lucy Forster-Smith, Chaplain at Macalester College, recently wrote a piece in the Huffington Post. She also describes this generation in terms vastly different from Twenge.

Is Dr. Twinge looking at the generational glass a half empty?

College and University Churches

The Collegiate Ministries Task Force is recommending a Starting and Renewing College and University Churches Initiative.

"Rationale; There are a multitude of congregations in college communities that desire to have a better mission to and with campus. There are also several congregations that are excelling at this. The University Church Initiative helps bring these two types of churches together to aid in the process. This takes some of the pressure off the collegiate ministries office and helps build collegiality among the congregations. This initiative will also involve the church development office and the church transformation office by connecting appropriate congregations to the ongoing work of those offices."

From the strategic time line and budget published, 25 congregations with some potential for growth in or starting college ministry will be identified in the summer of 2012. They will gather sometime in the summer /fall of 2012. Perhaps this would be where the OCM, and church development / church transformation lays out resources and help for those congregations. The during the next year, research and initial help of the churches is completed, and another gathering of the 25 along with some additional churches which have identified.

Categories of college churches, I assume, would be those who could use some help/ideas to ramp up their existing ministry, and those who currently have no ministry, but could with help. Churches with already strong ministries and those who don't seem to have any potential would have to be excluded.



Twenty-five College and University Churches would hopefully be spread over the five Collegiate Ministry regions, so we can figure that each region, and each regional rep, might be responsible for the nurture of five congregations.



Part of this strategy will be to develop "  an adaptive model to promote and establish local Presbyterian collegiate ministries grounded in local congregations and supported by mid-councils." No information about this model has been released yet, but judging from the composition of the Task Force, the University Church model used by congregations in the Assent network, would provide a basis for this new initiative's model. The Assent model is used by large churches near large campuses. The OCM and the CM network would have to find ways of adapting it for small congregations near small institutions.

Some questions about this area of the strategy which the full report will hopefully answer are.: What criteria will be used for determining these 25 plus churches? What resources and time line for establishment of a college ministry will be expected? If a congregation starts a campus ministry, does that count as one one the 101 worshiping communities the  collegiate ministry community will start? Will a small congregation work to start an adjacent worshiping community, rather than adding a campus ministry component to their existing ministry? Considering the spectrum of congregations, even those near campuses, how much help can an "adaptive model" be? And will there sufficient funding to implement this vision?

New Collegiate Ministries Structure and Network

The Collegiate Ministries Task Force is proposing that collegiate ministries in the PC(USA) have a two-part structure: the Office of Collegiate Ministries within the GAMC and a network in covenant with the GAMC. An Outline of the Strategic Plan the Task Force is recommending can be found in the information packet for the February GAMC meeting.

"Rationale; Many of our regional and local collegiate ministries are struggling to operate on a consistent basis, especially when there is local staff turnover or a change in the organization in which they operate (congregation, middle governing body, ecumenical setting). An organized structure, national network and regional intentionality will help collegiate ministries to function consistently and more effectively through changing times."

This CM Network will be something new. How it will relate to the existing professional networks ( PACHEM and PCCA) has not been made public. Published reports indicate that the Collegiate ministries Network be staffed with  five regional coordinators. These coordinators will serve as an informative and directive resource for students, parents, campus pastors and congregations within their region. This appears to be a model similar to what some other denominations are doing.

These coordinators will be part-time paid positions, funded through the Office of Collegiate Ministries (OCM). I don't know how much time is part-time, but the Proposed Budget and Timeline indicates that two coordinators will be in place by Jan 1, 2013, and the other three by Jan 1, 2014. The Regional Coordinators will initially be paid $10,400 plus travel, admin, and program monies. (I'm guessing approximately 10 hours per week.)

The Coordinators will be working to establish independent regional entities to support collegiate ministries. These entities will have established regional cohorts by the fall of 2013 and will be regionally incorporated with 501(c) 3 status by 2020. This implies that the Regional Coordinators will have raised sufficient funds by then to pay for their positions as well as funds to aid in the development and support of new campus missions as well as, I assume, helping existing ministries to become stronger and more financially secure.


The Coordinators will work with the OCM to "establish an adaptive model to promote and establish local Presbyterian collegiate ministries grounded in local congregations and supported by mid-councils." This will include identifying and  equipping 101 university communities to start new worshiping communities within the next 10 years.

Whew! This is an ambitious plan! The OCM in Louisville - one Associate and a half-time Administrative Assistant- will not get any larger, but an additional five Regional Coordinators will be hired. These will either be GA employees or contracted positions. They will have a few years in which to grow organizations which will fund their positions. The skill set for these Coordinators will be wide-ranging. They will have to be able to manage collegiate ministry development and programming, new ministry start-ups, and significant institutional development and fund-raising - and all in ten hours a week! That the vision incorporates five independent organizations in addition to the CM Network seems a lot of structure in a time in which less structure is occurring across the denomination. 

The Network will have some formal structure, also, with a part-time communications person as well as an operating budget. It will initially be supported by the OCM, as PACHEM and PCCA are now, but whether or not it will also move to independent status in not clear from the Strategic Plan Outline. 

I'm thankful the Task Force has Big Dreams.

What do you think?

A Vision for Collegiate Ministry

The PCUSA's Collegiate Ministry Task Force recently released its working vision statement: “We are a church that reaches, loves and teaches college students to be lifelong followers of Jesus Christ.” If approved at General Assembly in July, I believe it will be the first time that PCUSA college ministry will have a stated mission strategy. Of course, "vision statements" were not part of our vocabulary in previous decades of strategies, but this is still important. As collegiate ministry has been under attack by both benign neglect and aggressive denominational apathy, being able to articulate what we are about has become necessary for survival.

"We are a church that reaches...", so we take initiative and we take action to connect with college students. This phrase reflects the denominations' renewed interest in evangelism, and implies material support in order to be able to do the reaching.

"We are a church that ... loves... college students." I hope the Task Force means practical rather than theoretical love. Since the last mission strategy in 2001, the denomination has loved students in theory while neglecting them in practice. Do we love them enough to allow them to be students (who, in addition to academics, are studying how to be a young adult), rather than younger models of our typical 65 year-old lifetime Presbyterians? Do we love them enough to love sacrificially?

The combination of the verbs "reaches" and "loves" points to the radical hospitality which characterizes Presbyterian college ministry.

Loving college students should come before reaching. Search committees for campus ministers and chaplains discover this during their search process. They come to separate those applicants who first love students from those who first love reaching (evangelizing in its traditional sense) and teaching (in its purely academic sense).

"We are a church who... teaches... college students." The context of this ministry makes a teaching component a necessity. But what sort of teaching? Because it takes place within and contiguous to the academy, the teaching must be of a quality and sophistication appropriate to higher education. Simplistic answers will be rejected by the academic community. What is the purpose of our teaching?  Is our purpose to indoctrinate, or transform, or nurture? Hopefully the full report will address this.

"college students". I like that the mission isn't to Presbyterians, or to the unchurched, but to college students. All college students, including the ones who may never become Presbyterian.

"to be lifelong followers". Our mission is to equip and nurture lifelong followers. Some other campus ministries have a short term vision - make disciples today. The Task Force is calling us to keep the long term in focus. How do we help students be lifelong followers? How do we help them transition from their campus communities to their "real world" communities? How do we equip them for future challenges to faith when youthful answers don't adequately reflect the complexity of the adult world? (teaching, again, as above.)

"Followers of Jesus Christ". Our current culture is multifaith. How do we differentiate ourselves so as to understand and claim who we are? How do we follow Jesus Christ in a radically secularized culture which is rife with unhelpful stereotypes of Christians?

The Task Force is calling us to affirm that we are followers of Jesus. There are enough older Presbyterians who remember the 1960's -70's campus ministries which reflected the counter-cultural context of student life. Campus ministries, who were suspicious of the organized, traditional, inflexible church, were reluctant to use the vocabulary of the established church. As campus ministry distanced itself from the denomination, so the denomination distanced itself from campus ministry. The vision statement closes that distance. How can older members hear that? How can the academy hear that? How can the students who we love be reached and taught that?

“We are a church that reaches, loves and teaches college students to be lifelong followers of Jesus Christ.” This is a vision statement worth living into.

Student Food Pantries

A number of Food Banks especially for students have been sprouting across the country. Apparently the first was the Michigan State University Foodbank in 1993. It now serves over 4,700 clients a year! Wright State University,  Iowa State, and the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, are among the growing number of institutions who have food banks or pantries for students. The recession is impacting students with limited funds.


Presbyterian congregations know how to do food pantries. Many congregations use their facilities and members to run a food pantry ministry to their communities. So here is an easy-to-sell and easy-to-start ministry for congregations adjacent to campuses. Local churches might also join in supporting such a ministry. (Presbyterian congregations know how to support food banks, when sometimes they don't know how to support the campus ministry of another congregation. )

For further reading:
"Owens Readies Campus Food Pantry for Students in Need of Assistance," The Toledo Blade, Jan. 30, 2012.
"Among Dorms and Dining Halls, Hidden Hunger," The Atlantic Monthly, May 2010.