Inter-Faith Collegiate Ministry

This week I'm especially appreciative of a subset of collegiate ministers: those who work calls them into serious, on-going, inter-faith dialogue. To be fully present on campus today already means to be engaged in some sort of inter faith work, but I'm thinking specifically of those whose context or job description highlights that activity.

It's what our students face. The Hindu down the hall is a kind, loving, peace-filled person whose life seems to make sense for him or her. Some of the Christians on the hall may try to convert her, a few may be aware of differences and try to understand them, but almost all will "live and let live."

Inter-faith folks try to move beyond tolerance to a place where each person can celebrate and pursue their own faith in a mutually supportive environment. This almost invariably means that the institution supports and encourages the activities of these collegiate ministers. Most congregations or ecumenical funding groups or para-church organizations would not be as open. They might want to be tolerant (civil) towards other faiths, but there is a hierarchical understanding of other faiths inherent in their self-understanding.

Imagine a campus minister asking a congregation for financial support of the ministry, and highlighting activities and lives changed as a result of the ministry. As part of the ministry activities, said campus minister discusses how the efforts to renovate the prayer space and kitchen have invigorated the Muslim students and they have become better organized and vocal on campus - thanks to the past financial support of that particular congregation. So please give us more money next year.

These Directors of Spiritual Life or Directors of Interfaith Campus Ministries learn from experience that their own particular faith is deepened and enriched by open and honest encounters with those of other faiths. And they are also made acutely aware of how most incoming college students have no knowledge of other traditions, and very little knowledge of their own family's faith.

So blessings on those folks in their important work, and a challenge to the rest of us that we can send students to them who know the rudiments of their own tradition. (And yes, I am advocating for a "No Christian Left Behind" educational assessment. George Bush left behind, not Hal Lindsey.)

Evangelism's Step Child

I read that Louisville has hired a new Associate in the Evangelism Area. Since Collegiate Ministries is part of the Evangelism and Church Growth Ministry Area, that got me to thinking about the relationship with Collegiate Ministries and the Ministry Area of which is a part.

If you go to the Evangelism and Church Growth Ministry Area portion of the PC(USA)'s website, you won't find anything connecting Collegiate Ministries to the goals or directions of the Area. There is now a link to "Youth AND Collegiate Ministry." Just a link. On the same line. The same sort of link one can find on the "US and World Missions" page. (There Collegiate Ministries is listed under "Mission Through Education" while ministries to Youth, Men, Women, and Older Adults are listed under Ministry In Your Community.)

While little staffing, money and apparently no connective theology ties collegiate ministry with its parent area, evangelism and church growth, what area of the national church has more efficient evangelism? Most campus ministries are a de facto congregation - a faith community. Within that campus community will be a higher proportion of non-churched, un-churched, disaffected churched, atheists, and agnostics than in ANY established congregation. Maybe even MOST new church developments. Is that not effective evangelism?


The PC(USA)’s evangelism interest translates to spending money and hiring staff to “growth the church deep and wide.” But by all but ignoring collegiate ministries as evangelism and church growth, I’m afraid we’re growing the church shallow and narrow!

To clarify: The reduction in staff and operating budget from the Office of Collegiate Ministries and the increased staff and budget for the Office of Evangelism is all under the same management directorate for budget and control in the GMAC's Evangelism and Church Growth Ministry Area.

A Collegiate Ministry Conference

During the Montreat College Conference, Adrian McMullen, the PC(USA)'s Associate for Collegiate and Young Adult Ministries, hosted a reception for collegiate ministers. Over 35 attended. As part of the event, Adrian asked folks what resources they would like. Most of the ensuing conversation centered around a professional conference, and fleshing out what a helpful conference would be like.

It should be held during the summer, and should contain times for inspiration, relaxation, and skills development. A recognized name should be a keynoter, but most of the education should be led from within the body of practioners. Some identified topics for workshops included board development, financial management, drawing local churches into supporting the ministries, and best practices. There was also a desire to ensure time enough to hear each other's stories.

The result looked amazingly identical to the conference the PACHEM Leadership Board had planned for July 2010 at their last board meeting! Only two members of the board were present at the Montreat reception, and neither of them contributed to this part of the discussions. I think this exercise was a validation of the of the Summit '10 Collegiate Ministry Conference. It has the flow and content desired by collegiate ministry folks, and I'm excited that the PC(USA) collegiate ministry community will be doing this.

In a perfect world, I don't think I would want to schedule a conference on the July 4th weekend. (Summit '10 is scheduled 1-4 July) There must be SOMEONE in Louisville who thought that having General Assembly run July 3-10 was normal (I wonder when the last time a GA met over July 4th?), so that for PACHEM to hope to have some presence at GA, the Summit conference would have to overlap at the beginning. But I hope the need and desire for such a gathering will outweigh the timing, and if it is important that an attendee be home on the 4th, that travelling that day will be acceptable.

Collegiate Ministry as Vanguard

Collegiate ministries are the R&D of the denomination and the cutting edge of higher education’s student affairs. The issues with which CM are engaged in the present are an indication of some of the things the denomination and institutions will be dealing with in the future.


Here are a few examples. In the past, international students had no support systems on campus, so chaplains and campus ministers arranged for host families, especially during holiday breaks. Then congregations and institutions became involved. Now institutions have offices with professional staff concerned about the quality of life of international students. Campus Ministries reacted to Spring Break excesses by developing alternative spring breaks for their constituents. Now most institutions support and initiate alternative spring breaks. Racial equality. Social Justice. GLBT issues. All incubated in campus ministry and then made official parts of the institution or denomination.

So what might be some of the denomination’s issues in the future?

The recent Montreat College Conference, currently the largest annual gathering of Presbyterian collegians, provides some indications.

Interfaith / Multifaith issues. How are Presbyterians to relate to and with other denominations and religious traditions? One of the key speakers, Eboo Patel, was a Muslim, involved in building bridges between faiths.

Thoughtful, challenging Bible Study and Theology. No ready-made check list of answers or beliefs, no simplistic reading of Scripture. Another of the speakers, Cindy Rigby, and the Conference Preacher, Anna Carter-Florence, embodied this.

Sex and Relationships. Moving beyond the simplistic no-no of junior high, how do we equip emerging adults with the skills and the theological underpinning to have healthy interpersonal relationships and not have them reject the institutional church because it ignores the complexity of their relationships after high school? The conference attendees were organized into self-selected focus groups. The largest groups were centered around intimacy, friendship, and sexuality.

What other issues are on the horizon? What is the cutting edge in your campus ministry communities?

The Woman at the Well Must Have Been a Non-Traditional Student

The Samaritan woman who encounters Jesus at the well (John 4:7-12) has many similarities with Presbyterians on college campuses. She comes face-to-face with different faith traditions (who distrust each other). She is eager for theological discussions, raises questions, and won't settle for easy answers. (She has the longest theological discussion in the NT) She comes to know the grace of God and receives the grace of Living Water. Then she shares what she knows- doubts and all. She had the experience of encountering Jesus, the Living Water, and when she went to share it, she knew her vocabulary couldn't do justice to the event (or be correct), so she just described it.  - And the "disciples" were astonished that Jesus would spend time with such a person.


Most Presbyterian College Ministry I know is characterized by theological inquiry in a safe environment which avoids easy answers.

In these ministries students want and find relationships which share the Grace of God as embodied in Jesus. These relationships are honest, so that doubts are recognized and accepted. And doctrinal formulations take second place behind descriptions of experiential Grace.

Annos Inturruptus

For those engaged in campus worshipping communities, this season has its liturgical tensions. The worshipping year includes Advent, but not Christmas; Lent, but not Easter. The students are off campus / at home. Especially for those liturgically inclined, how can we allow the community to participate in the full range of the church year?

The culture has been celebrating Christmas since October, and the rest of campus since the return from Thanksgiving Break. How to seriously address Advent? Many have the largest worship service of the year, some sort of Christmas and candle-lighting event, a pseudo- Christmas Eve, this weekend. (Some had it last week.)  Perhaps a couple of weeks with Advent themes and hymns, then the last week on campus could be Christmas? Perhaps a recognition of Advent and its themes with the acknowledgement that the community wants to celebrate Christmas together before everyone goes their separate ways? Any suggestions?

Lent and Easter seem a little different. With Lent and Easter, the campus isn't celebrating Easter, but when will the campus worshipers celebrate Easter? Prematurely, during Lent, or during Eastertide, when students have already celebrated Easter at home (or on the beach)?

Is this an "in the world, but not of it" issue?

Where is Our Theology?

I am thinking about all the professional books released this fall which I have read. They are:
Souls in Transition, Christian Smith with Patricia Snell
It's All About Jesus! Faith as as Oppositional Collegiate Subculture, Peter Magolda and Kelsey Ebben Gross
To Transform the World: Vital United Methodist Campus Ministries, edited by Alice G. Knotts
College Ministry 101: A Guide to Working With 18 -25 Year Olds, Chuck Bomar
Reaching the Campus Tribes  (An Opening Inquiry), Benson Hines

Each, in a different way, is bringing something to the collegiate ministry discussion. But they highlight a deficiency in current collegiate ministry thinking.

Who is doing the hard work of theology of collegiate ministry? Where is serious thought about "why" going on?  There are an increasing number of "how" and "who" books about this student generation, but when it comes to theology they are light. That characterizes the above books. I'm not slamming them for their theology. I just want more meat! Is anyone working on the theology of collegiate ministry from a Reformed perspective?

Where is the face of theoretical collegiate ministry in the PC(USA)? For that matter, is there any face / name recognition the denomination has for collegiate, comparable to Roger Nishioka or Kenda Creasy Dean for youth ministry?

Maybe the denomination isn't taking collegiate ministry seriously enough because we have not taken our profession and calling seriously enough to write, wrestle, publish, and publically discuss it.

Already, not yet

The beginning of this school year feels a bit like this sign -I'm not always sure which way things are heading. Make no mistake, I love what I do - I get to walk alongside young adults who are trying to figure out a lot of stuff. Things like what they want to study, who they want to date, what they believe about God. It is an honor and privilege to be allowed to participate in those conversations, to listen as some big questions are asked. But there are some tricky parts about ministry at a university. For one thing, people are ALWAYS coming and going. There is the normal, expected graduation of many - usually those who have become over time the group's leaders. There are the students who drop out of the campus ministry group for awhile because their class schedule is particularly grueling or they have to take on another job. There are those who decide they fit in better with a different group of folks. There are those who transfer to a different school. There are those who decide college is not for them. On the flip side, there are lots of folks who don't start looking for a ministry group till they have been in school for a year or two or four. It makes for an interesting dynamic. I recently learned that you need 17 hours of time with a group for them to develop "group-ness". They don't have to be continuous, but it does have to be the exact same people - so anytime someone leaves or someone new joins you are back at hour number one. Seventeen hours . . that is next to impossible in this context. So we already have a group, but they are not yet a group.

I feel like I am coming and going a bit these days as well. We are looking into ways we can become more sustainable for the long term - so in addition to the everyday, much of my time has been focused on a project that won't really begin to affect us until 2011 or 2012. So I'm working with today's students while spending lots of time dreaming about what this ministry could be for students who haven't even taken their SATs yet! The already and the not yet are struggling for my attention.

So how do you stay fully present to the people who are here now while looking forward? How do you foster community and group cohesiveness when you are never working with the same group twice?

Research and Development

The United Methodist Church's General Board of Higher Education and Ministry recently published a book, To Transform the World: Vital United Methodist Campus Ministries. In it, ten United Methodist campus ministers address some aspect of campus ministry from the lens of their own situation, and in the process develop what vital campus ministries contribute as well as need from the denomination.

I was struck by a phrase Kristin Stoneking used in her chapter, "Our Heart and Our Treasure: Strategies for Healthy Partnerships for Campus Ministries and Annual Conferences." In it she writes, "... campus ministries are to the church much like 'research and development' departments are to corporations." (p.78)

R&D departments are funded by the corporation expecting results in the future, not necessarily in the present. And since there might not be a perceived benefit in the present, short-sighted leaders and other departments, jealous of resources being allocated for R&D, are eager to have R&D funds reduced or eliminated. The members of R&D departments are a different breed, because they invariably think in terms of future possibilities, and need to think "outside the box" in order to be successful.

What group sends more people to seminary? What group plants seeds which grow into congregational leaders? What group is living out the issues which the denomination is currently struggling or which it hasn't yet begun to seriously address?

Is there any successful corporation without a vital R&D Department? How can the PC(USA) be so short-sighted as to be reducing its Research and Development though its collegiate ministries?

...And if there is anyone who ought to be publishing a book on "transforming the world", shouldn't it be the Presbyterians?

College is Good for Your Faith

Prevailing wisdom is that going to college weakens your faith. That apparently held true until the 1990s. Now there has been a shift, so that going to college will more likely strengthen your faith than weaken it!

Christian Smith, from the University of Notre Dame, is the Director of their Center for the Study of Religion and Society. He has been engaged in a study of emerging adults,first when they were teenagers (published in 2005 as Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers), and now the follow-up as they became traditionally aged college students, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. His conclusion is that, " for contemporary emerging adults, going to college does not increase the "risk" of religious decline or apostasy as it did in the not-to-distant past. Some evidence now even suggests that it may actually decrease that risk, compared to not attending college." (p.251)

Campus Ministry critics may need to re-formulate some of their their arguments.

Additional studies:
"Losing My Religion:The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood"
"Religion and College Attendance: Change Among Students"