Christians on Campus

I've been around a lot of college and university campuses over the past 15 years - as an undergraduate student, seminarian, campus minister, and now as a doctoral student.

University life has always been exciting to me. The people there are bright and earnest, pursuing dreams and developing abilities. The exchange of ideas is stimulating. And the monotony of the work-a-day world never really seems to play a role in an environment where people are constantly testing new theories, developing arguments, and advancing scholarship in every area of human knowledge.

That's the academic side of things, anyway.

But what about the place of faith in a modern college or university setting?

This is a complicated issue, which is perhaps best understood by the difference between a "Religious Studies" curriculum and a "Seminary" or "Christian theological studies" curriculum. The former represents an attempt to justify the study of religion within a secular academic environment. The latter seeks to hold on to the traditional place of the theological curriculum within the university without apologizing for the unavoidably confessional aspects of its content.

A place like Duke University has both, of course. One is housed in the Religion Department of Trinity College (the undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences) and the Graduate School. And the other is housed in the Duke Divinity School (which, as you probably know. is a seminary of the United Methodist Church).

The complexity of how Christianity is perceived on university campuses is difficult to describe to people who haven't been around it. And beyond all these faculty and curriculum issues, it extends to the practice of faith.

The very environment of college can be hostile - implicitly or explicitly - to Christian men and women who want to grow in their faith as they grow in other areas of intellectual and social life. That's a shame, and I don't think it has to be that way. In fact, one of the ways I'm trying to help our seminary students at Duke to ground their discipleship as they prepare for ministry is through encouraging participation in Covenant Discipleship groups.

I write about this experience in the new issue of Covenant Discipleship Connection, which is available here. CD groups are small groups encouraging growth in discipleship through the practice of weekly mutual accountability. They've been an important part of my own discipleship for a decade now, and I think they are ideally suited to help college and university students who want to stay grounded as Christians as they explore new academic heights as students.

CD groups are just one avenue, of course. If you have ideas for how to help students focus on faith during their college, seminary, or grad school years, please share!

Our most crucial need...

... is vibrant & faithful campus ministry.

The church as a whole needs to embrace this idea in a big way.

Here are two reasons why:

First, the transition from high school to college is fun & exciting, but also scary & disruptive. You leave a stable environment, where the structures of nurture, authority, and accountability are all very plain. And you move into an environment where nurture is tough to find, authority is in flux, and accountability is often nil. Campus ministry provides a setting where young adult men and women can continue to grow in grace as they navigate the waters of college life.

Second, for many young men and women, the stirrings of a call into ministry that they might have sensed in high school come into full bloom during that crucial period from age 18 to age 22. But in order to really hear that call and begin to respond to it, they need the right environment. When it is resourced well and led capably, campus ministry offers that environment.

A colleague of mine, the Rev. Creighton Alexander, has written an op/ed in the United Methodist Reporter that asks the question, "Does anybody care about UMC's campus ministry?" Creighton offers a compelling argument both about the current neglect of campus ministry in the UMC and about the urgent need to reverse that neglect and embrace the potential that campus ministry represents. Creighton lays it out much better than I could, so go read his column for yourself.

Our campus ministries are a vulnerable part of the church's overall ministry. Wesley Foundations at state universities and Christian Life programs at UM-related colleges typically depend on apportionment dollars (either directly or indirectly) for their funding. And when the economy is bad, it is those programs that often suffer from cutbacks.

Another friend, the Rev. Eric Van Meter, has written compellingly in the past about the need for us to ask new questions and think unconventionally if we want the church to have a strong future. Eric is a campus minister, of course, at the Wesley Foundation at Arkansas State University.

And Eric, along with many of his colleagues, know how crucial campus ministry is to the health of the church - not because we want to prop up an institution, but because we want that institution to be the kind of community where the gospel of Jesus is proclaimed, broken people are given saving grace, and mature disciples are formed.

Campus ministry has the potential to 'stand in the gap,' as it were, providing a solid faith community for young adults during a vulnerable period in the lives, as well as offering an environment where those whom God is calling can hear and respond to that call into ministry.

Campus ministers and their ministry settings need our help. So be an advocate. Speak out. And pray without ceasing.

Sex on Campus

It was with more than a little fear and trembling that I wrote this column - "Sex on Campus" - in the United Methodist Reporter this week. No one has ever accused me of being a saint, and I was about as far from sainthood as you could get during my own college years. But time and maturity cause one to reflect, not only one's own past but also on the way that environments play such a key role in helping people to live in healthy ways. I'd be curious to hear readers' thoughts on this column in particular.

I believe there is very little that is healthy about the recreational pursuits of college students these days. The levels of substance abuse and casual sex, the inattention to engagement with the larger world, and the neglect of virtue formation all have real consequences for later life. Bad habits ingrained during the formative years tend to stick around and only become worse.

By the way, I wasn't picking on Duke in particular in the blog post. I only use it as an example of the permissiveness of campus culture because it is the campus I happen to walk around on everyday. And despite all the Duke lacrosse controversy over the past year-and-a-half, I don't think Duke is any worse than most places.

Amy Forbus had this to say on the Reporter's own blog about the issue of campus culture. Her comments about the "Shirttails Serenade" tradition at our own alma mater, Hendrix College, is right on: "Back then I saw it as innocent fun. Now it seems far less innocent." You could say that about a lot of the troubling behavior that happens on campuses. We have lost the sense that virtue formation is something that is intimately connected with an educated person.