College Ministry Matters
I am a proud product of college ministry. Unlike many undergraduates, when I went off to college, I sought out a church I could call home. Not long after the start of my first semester, I opened the Yellow Pages, turned to the “Churches – Episcopal” page, and, when I saw that the first church listed was relatively close to campus, I made plans to attend. That Sunday, I went to the Cathedral Church of the Advent in downtown Birmingham and never seriously considered going anywhere else.
I loved the Advent, but it did not come close to meeting my spiritual needs. The preaching was excellent. The music was outstanding. The worship was beautiful, and the people were friendly. But there was no clear opportunity for an eighteen-year-old newcomer to become a part of the congregation. If there was a young-adult ministry in the parish, I could not find it. I was always greeted warmly and enthusiastically, but, once the service was over, I had no real connection with the church.
To be frank, I did not want much more of a connection with the Advent. I was a college freshman, and Sunday mornings were not always a convenient time for me to get up and go to church. As a large congregation, there were hundreds of people in church every Sunday, and I enjoyed the relative anonymity. If I signed up for any program or ministry in which people would actually get to know me, they might start saying to me, “We missed you in church last week. Where were you?” At that stage of my life, not being missed on Sunday mornings was just fine with me.
But I craved meaningful relationships in a spiritual setting. I needed to be a part of the body of Christ in a real, tangible, mutual way. College ministry was the answer.
Birmingham, Alabama, is home to multiple college campuses. Back then, the Episcopal diocese supported a single campus ministry that included students, faculty, and staff from all of them. One afternoon each week, the chaplain at the time, the Rev. Bill Blackerby, held a Eucharist in the college chapel at Birmingham-Southern. It was nothing like what I experienced at the Advent.
Instead of four hundred people in a service, we sometimes had four. I do not recall much music being sung, though I suspect we occasionally sung hymns or chanted the eucharistic prayer. The preaching was far more personal and approachable—not the performative sermons I found captivating at the Advent but relevant and applicable explorations of the scriptures and tenets of our faith I needed. And, if I did not show up, I was missed, and that felt good.
I was a part of the Church of the Advent, but I belonged to the campus ministry community. Once a week, on Sunday evenings, people from all the campuses were invited to a shared Eucharist and supper at central site where the college ministry offices were. I did not attend that gathering as often as I went to the Eucharist on our campus, but, whenever I did, I knew I was supposed to be there—that this group was specifically for me and others like me. While the Advent was happy enough to have another young person show up, the college community was built so that I could belong.
Even though both communities were in the same town where I went to college, the Advent functioned a little like the “church back home,” while the campus ministry took care of me while I was off at school. I grew up in the Methodist church, and, when it was time for me to be confirmed as an Episcopalian, the service took place at the Advent, but my sponsor was Fr. Bill.
Eventually, when I started taking seriously the call I felt to ordained ministry, I pursued that work of discernment with the clergy at the Advent, but they also encouraged me to stay connected with the chaplain, whom they recognized was critical to my spiritual formation. In time, Elizabeth and I were married at the Advent, and I was ordained there twice, but campus ministry is how I truly became an Episcopalian and where I explored my vocation as a future priest.
As you can tell, I owe a lot to college ministry. I suppose I would have become an Episcopalian and probably would have discerned a call to ordination even if I had never become active in campus ministry, but I cannot overstate the importance in my spiritual growth of belonging to a community designed for college students. The church were I went on Sunday mornings was important, too, but they never would have been able to provide a full spiritual home for me while I was in college. For that, I needed campus ministry.
You may have noticed that we attract a lot of college students to St. Paul’s. Every year in August, we see young newcomers start showing up, sometimes alone but often in small groups. Some of them are bold enough to give us their name and email address, which allows us to begin building a formal relationship with them, but most of them simply come to church and then go back home. I must confess that, while I do recognize many of their faces, I do not know many of their names. That is not abnormal for a church as big as ours, but it also speaks to the nature of their relationship with St. Paul’s. Although I may be projecting my experience onto them, I imagine that they are happy to have a place to go on the occasional Sunday morning, but they are not looking for a permanent church home.
But I want to be sure that any of them who wants a meaningful place within a spiritual community designed just for them has a place to call home, and that is why St. Martin’s is so important. As the Chaplain to St. Martin’s, Charles is building up that body by nurturing those relationships. Even those college students who do not regularly participate in the life of St. Martin’s but who come to St. Paul’s can take heart in knowing that our church cares enough about the experience of undergraduates to dedicate considerable resources to campus ministry. Some of them, I suspect, come to St. Paul’s because they know that St. Paul’s is a church that has a St. Martin’s. I want our commitment to the campus community to grow.
Some of the students who come to St. Martin’s are new to The Episcopal Church. They grew up in another church tradition or in an unchurched home, and they are curious. They want to know what it means to follow Jesus in an inclusive, liturgical, sacramental, Bible-focused, non-judgmental, socially active community, and St. Martin’s helps them find it. Other students at St. Martin’s belong to Episcopal congregations in their hometowns, and they are glad to have a place to belong while they are away from home. Regardless of what brings them to St. Martin’s, we want them to have a place where they belong—a community that recognizes them, knows them, and misses them when they are not present. That takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, money, and prayer, and I am thankful that we are willing to expend it.
We do not have a campus ministry because we want to raise up new priests and lay leaders for The Episcopal Church, but we recognize that, when college students participate in a community like St. Martin’s, sometimes that happens. We do not keep the doors open at St. Martin’s because we want Episcopalians from across the country to have a place to go on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, but we know that many of those who will walk through the doors during the year are looking for just that. We do not focus on college ministry because we want to provide an alternative expression of Christianity for those who have never known that following Jesus can be truly inclusive and grace-filled, but we believe that St. Martin’s is important for that reason, too.
Join me in remaining excited about what God is doing at St. Martin’s. Pray for Charles and for the students, faculty, staff, and volunteers for whom St. Martin’s is an important part of their spiritual life. Ask God to use that ministry to grow the reign of God in the lives of the university community and beyond. Look for ways to lend your gifts, talents, and other resources to college ministry. Back when I was in college, I did not know the name of almost any of the people who made our campus ministry possible, but I can tell you how grateful I am that they did. May that be our role in this next chapter of our lives.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
