Campus ministers and chaplains at Student Forum

Campus ministers and chaplains listen to Bruce Birch, academic dean of Wesley Theological Seminary, presenting a Bible study for campus ministers and chaplains. GBHEM photo by Vicki Brown.

By Vicki Brown*

Some 60 United Methodist campus ministers and chaplains attending Student Forum 2008 had their own immersion trip, met with the general secretary of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, and heard presentations about campus ministry.

One of the organizers of the event said it was aimed at filling a niche in campus ministry by providing education and fellowship.

“The response was overwhelmingly positive,” said the Rev. Michael McCord, campus minister at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. “What people really liked were the small groups, which were structured discussions about particular areas of campus ministry.”

He said participants were talking about things their annual conferences are doing to support their ministry. “We spent a lot of time at the end talking about the possibilities for campus ministry. McCord said the group also liked holding the event during Student Forum, the national college leadership development event, because that allowed campus ministers and campus chaplains to worship with their students and spend time with them at the same time they were getting a chance to network with their peers.

The group also met with the Rev. Jerome King Del Pino, general secretary of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, which sponsored both Campus Ministry at Forum and Student Forum.

“Campus ministry is the linchpin for sustainable renewal of The United Methodist Church,” Del Pino said. “So many of our annual conferences have blind spots regarding the need to continue financial support of these specialized ministries in difficult economic times.”

But Del Pino said campus ministers must be intentional about developing leaders for the twenty-first century, and added that The United Methodist Church still has the most significant campus presence of any denomination.

On Friday, some campus ministers accompanied students on 11 immersion trips, while others when to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church for an immersion trip about engaging student leaders. They heard presentations from Susan Burton, director of the seminar program for the General Board of Church and Society; Glen Sears, legislative assistant and deputy communications director for U.S. Congressman Dennis Moore; Tyler Edgar, assistant director of the National Council of Churches in Christ; and Panravee Vongjaroenrat, director of legal services for Justice for Our Neighbors, United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR).

McCord said the campus ministers’ immersion trip was focused on opportunities for getting students involved in the work The United Methodist Church does in the legislative and political arena.

Saturday, Dr. Bruce Birch, academic dean of Wesley Theological Seminary, presented a Bible study on the theme of exile, and told participants they must be fruitful where they are.

“There’s a part of me that wishes we could have the student movements that were happening back in the 1960s, but that’s not the way it is now,” Birch said. “We’ve got to build houses and live in them where we are.”

He said we are living in a broken and uncertain world that has seen the attack on the World Trade Center and the war in Iraq. “We have not made as much attempt to radicalize and transform the church of exile as we might have,” he said. “In the North American context, we tend to think only in terms of geography, but we have failed to see that exile is more than geography.”

He said exile calls into question centers of meaning and that the centers do not hold when things the previous generations thought they could count on to give meaning are no longer there.

Psalm 137:4 asks “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Birch said. “The implied answer is that we can’t, there is no singing in this world to which we’ve gone. I want to suggest that the vocation of the community of faith may be to give singing lessons, to provide bold voices that sing of hope when many are settling for survival.”

Today, God is working in interfaith places, and that is something campus ministers have more experience with than the rest of the church, Birch said. “You can keep us on track.”

The Rev. Malcolm Frazier, campus minister at Howard University, said Birch also talked about a Doctor of Ministry degree for campus ministry and other curriculum that Wesley Theological Seminary is developing.

Frazier said Dr. Shaun Casey, professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley, gave a presentation about the faith of the millennial generation.

“Dr. Casey reminded us that we have the opportunity to undergird our students theologically as they engage in the work of social justice,” Frazier said.

*Brown is associate editor and writer, Office of Interpretation, General Board of Higher Education and Ministry.