wfn.org | Congregational Involvement Is Key to Revitalized

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2-April-1997 
97145 
 
 
         Congregational Involvement Is Key to Revitalized 
        Higher Education Ministry, Forum Participants Told 
 
                      by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
MEMPHIS, Tenn.--With denominational funding declining and ecumenical 
partnerships unraveling in many parts of the country, the direct 
involvement of Presbyterian congregations in campus ministry and college 
chaplaincy programs is the key to the denomination's ministry in higher 
education in the 21st century, participants in a March 19-20 forum here 
were told. 
 
     The forum, "The Church's Mission in Higher Education," was hosted by 
General Assembly moderator the Rev. John M. Buchanan.  It fulfilled one of 
Buchanan's themes as moderator -- that the church give renewed attention to 
its ministry in higher education -- and attracted more than 150 
participants to the campuses of the University of Memphis and the 
PC(USA)-related Rhodes College. 
 
     Those attending included the presidents of a number of the 67 
PC(USA)-related colleges and unversities, who stayed on for the annual 
meeting of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities, and a 
sizable contingent of college chaplains and Presbyterian campus ministers, 
who remained for the annual meeting of the Presbyterian College Chaplains 
Association. 
 
     During his opening remarks Buchanan credited the higher education 
leaders for "initiating this conversation -- you came knocking at the 
church's door and we are profoundly grateful that you did. It is not a 
coincidence," Buchanan said, citing statistics compiled by Louisville 
Presbyterian Theological Seminary president the Rev. John Mulder, "that 
membership loss in the Presbyterian Church began when the church started 
pulling away from colleges and universities." 
 
     "We lose our children because the church is nowhere to be found during 
their most critical years," he added. 
 
     Speakers during the forum repeatedly painted a picture of campus 
ministries and college chaplaincies in need of reinvention due to dwindling 
income from denominational coffers and ecumenical partnerships that have 
broken down.  But some news was good.  At Westminster House in Berkeley, 
University of California campus minister the Rev. Randy Bare said, the 
number of Presbyterian congregations directly supporting the ministry has 
grown from three to 18 in the past two years. 
 
     Campus ministry at Westminster House, which for 20 years was an 
ecumenical effort operating under the name UNITAS, nearly collapsed three 
years ago when the United Methodists withdrew their funding and 
Presbyterian governing bodies cut way back on theirs.  Bare, called to try 
and rescue Westminster House's ministry, told forum participants that 
direct involvement by Presbyterian congregations has quickly turned around 
campus ministry at Berkeley.  He is now a parish associate at the two 
Presbyterian churches nearest the Berkeley campus, which enables 
Westminster House to "be a conduit for students to established traditions 
and churches." 
 
     The Rev. Dorothy McKinney-Wright, who for six months has been campus 
minister at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, has adopted a 
strategy of "bringing town and gown together" by organizing programs that 
appeal to both the university and church communities.  As pastor of Faith 
Presbyterian Church in Pine Bluff as well as a campus minister at the 
university, McKinney-Wright said, she is trying to create in the church 
"concentric circles of extended family around each student" and  an 
environment in the church where university students "can come and 
participate at their own level of interest." 
 
     In Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Presbyterian Church-related Stillman 
College coexists with the University of Alabama, the Rev. William Lawson, 
pastor of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, said the church has embraced 
an "incarnational theology where town and gown embrace." 
 
     Lawson said the history of campus ministry in Tuscaloosa has been 
marked by alienation -- between the campus and the community and between 
the church and the community.  For instance, he said, "Brown Memorial for 
many years has hosted chapel services designed for Stillman students, but 
until just recently we didn't allow students to even park at the church." 
 
     There was no cooperation between the University of Alabama and 
Stillman College and no cooperation between the five Tuscaloosa 
Presbyterian churches and Stillman.  Now a number of programs have been 
established that involve students from both schools, and forums on such 
issues as race relations in Tuscaloosa have been co-sponsored by church and 
community groups and held on the campuses of both schools. 
 
     "It has helped a great deal," Lawson added, "that we have a new 
president at Stillman and a new president at the University of Alabama who 
happens to be a Presbyterian elder." 
 
     Governing bodies, too, are reexamining their role in the church's 
higher education ministry.  The Rev. Verne Sindlinger, executive of the 
Synod of Lincoln Trails, admitted that middle governing bodies were 
"ill-equipped" to handle the shift of responsibility for higher education 
ministries from the General Assembly to the synods in 1973.  Now, after 
years of declining financial support and ever more tenuous relationships, 
he said, "conversations are increasingly being initiated by the colleges." 
 
     With Presbyterian campus ministry or chaplaincy currently on just 15 
of the 250 institutions of higher education within the Synod of Lincoln 
Trails, the synod has adopted an aggressive new congregation-based strategy 
for dramatically increasing the churches' ministry.  "Campus ministry will 
be carried out wherever possible through congregations," the synod's 
strategy paper declares, and then it invites congregations to "help test 
new models for campus ministry" in partnership with the synod and its 
presbyteries. 
 
     The Synod of Living Waters has adopted a goal of having a campus 
ministry of some sort at every institution of higher education in the synod 
within the next few years, said the Rev. Harold Jackson, that synod's 
executive.  The synod comprises the states of Kentucky, Mississippi, 
Alabama and Mississippi. 
 
     Such cooperative ventures are not without their drawbacks.  The Rev. 
Robert Turner, campus minister at the University of Indiana, said some 
campus ministers "rather enjoy some of the aspects of distancing themselves 
from the church -- there's less politics and personalities to have to deal 
with." The Rev. Harry Smith, former chaplain at Austin College in Texas, 
said there "will always be a tension between campus ministry 
professionals' and  amateurs' in churches who want to do something but 
don't know quite what or how."  Smith said the challenge is to provide 
"professional campus ministry without churches and governing bodies feeling 
left out." 
 
     The Rev. Robert Haywood, campus minister at the University of North 
Carolina-Wilmington, said there is great difficulty "intepreting to 
churches that campus ministry is so much more than Presbyterian 
sheepherding."  Pastoral care of students is important, he said, but 
"campus ministry in its fullest sense involves faculty, who are the forces 
of continuity in universities, and so church members need to appreciate 
ministry to students and to the larger university community." 
 
     Alan Stone, president of Alma College in Michigan, said, 
"Presbyterian colleges, anyway, are not just wells of academic achievement. 
At Alma we are seeing a tremendous wave of volunteerism and a resurgence of 
traditional religious practice.  What we need most are faculty with soul 
and academic leaders who can articulate a sense of mission and service and 
a greater sense of the campuswide connection to the church and the world."  
 
     The Rev. Lucy Forster-Smith, chaplain at Macalester College, decried 
the individualism "that causes us to forget our rootedness."  In the highly 
competitive world of higher education today, she continued, "the central 
challenge is the mandate to share holy joy -- to infuse joy back into our 
institutions."  Calling the task "teaching to Godness," Forster-Smith said 
students are struggling to "find roots in the unrelenting transcience of 
contemporary society." 
 
     Betty Landman, president of Beaver College in Pennsylvania, agreed. 
"I have never seen students more hungry and thirsty for what we have to 
offer."  But, she cautioned, "all of us must be involved to provide the 
creativity that will produce success -- our survival lies in our 
interdependence." 

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