United Methodist Campus Ministry

Spring Break Mission Trips

2006-02-27T15:50:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone. I hope you are all well!

My question(s) centers around spring break trips.

1. Just curious---where are you going? What are you doing?
2. How many students/faculty/staff are going? How do you get them involved? Are they "regulars" in your campus ministry?
3. Has anyone been to the New Orleans area?

I'm preparing to depart with 9 students to Pascagoula, MS. mid-March. We are looking for something to do on our "fun day" mid-week. I've thought about heading over to New Orleans, but I've heard that the only thing up & running is the zoo? If you have any suggestions please let me know!

Blessings,
Beth

Campus Ministry Summit

2005-11-09T09:46:00.000-05:00

December 6-8 at Duke there will be a summit on campus ministry sponsored by the Foundation for Evangelism. I'm curious to know if anyone reading this blog was invited/plans to attend.

Is it true?

2005-10-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

There's a rumor flying around that the name of Jesus was never raised or mentioned at the UMCM conference in Baltimore in July. I was there. I'm 100% positive this is not true. If you were there, could you please confirm or deny this rumor? Did you hear the name of Jesus?

January Mission Trip Ideas?

2005-10-28T16:50:00.000-04:00

Hello to all of you amazing people with a wealth of knowledge! We are in the process of nailing down our January mission trip and there are so many cool opportunities out there that it is hard to determine which direction to go. Any ideas? There will probably be about 10 of us and we are looking at January 8-14th and are wide open to international or US opportunities. Money is as always an issue and reasonable is good. Any help or advice is appreciated!

=0), Narcie

Glad to know y'all are out there! My email is nmcclen@learnlink.emory.edu for any of the great people that respond!

Hurricane Response

2005-09-04T21:40:00.000-04:00

What are you all doing to help the victims of the Hurricane? Has anyone been in contact with campus ministers in any of the ravaged areas? Carolina is offering spaces to about 200 or so students from Louisiana. Are any of your schools doing this and if so are you doing anything to offer hospitality to them?
Jan

Idea Mart - Dinner for 12

2005-08-23T09:48:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone -My situation is that I have a weekly lunch time gathering that so far is attracting around 40 students. Because of the room set-up (we're in an auditorium) and the logistics of our time together, it is very difficult to get to know students in any real way with so little contact with them each week and they don't get to know each other. So yesterday, I had the idea to start hosting "Dinner for 12" every other week. I'm going to pick restaurants close to campus and have people sign up to go together to meet each other and me. I wondered what other folks did to try to create some intimacy between students. Maybe we could share ideas.Melissa

Online Communities

2005-08-19T11:31:00.000-04:00

In my experience students are becoming more and more involved in online communities such as Facebook, Ringo, Livejournal, etc. I find it critical as a campus minister that I am able to communicate with students through these online communities.

I moderate a livejournal community that is a group of Wesley Foundation/UM Campus Ministry students from across the country (as well as others who are interested). It can be found at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wesleyfdn

It is a small community, but fruitful nonetheless. Are there other communities online we, as campus ministers, should know about?

Thanks,
Beth Gibson

Lectionary - August 21, 2005 (Gospel)

2005-08-16T09:45:00.000-04:00

In Matthew 16:13-20, Jesus asks the disciples two questions: "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" and "Who do you say that I am?" In a conversation with Kimberly Broerman (some of you know her), she suggested that in the first question, Jesus is not referring to himself in the third person. Rather, he is asking about what the contemporary wisdom was about the Messiah, whoever that happened to be. He's asking a philosopical question about the Son of Man, not trying to get a read on what people are saying specifically about him. (This can only be said of Matthew's Gospel - it is clear in Mark and Luke that Jesus is referring to himself. Which begs the question, do Mark's and Luke's versions of this story make this particular interpretation of Matthew invalid?)

With this particular reading of Matthew's version of this story, we can say that there are two questions we are invited to wrestle with - a philosopical, theological, doctrinal question, and a confessional question. The first question, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?", invites us to explore differences between denominations, theories of atonement, history of Christian thought, etc. The second question invites us to answer the question, "Who is Jesus to me?"

In many campus ministry settings, being "saved" means accepting one answer to "Who do people say that I am?" over all other answers. And the answer to the second question is expected to be the same as the answer to the first. In Matthew's telling of this story, there are two very different questions being asked. "Jesus' blood was sacrificed because it was the only way to cleanse humanity of its sinful nature" is very different from "An encounter with the living Christ gave me hope when I had no hope, rescued me from an addiction I could not overcome, sustained me through a grief that was too much to bear, ..." In Matthew's telling of this story, we are invited to explore historical, doctrinal, philosophical, as well as confessional understandings of Christ.

On many liberal arts campuses, the historical / doctrinal / philosophical questions are dealt with in religion and philosophy classes. This frees campus ministries to deal primarily with confessional questions. On other campuses (like Georgia Tech, where there are no religion classes), the campus ministries must deal with all aspects of understanding Christ. This can be difficult because students often come looking for strictly confessional treatments of their faith ("I don't care about the Q document or why Martin Luther left the Catholic Church! I just want to sing praise songs!"). There are others, however, who crave a treatment of their faith that is intellectually on par with the rest of their studies. We need to be attentive to them. There are plenty of other campus ministries offering the strictly confessional!

Lectionary - August 14, 2005 (Gospel)

2005-08-12T15:30:00.000-04:00

Hello,
I realize that this is WAY too late for anyone to use this week, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I will try to post something on Monday for 8/21 - that's our first Sunday of the school year and I've been looking at it for a few weeks now.

This Sunday, the Gospel lesson includes the Canaanite woman who demanded a blessing from Jesus. Jesus told her that he was sent to the children of Israel, and that it's not right to take the children's food and give it to the dogs. The woman responds that the dogs are able to eat the crumbs under the table. Jesus offers the woman a blessing, and from that point on he sees his ministry as being greater than just to the children of Israel.

Being a denominationally-affiliated campus ministry on a state campus, there is the assumption that we are here to serve "our" students - students who have ties to the United Methodist Church. We are given the names of UM students by both the annual conference and the school, and many local church pastors even pass along names of students from their congregations. It's tempting to develop a ministry that's "by United Methodists, for United Methodists." After all, the people and churches who fund our ministry would like us to use their money on "United Methodist" causes, right? Aren't we expected to raise up and train the next generation of United Methodist leaders? Of course we are, but at the same time I am challenged by this Gospel story to consider the needs of the entire campus when planning my ministry. I am here, in the name of Christ and on behalf of the United Methodist Church, to walk with each and every student as they journey from adolescence to adulthood; and I am here to work with the "powers that be" to create an ethos on campus where those journeys can happen. When we are faithful to the Gospel, our ministries bless the entire campus community, not just the handful of United Methodists who become part of our programs.

Balancing Mission

2005-08-07T14:05:00.000-04:00

Someone raised the question about how we balance the institution's mission with the campus ministry's mission. This is a really good question. I'd be interested in hearing how folks do it. Is there intentionality? Is there an attempt to make the campus ministry mission somehow fit into the university's mission?

At UNC we have a very good working relationship with our Office of Student Affairs. They are, starting with the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, very supportive of the work we do. We are not perceived to be a threat to the university; in fact they see that we offer a dimension to student development that is very important. So in a sense we at times articulate to the university ways in which our mission actually supports theirs.

But there is another question here and that has to do with our mission. How do you develop mission statements? What IS your mission in the university? How does it differ from the ministry of a local congregation in the community? I'd be interested in hearing how you all see your ministries as being distinct from local congregations - where that applies; and where you are based in a local church I would like to hear how you all live out the campus ministry mission as distinct from the mission of the local church.

Jan Rivero

Lectionary

2005-08-04T00:25:00.000-04:00

Do any of you use the Revised Common Lectionary on a weekly basis? If so, do you belong to lectionary groups? Is there interest in weekly lectionary discussions among us?

Blessing of the Books

2005-07-31T20:58:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago I saw "Blessing of the Books" mentioned as an idea. Does anyone have a liturgy or suggestions about how do do this?

Student Leaders

2005-07-30T10:54:00.000-04:00

My core group of student leaders just graduated. I think I kept them in leadership for too long; their minds were elsewhere this past year. Also, I don't really have a new team of leaders waiting in the wings, ready to take on leadership positions this year. Yikes! So, I'm about to rebuild my student leadership team. Here are some questions:

1. How early do you put students into leadership positions? That is, do you look to second-year students, or do you wait until they're older?

2. How long can students hold leadership positions? One semester, one year, as long as they want?

3. How do you select student leaders? Elections, appointment by the campus minister?

4. Is it better to maximize the number of student leaders in order to involve as many students as possible, or minimize the number of student leaders so that students can be involved without having to choose between campus ministry and other activities on campus (such as SGA, Greek life, clubs, residence hall leadership, etc.)?

Thanks,
Steve

How To Post

2005-07-30T02:22:00.000-04:00

You may post directly to this site by becoming a TEAM MEMBER. In order to do that, you must respond to an invitation from the Administrator. It's an easy, 2-Step process:

1. Simply e-mail me at ronald.robinson@wofford.edu, and I'll send you an invitation.

2. You then respond by clicking on the invitation link and, presto, you're a TEAM MEMBER.

Invitations are sent on an individual basis. Some of you who attended the Baltimore Convocation have already received invitations by email. Just respond to that invitation or email me and I'll send another.

Be a team player, and sign up to post.

-Ron

Some Things Campus Ministers Would like to See Here

2005-07-28T09:23:00.000-04:00

During one of our recent jurisdictional meetings, the campus ministers from the Southeastern Jurisdiction requested the following information to be shared:

1. How do we balance the institution's mission and our campus ministry mission?
2. Practical resources for campus ministry...
3. How do we deal with campus administration.
4. What are some model campus ministries so we can benchmark them for ideas.
5. What resources do you use for programming?
6. Any resources for helping students with prayer?
7. How does our national, jurisdictional and conference structure work?
8. Anyone doing a mission trip during which you'd be willing to have a few students from another campus ministry join you.

Please add to this post if you have some thoughts or ideas. If you have documents, email them to me at ronald.robinson@wofford.edu and I'll set up a resource web page to post them.

-Ron

Welcome

2005-07-28T00:16:00.000-04:00

Thanks for visiting this new blog for folk who are engaged in United Methodist Campus Ministry. This site is created after conversations at the United Methodist Campus Ministry Convocation held in Baltimore, July 23-27, 2005. Several chaplains and campus ministers expressed a desire for a place to share resources and ideas and ask questions. I hope this site can be such a place.

Hopefully we will discover new and creative ways to keep in touch. Please ask questions, request information and share ideas. As we contribute and grow, you'll be able to search and find helpful resources.

Explore the initial links and please suggest others.

Here's looking forward to the joy of shared conversations and meaningful ministry.

-Ron Robinson