Center-based Lutheran campus ministry has been around for over 80 years in Cedar Falls. Very good ministry has happened here and at Lutheran student centers around the country. However, it is an expensive way to do ministry, and it is increasingly apparent that we are missing a significant portion of college-aged young adults. I believe we are at a place where we would do well to reassess our way of doing ministry to college-aged young adults.
In 1922 when Lutheran campus ministry became an independent entity in Cedar Falls, Lutheran college students who choose to study in northeastern Iowa might have chosen to attend either Luther or Wartburg College where the religion faculty was expected to tend to the student’s spiritual needs or they might have chosen to attend Iowa State Teachers College (the present UNI). There were not many other options, so a campus ministry that addressed the specific spiritual needs of college students in Cedar Falls made a lot of sense.
Today, the demographics are changing. There are increasing numbers of students studying at community colleges, attending classes at local satellite campuses, or even working toward degrees online, from home. They tend to be more spread out across the synod, and they tend to be closer to home (often living at home), but the current reality is, that there are more students studying at these institutions in northeastern Iowa than are currently enrolled at UNI. What this means is that there is a significant numbers of young adults in the Northeastern Iowa Synod that are being missed by the current way we deliver ministry to college students and young adults.
There is not going to be a simple fix for this issue. It is not simply that the context has changed. The text itself is changing. There was a time when you could map out a story that would fit most college students. They graduated from high school, went to college, got a job, often got married… The issues along this storyline were fairly predictable. These days there is no usual story. There are many stories, and they are not predictable. The life choices of young adults are becoming more varied and more complex. Will the old models continue serve us well? Or do we need to start to develop new models and new understandings?
I know that my time at the LSC was one of the biggest blessings I had in college. Yes, the text is changing, but not the message.
ReplyDeleteThe ministry I am involved in now in Omaha ministers to young adult singles. It is ministry for a neglected group by that same group.
There is a cry for places like the LSC... it was very difficult to move and not have something like that, that instant family in a strange place. The models might need to change - but the message can't.