PRINTChristian college students practice faith outside church services
September 15, 2011 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Veritas, founded by The Crossing five years ago, used to meet in a room at Memorial Union but now meets in Middlebush Hall due to its growing popularity. Photograph by Katie Currid
Theology on Tap
Roman Catholic
Where: Heidelberg
When: Monthly; next meeting:
Tuesday, Oct. 4, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Call: 449-5424
Online: newmancentercolumbia.org
Karis Community Church
Non-denominational
Where: Tiger Hotel
When: Sundays, 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Call: 479-0699
Online: karischurch.org
The Vine
Presbyterian
Where: The Chez, 16 Hitt St. First
Presbyterian Church
When: Sundays, 7 p.m.
Call: 442-1164
Online: fpccolumbia.org
Veritas
Evangelical Presbyterian
Where: Middlebush Auditorium, MU
When: Tuesdays, 8 p.m.
Call: 256-4410
Online: veritasmizzou.com
Students participate in worship in Middlebush Hall.
A NEW SETTING
A small group of college students push two tables together at the Heidelberg for dinner on a Tuesday evening. They’re picking at fries and finishing their sodas and beers as a priest arrives and joins them. He takes a seat, Catechism in hand.
They’re gathered for Theology on Tap, a monthly event for socializing and discussing religion that is organized by MU’s Newman Center, which serves local Catholics and is the center of faith-based activities for Catholic college students. The purpose of the group is to create a forum for challenging questions and sparking helpful discussion in a casual setting.
As the group’s guest on this night, the priest starts the discussion and asks students to chime in whenever they have something to say. The topic is morality, and for the first few minutes, the students are mostly quiet. Soon they start asking questions and citing examples of moral dilemmas they recall from classes and movies.
The group sits in a side room of the restaurant. Still, music from the jukebox in the main room is easily audible. At one point, it’s hard to tune out Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music.” A freshman student bobs his head and mouths the title lyrics across the table to his friend, and the priest acknowledges him. “Nice,” the priest says with a nod and a smile, prompting laughter from the group. The boy shrugs. “Couldn’t help it.”
The Newman Center and other religious groups in Columbia are learning more about what college students want in a faith community. A University of Texas study stated there is an increasing number of students who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. Essentially, some students have kept their interest in faith but decreased or dropped their church involvement after starting college.
As is the case for student organizations, leaders at churches in college towns recognize the importance of attracting new members. For those who might be interested in joining a faith community, Christian churches in Columbia and across the country are working to find fresh ways to appeal to an audience they have struggled to reach.
The students at Theology on Tap say an informal setting can create a level of comfort for discussing complicated topics. “Most of us have a desire to learn about the big questions,” says MU senior Stephen Estes, a Newman Center campus ministry intern. Freshman Ian Ford thinks of the session as a refresher. “You feel more open to discussion,” he says.
JoAnn Jorgovan, a Newman Center campus minister, attends the Heidelberg discussion on that particular Tuesday. She says Theology on Tap is designed to also appeal to students who aren’t regular attendees of the center’s programming. “I think a lot of people are afraid to walk into the Newman Center,” she says. “It’s not as intimidating to walk into the Heidelberg.”
Across the country, the attempt to incorporate younger followers into church activities has developed slowly. “The trend has probably been happening since the ’70s,” says Neill Caldwell, editor of the Virginia United Methodist Advocate. He says his religion, the United Methodist Church, has attempted to address it with changes the past 10 years.
Ryan Davis and Rachel Tiemann participate in a Bible study at their Karis community group. These groups are opportunities for members to meet in a more intimate setting. Photograph by Matthew Busch
Recently, denominations such as the United Methodist Church have broadened the range of faith-based activities. Caldwell has several nieces and nephews who are in college who have told him their generation of Christians “loves religion, loves God, loves Jesus. They don’t love the church.”
Today, Caldwell says the church is part of his life every day. His wife, Rev. Lynne Blankenship Caldwell, is also a United Methodist pastor. Caldwell knows the trend of temporarily abandoning church during college is common.
“When I went off to college, I was guilty of it, too,” he says. Eventually, he moved to a small town and was attracted to the social opportunities that going to church might offer. He was advised the best way to meet people was at church.
Caldwell says the United Methodist Church has started utilizing what he calls “church planters,” who aim to build a new faith group separate from an existing church. The small groups are often based in college towns and serve as part of the church’s ministry to young adults. “They’re not really churches, they’re faith communities,” he says. “They may meet in a restaurant or a theater or a school.”
Community involvement is a major component of many of these college-oriented religious groups. Caldwell says there is just as much emphasis on meeting to do service projects as there is on meeting for worship or traditional religious activity because students tend to see those projects as a critical part of their faith. “Young people are more interested in that than standing and singing,” he says.
Members of Karis Community Church partake in communion. Kevin Larson, who founded Karis, wanted to start a church that was “friendship driven.” Karis, which means “grace” in Greek, meets in the Tiger Hotel. Photograph by Matthew Busch
URBAN MINISTRY
Members of Karis Community Church open Sunday morning worship at the Tiger Hotel situated in a large ballroom on the second floor. The layout of the room is traditional but the setting is not — chairs are situated in two large sections facing the front with an aisle down the middle.
For this portion of their worship, the room is fairly dark. The crowd consists largely of 20- and 30-somethings, though not exclusively. They look up to see song lyrics projected on a screen, along with an image in the background for each song. A few hold up a hand or close their eyes as the crowd sings.
The image shown on the screen for the opening song is a simple, wooden park bench sitting vacant along the side of a building. It’s hard to tell where the picture was taken, but the picture is reflective of a common urban scene.
Elder Kevin Larson preaches and leads Karis. He knew he wanted to concentrate his ministry and community service in an urban area.“I see a really great need downtown,” he says. Larson knows the audience for his sermons is relatively young. “If you’re 30 in our church, you’re mature,” he says with a smile. He is also aware this is not the case in many churches. An MU graduate, Larson came back to Columbia after seminary in 2005 to start a church. He set up Karis in hopes of appealing to adults in their 20s interested in faith and community service in the city’s urban core.
Still, with a newly planted church, there isn’t a large membership base off which to build. Larson says the recruiting is a gradual process. He worked as a barista at the old Cherry Street Artisan after he and his wife, Amy, moved back. He wanted to get back in touch with the community, but says he couldn’t tell strangers he was starting a church without getting to know them a little first. “You try to build relationships,” he says. “It isn’t easy.”
There are other churches in the downtown area, but Larson says he wanted Karis to preserve an evangelical Christian message that would appeal to young adults. “They are sick of the church that is all about preaching a political message,” he says. “They’re tired of being a church that is culturally backward and even culturally antagonistic. We want it to be kind of a stereotype smasher. There are Christians that don’t picket and preach politics.”
Larson says two of the critical components of building relationships and discussing faith with young adults are authenticity and honesty. “Young people are looking for truth and substance,” he says. “We’re real people with real jobs who are trying to be compassionate and loving and serving. People don’t want shallow, weak teaching. They want the Bible.”
Too often, he says, churches fail in attempts to appeal to younger followers. He says young men are not effectively drawn in to certain worship styles, particularly regarding music. Although many Christian churches have embraced contemporary music over traditional hymns, Larson says some of the newer songs have narrow appeal that leaves out a lot of young men. He says some of the music is too much like mainstream pop music, where it almost sounds like the word “baby” in a love song has been replaced with “Jesus” in a worship song.
“A lot of churches have given up (trying to reach men),” he says. He says he wants Karis to be meaningful for both men and women. Larson emphasizes that he does not want Karis to have a once-a-week impact. He says one benefit from making a home at the Tiger Hotel is a reminder that “the church is not a building.”
Outside of Sunday worship services, some church members split into community groups. They are designed, he says, for church members to spend time with people in the city’s urban areas and to help them with whatever needs they have. “You’ve got the Bible in one hand, and you’re reaching out to the culture with the other,” he says.
Laura Kebede, Joshua Rice and Lauren Bird pray during a Karis Church service. Laura says she enjoys the Karis Church community because its leaders and members “strive to get to know you.” Photograph by Matthew Busch
REACHING OUT WITH RELIGION
Thom S. Rainer is CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, which helps Christian churches plan and develop programming. He and his son Sam Rainer III studied generational trends of church participation for their 2008 book, Essential Church? Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts. They found that 69 percent of college students who were active in faith-related activities prior to college stopped their church participation for at least one year between the ages of 18 and 22.
Meanwhile, 71 percent of non-students of the same age also dropped out of church activities. That close comparison has led the authors to suggest being at a university has no significant impact on a student’s decision to move away from active faith participation, as many people once believed.
John Schmalzbauer, a professor in Religious Studies at Missouri State University, acknowledges an old myth that people go to college and lose their religion. “More recent studies have shown that actually you’re more likely to hold onto your religion if you go to college,” he says. Schmalzbauer emphasizes the way campus ministries look today has changed over the past 50 years. Within Christianity, both evangelical and non-evangelical Protestant organizations have seen increases and decreases in popularity on college campuses.
Schmalzbauer uses what he calls his “market metaphor” to explain the increased segmentation of religious organizations on campuses. As student bodies have grown more diverse, more options have developed for students’ religious values. That means a greater variety of faiths are represented, and even within Christianity, different groups might be more traditional or more contemporary than others. Often, groups are small because there are so many of them. “You just get dizzy with all the religious groups on campus,” Schmalzbauer says.
Angelle Hall is the campus ministry director of MU’s Newman Center. She says church groups don’t have to be limited to only fostering faith development, and she wants the center to be a place for students to learn life skills as well. As older students prepare to leave campus, some might be unfamiliar with the healthcare system. Perhaps they’ve been going to the Student Health Center, but soon that will no longer be an option. The Newman Center addresses issues like that in a session called “Living 201.”
Part of the challenge for churches to gain new young followers in a college town is to inform incoming students of their options for faith programs. Individually, church leaders often visit or send letters to high school church youth groups and religious high schools in Missouri to inform them about college faith groups. Additionally, many of the students who end up participating in faith activities at college came with friends.
Preston Turley is a minister at First Presbyterian Church, which is within walking distance of both Stephens College and MU. Among his responsibilities for the church is leading the activities for its college students. He says the religious leaders in the Association of Campus Religious Advisors that attend MU’s Summer Welcome, an orientation program attended by incoming freshmen, understand each other’s programs and can talk to freshmen to help them find the type of faith group they are seeking.
Turley is in charge of the church’s college group, The Vine, which he has organized since 2009. Last year, about 10 students were involved on a regular basis.
Turley says students are interested in discussing elements of their lives, including faith, with each other. “I’ve never preached at a Vine meeting,” he says. “I just think that dialogue is what they’re looking for.” He says the ministry’s goal is to allow students to be more directly involved with the development of their program. “We hope that you take some ownership of it.”
Before coming to the Newman Center, Hall spent much of her time in college planning retreats as social outings. She speaks highly of the involvement students at the Newman Center have in activities like intramural sports on campus.
Like Turley, she also values small group conversations for students and says social events enhance discussions that are relevant to a young adult’s life. “I love the really hard conversations,” she says, adding that she was looking forward to hearing about a session one group of students would have later in the week. “The social (connection) is important to get you to the deeper conversations.”
Schmalzbauer says it’s hard to say which aspects of religious activity college students value the most. There isn’t one way to cater to everyone, he says. Some people arrive on campus knowing exactly what they want for themselves, and “other people are more in a seeker kind of mode,” he says.
Rev. Thomas Saucier hosts Theology on Tap for the Newman Center. The movement started in the ’80s in Chicago.
FAITH IN ACTION
On a Tuesday night in early 2011, students gather in a large second-floor room at Memorial Union on the MU campus with coffee or backpacks. There are no fewer than a dozen large, round tables in the middle of the room. A little after 8 p.m., the tables are full.
Veritas was started five years ago at MU as the college ministry program for The Crossing church in Columbia. Veritas has seen fluctuations in size, but an attendance of more than 100 students has become typical.
Rex Oberle and Jimmy Munson open the meeting with announcements. Actually, they preface the announcements on the projector screen with a couple photographs of themselves intended to draw laughs. The audience particularly enjoys their depiction of Titanic, with one of them holding up the other’s arms as Leonardo DiCaprio did for Kate Winslet at the edge of the ship. “We like to make it lighthearted and fun,” Oberle says, adding they should do it more often.
The session starts, and students get several chances to read a few Bible verses at their tables and share their thoughts. Soon the room becomes noisy as students chime in. They turn their attention back to the discussion leader. Now, people are hesitant to volunteer suggestions. The discussion leader asks for input from those who haven’t said much yet, and eventually gets responses.
Despite the healthy number of participants, Veritas will continue to be challenged. They changed the physical layout of their meetings, abandoning the round tables in favor of a more traditional seating arrangement where all seats face the front, like a lecture hall. Although it will create more space, they know everyone will have to work harder to feel the sense of community.
“The time at tables is a great time to talk with people,” The Crossing staff member Patrick Miller says. “It’s going to be a different dynamic.”
Miller brings up the significance of the small groups, which meet outside of the large group meetings. Each small group consists of 10 to 12 people, and their purpose is not only to foster Bible study, but also to encourage friendships.
“That’s where people really get connected in community,” Miller says. “You’ve got a ministry this big, you’ve got to make it small.”
When Oberle started at MU, it was easy to turn to The Crossing, where his sister and several high school friends were already involved. Oberle, now a senior, is not new to faith activities, having attended church with his family and also a Christian high school. He embraces his participation at The Crossing and Veritas, which he describes as more Bible-oriented than his previous church experiences. “Both of them are challenging, a lot more intellectual than I was used to,” he says. “This is kind of the first time my faith has been my own.”
Veritas maintains its own website, but Miller estimates the vast majority of growth has stemmed from regular attendees bringing friends. “Our Tuesday night meetings are kind of our front door,” he says. From there, people will ideally want to get involved in the other activities they hear about.
Indeed, many of the students present at the meeting in the spring were out in the rain the next day, inviting passers-by on the MU campus to launch water balloons for a fundraiser.
Oberle embraces that approach to faith, in which people not only read and discuss and worship but also engage others in their community. “I think there’s something to be said for a faith that’s not just on Sunday morning.”
