Our Vision for Campus Ministry
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Our call
As consecrated Brothers, God has called us to dedicate the entirety of our lives to him and to serve Mother Church with all our strength. Our main apostolate is college campus evangelization, in which we aim to reach as many students as possible with the love of Christ and to equip them to be lifelong disciples and leaders in the Church and in the world. Our goal is to commission saints for the Church.
Our societal context
Our apostolate is largely informed by our contemporary Western social situation. We live in a time and place in which the vast majority of people have not encountered the saving love of Jesus. Moreover, since the prevailing secular ideologies are so hostile to the truths of Catholicism, many people who were Catholic by upbringing are increasingly abandoning their faith. This decline, shown in the graph below, is gravest for young people who are highly vulnerable to secular values and pressures.
Evangelization and formation
Since so much spiritual poverty on campus comes from loneliness and isolation, our primary mode of evangelization is relational. We rely less on posts, programs and big events and more on meeting people face-to-face: going out onto campus and forming friendships. Over time these encounters lead to new students’ involvement in a broader Catholic community and, hopefully, to profound conversion. We call this direct approach relational evangelization.
Our work of facilitating a personal encounter with Jesus through relational evangelization is only the first step. To respond fully to the needs of young people, we want to see beyond their college years and equip them for long-term spiritual survival. The Church in our age seeks daughters and sons who embrace their Catholic identity not merely for parts of their lives but for the rest of their lives. An essential next step, then, is something we call formation to Christian maturity. Without this important preparation for their post-college years, a young person's faith is like the seed sown on rocky soil that "had no root" and "withered away" (Mt 13:6).
The formation we speak of is a comprehensive process of equipping students with the personal, relational, intellectual, spiritual, and apostolic training necessary to be lifelong disciples and future leaders in the Church. Our instruction draws on the riches of sacred Scripture and tradition while also offering personalized and experiential learning through one-on-one mentoring, leadership coaching, and Catholic student housing.
The early Church saw the need for deeper formation following the initial stage of evangelization called the "period of catechumenate." This subsequent "period of mystagogy" provided for a secure integration of the neophyte into the life of the Church and the local Christian community. We believe the same twofold strategy is needed today. We reach "wide" because God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). We also want to bring people “deep,” namely, “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13).
There's an important balance we work to maintain between formation and evangelization. We call this the principle of deep and wide. Students who are already involved in our campus ministry, we form into an “evangelizing community,”1 ready to share Christ personally with their peers. These students grow as leaders individually, while our impact on campus grows exponentially.2 Thus evangelization and formation go hand in hand. The more that young people mature as disciples, the better that they can reach their peers; the more that they reach their peers, the more that they mature as disciples.
Our commitment to evangelization and formation on college campuses is our response to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the universal call to holiness. Not only do we believe that “all the faithful of Christ...are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity,”3 but also that lay persons, and especially young people, ought to receive “thorough formation” on “how to perform the mission of Christ and the Church.”4 When students genuinely encounter the love of God, they experience the grace of freedom—freedom from sin and freedom for holiness. And when such freedom is secured and deepened (through the Sacraments, supportive relationships, formation in Church teachings, and training in prayer), students are better able to hear the Lord’s voice and accept their personal vocation, i.e., the unique way in which the Lord has made them to follow him.
One spiritual family
Partnership is essential to our Brotherhood's apostolate. The Lord does not want us to labor alone and has thus provided us with a charism that works best with the giftings of other individuals and groups. This is especially true in our campus ministries. Our principal partner is always the local bishop, and then those to whom he has delegated authority to serve campus ministry—often the local pastor or chaplain. Other partners include lay campus ministers, religious orders, missionary organizations, and lay administrators. We call this model one spiritual family and it testifies to the unity and beauty of the Catholic Church.
While we emphasize a variety of charisms, our partnerships are always predicated upon unity. An important dynamic of our model, discussed below, is that the student community is truly unified, i.e., that it is an integrated whole in which the many parts form one body. It’s critical to both the evangelistic and formation process that students have an integrated experience of the campus ministry. If, for example, students experience various Catholic “options” as soon as they come to campus, it becomes more difficult and confusing for them to become involved. It helps for them to see the Church as having “one front door,” even though there is a diversity of expressions inside. But even once inside the campus ministry, the various expressions and charisms of Catholic life should harmonize on all the key issues. Otherwise students, rather than being formed into mature disciples, will just pick and choose the elements of Catholic life and teaching that they like the most, and avoid the others.
Thus, while we want to expose students to the diversity of charisms and spiritualities of the Church, the outreach community itself should have an “inclusive spirituality” around which all Catholics, with proper faith formation, can be unified. We believe that the heart of our campus ministries, like the Church herself, ought to be both fully traditional and fully charismatic. Beautiful liturgies and approved devotions ought to be integrated with the spontaneity and gifts of the Holy Spirit.5 We aim to form students, for example, both in contemplative prayer and in expressive worship.
Our Brotherhood is partnered nationally with Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO), a Catholic missionary organization in the United States. SPO has fully embraced our Brotherhood’s vision for campus ministry, and our collaboration has born tremendous fruit for nearly a decade. Prior to this partnership, we struggled to train and support our own 'alumni interns' as campus missionaries. SPO greatly improved our effectiveness in both areas. We also partner with other organizations who wish to build one spiritual family within the local parish or Catholic/Newman Center.
Since our founding in 1980, our Brotherhood’s approach to campus outreach has developed and matured. This is due, in part, to our growing experience but it also reflects far-reaching cultural shifts that call for a more robust response.
Our story
The following sections describe the three main developments in our model. It should be emphasized, however, that our core commitments to evangelization and formation have not changed: to reach as many students as possible through personal relationships and communities, and to form future leaders and lifelong disciples.
1) Eucharistic retreats
In the 1990’s, thanks to a Catholic movement called Youth 2000, our Brotherhood discovered the power of Eucharistic retreats and we began centering our campus retreats around exposition and adoration. These weekend encounters, which we still run today, have proven effective in helping students experience the love of Jesus and return to the Sacraments. A renewed appreciation for the liberating power of reconciliation followed by communal worship and reception of the Blessed Sacrament at Mass leaves a lasting impression. For many, it will never be forgotten.
2) Student leadership
In the early 2000’s, our Brotherhood discovered that Millennials respond well to leadership opportunities. We launched supervised leadership initiatives, giving our students major responsibilities in running events and assisting with important decisions. While Gen Z, on the whole, is less interested in these kinds of leadership opportunities, our mentoring continues to bear fruit. As always, we are being stretched and learning along with our students.
3) Formation and households
Around 2010, our Brotherhood became increasingly aware that we needed to develop our approach to student formation. We began to notice two things:
- Some of our alumni, once strong in their faith, were falling away. As we kept in touch post-college, we were saddened to see so many grow distant and some leave the Church altogether. While many others still thrived, we knew we needed to do more to prepare future graduates for life after college. We also felt called to provide further formation to our alumni, some of whom were asking for this very thing.
- We also began to notice, due to the breakdown of family life and other cultural factors, that students were entering college with less social maturity overall. They lacked religious training and struggled more with mental health and patterns of addiction. Our existing formation approaches were inadequate. Far more than previous generations, these young people needed to see a stable, committed pattern of life before they could embrace it fully in a future call to marriage, priesthood or consecrated life.
For these reasons we began a comprehensive overhaul of our formation strategy. We not only developed new content, but we sought to provide living situations where students could gain life skills in a healthy Catholic environment. In 2014, these efforts were greatly accelerated by our partnership with SPO. Their extensive experience with formation content and running households was and is a key asset. The integration of our complementary charisms has been remarkably fruitful for our shared mission on campus.
Our present model for campus ministry combines our own approaches, honed by long experience, with the insights of our many mission partners. We work together to ensure that our evangelistic reach is wide (as many as possible) and our formation is deep (lifelong discipleship). This can best be described in terms of the threefold call of the baptized to holiness, communion and mission. Each supports and strengthens the others, and thereby they provide a suitable overview of our model.
Our ModelCommunion
In our own times there is great confusion among young people about what it takes to make and keep healthy relationships. This is true on the human level, but it's especially evident when we speak of a relationship with Jesus Christ. It's no longer enough to invite them to "know Jesus." We go the extra mile and introduce students to the love of Jesus through welcoming and supportive environments as well as positive encounters with converted peers and dedicated staff.
Communion is most tangibly experienced through the dynamism of our student ministry community. Whether meeting in a Catholic Center or based in a parish, this communion forms a vibrant and attractive hub of Catholic life on campus. Newcomers are often impressed by the warm welcome they receive and the rich relationships they see among the members. Students who have been involved longer demonstrate confidence in living their faith and describing their own journey of discipleship.
This dynamism is enhanced by an approach to student participation that offers various degrees of involvement. Widest of these would be our "outreach environments." Social gatherings both large and small comprise this category: ice cream get-togethers after Mass, movie nights in the dorms or Frisbee games on campus, to name a few. Next and somewhat deeper in scope are our large group nights where students gather for prayer, fellowship and practical catechesis (good news you can use). Here young people—those who have at least some openness to faith—begin to discover the beauty of the Church in a fun and informative way.
Deeper still, we offer environments that call for a modest level of commitment. This is pedagogical in nature, preparing students for future life commitments beyond college. Such commitment also deepens friendships, and thus our weekly small group nights allow students to share more openly with their peers about their daily lives and personal growth as disciples. Each year students are invited, after a time of "trying things out," to commit to these small group meetings. Such commitments, if honored by all members, lead to successful groups, rich sharing and relationships that last for years. We offer deeper levels of formation through our bi-weekly "formation nights'' which provide some of our most mature students, typically upperclassmen, with opportunities for further growth as well as leadership training. Students in the formation community take on responsibilities in the ministry, including the facilitation of the large group and small group nights.
Commitment, and the valuable life skills it provides, goes deepest when lived in our household way-of-life. Students who relate to our campus ministries through weekly or monthly programs will only receive the limited instruction these meetings provide. Students who live in households, however, are able to move beyond "information" to experience lasting transformation in their Christian lives. Common prayer and common meals form the basis of this traditional style of Christian communal life going back to the very beginning (Acts 2:42). Prayer, usually the Liturgy of the Hours, is prayed together a few times in the course of a week and family-style meals are opportunities for conversation, laughter and mutual encouragement. Students in these households also practice the virtue of hospitality by using their houses as outposts of mission to the campus.
HolinessWe believe that a key dynamic and motivation for growth in holiness is baptism in the Holy Spirit, which is a life-changing encounter with God’s love.6 There are many people today who have been sacramentally baptized and yet the power of the Holy Spirit, already within them, remains mostly untapped. Pope Francis asks that we “share baptism in the Holy Spirit with everyone in the Church.”7 Life in the Holy Spirit, however, must be nourished by frequent reception of the Sacraments. Therefore we work with the local parish or Catholic Center to make Mass, Eucharistic adoration, and Confession as accessible as possible.
Students in small groups and formation community as mentioned above receive practical instruction in Christian living. Some of the key formation areas include:- Personal prayer and Scripture reading
- Basic catechesis, including on the Sacraments and ecclesiology
- Ignatian discernment of spirits and vocational discernment
- Emotional maturity and inner healing
- Virtues of interpersonal relationships
Students involved in formation also have the opportunity for one-on-one mentoring with a staff member or a trusted volunteer. These meetings give the student an opportunity to ask questions and receive personalized advice. If desired, the student can use the meetings to help them with accountability to prayer or forming other good habits.
In order to commission students as lifelong disciples, we help them take the first steps in discerning their vocation. To support this, we foster a culture of discernment within the student community. Specifically, we help students see that their vocation flows from their identity as God’s sons and daughters. This identity is revealed through formation, a process which itself happens only gradually. Moreover, we encourage students to weigh the prospect of priesthood and consecrated life seriously, in light of the way the Church esteems celibacy.8 Hence we encourage students to be patient in discerning their vocation, rather than following their first impulses and attractions. These practices are only proposed, never imposed. Once a student enters a dating relationship, we offer them support and practical wisdom on dating well. Our ministries have produced over 5,000 sacramental marriages with astonishingly few divorces.
In our campus ministries, as in the early Church, mission is seen as a community commitment, something in which all participate insofar as all have experienced, to some degree, the work of the Spirit in their lives.9 We equip these students to share the love of God with their classmates, friends and others outside the Church, and to support their peers in all their various stages of conversion. Additional training is given to student leaders who often go on, after graduation, to serve as leaders in their parishes and dioceses.
Mission
On this note we conclude. We firmly believe that the best evangelists of students are students themselves. Theirs is the secular character proper to the vocation of the laity, rich in opportunities to encounter the lost on the margins of campus. Theirs is the call to overcome the separation between daily life in the world and the dynamism of the gospel. Theirs is the privileged role in the Church's mission to which St. John Paul II summoned them when he wrote, "A great venture, both challenging and wonderful, is entrusted to the Church—that of a re-evangelization, which is so much needed by the present world. The lay faithful ought to regard themselves as an active and responsible part of this venture, called as they are to proclaim and to live the gospel in service to the person and to society."10
1 Cf. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, §24.
2 “The person who has been evangelized goes on to evangelize others” (Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, §24).
3 Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, §40.
4 Second Vatican Council, Apostolicam Actuositatem, §28–29.
5 As with Pope Francis, we believe that the Catholic Charismatic Renewal “it is a current of grace, a renewing breath of the Spirit for all members of the Church” (To the Renewal in the Holy Spirit Movement, 3 July 2015). For other papal endorsements of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, see the CCRNSC website.
6 Cf. “Baptism in the Holy Spirit" by the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services Theological Commission. It’s a rich, compelling, and nuanced book.
7 Pope Francis, To CHARIS, 8 June 2019.
8 Cf. Mt 19:10–12; 1Cor 7; Pope John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, and Vita Consecrata.
9 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio §27.
9 Christifideles Laici §64.
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