Summary of Our Vision for Campus Ministry

People often ask, “What is your approach to campus ministry?” or “How has it changed over the years?” Several of the Brothers have drafted Our Vision for Campus Ministry to help answer these questions.

We’re encouraged that during our 30+ years of mission our approach has borne many fruits, including more than 100 celibate vocations, 180 missionaries and 5000 sacramental marriages.

In our university ministries, “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.”

Over the years, there have been three main developments in our campus ministry model:

1. We began to center our retreats around Eucharistic adoration in the 1990s. These weekend encounters, which we still run today, have proven effective in helping students experience the love of Jesus and return to the Sacraments.
2. 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.
3. In the last decade, we’ve increased our emphasis on formation: 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.

Other key themes addressed in the document include:

• Spiritual poverty and our response of relational evangelization
• Formation to Christian maturity through an approach that is both deep and wide
• Forming one spiritual family with one “front door” and an inclusive spirituality
• Shaping a community that offers various degrees of involvement

What others say about our approach:

• New Leadership Sparks Unprecedented Student Involvement in U of M Campus Ministry
• Alumni impact
• Testimonials
• Letter from Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley