Feeding Our Young People Campus Ministry

Formation feeds us. It brings us together, sustains our souls, and helps prepare us to go out and feed others. It reminds us that we are blessed so we may go out and bless. But when we say “formation,” we often think of just two groups— children & youth on the one hand and adults on the other. What about young adults? Spiritual food is vital for everyone, and perhaps especially for people in these in-between ages! The following is an account of three such young adult ministries as described below by their leaders:

St. Luke’s, Fort Collins, is just a few minutes’ drive from Colorado State University. Proximity to campus has meant that the church has long had students in and out of its doors. A new student ministry emerged, however, during the pandemic. The 2020–21 school year was a tough one for college students— maybe harder for them than for the rest of us. Most of us had completed this experience and generally recall a pleasant whirl of studies competing with social gatherings, meeting new people, and exploring the world mostly on our own terms. But the pandemic meant students on virtual lockdown in dorm rooms, having to choose between safe and responsible behavior (limited social interaction) and venturing out and, before the vaccine, getting sick and quarantined. The work of the church in fostering community and connection in the midst of isolation therefore became critical.

Some CSU professors are also parishioners at St. Luke’s and identified the brewing calamity. Together with Mother Krista, they contacted a few CSU students, asking them if they would be interested in checking in via Zoom early in the fall of 2020. The idea was to Zoom and pray together about once a month. Immediately it became clear both that there was energy in this group and that the ministry would be more essential and Spirit-filled than we had first dreamed. The group asked to meet not once a month but every week. Soon more than just CSU students became involved. Word traveled among students who had experienced other ministries within the Episcopal Church in Colorado. Students who knew each other from Cathedral Ridge, Quest, or other regional youth gatherings began to participate. We soon had students zooming in not only from Colorado State but also from Colorado College and the University of Northern Colorado. We even had a college-aged man zoom in from Maryland, where his family had recently moved.

We dubbed it the “Campus-Less Ministry” because it is anchored not to one place. Anyone can participate no matter where they are. Each week the group checks in, shares what is happening in life, and how these events relates to their faith. Sometimes the group participates in a prayer practice, watches a sermon, or engages in reflection. Sometimes the group is just social. They have continued to meet over the summer and look forward to welcoming more students in the fall. Students in northern Colorado will also have the opportunity to gather in person soon. If you are interested in participating in Campus-Less Ministry or know someone who might be, contact the Rev. Krista Dias at motherkrista@stlukesfc.org.

For nearly ten years, St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in Boulder has worked with Lutheran Campus Ministry to support students at the University of Colorado (CU). Called Bread and Belonging, the community gathers every Tuesday evening at St. Aidan’s for a meal and formation. For undergraduates intent on belonging, we create a table with room for everyone. We strive to feed students with the fruit of the reality that we belong, first, not because we like or believe the same things or have proven ourselves, but because we all belong to God.

Amidst the uncertainty that comes with college life, a meal every Tuesday night can bring a life-changing stability. In the fall of 2020, we did everything we could to keep this ministry going—outdoors and socially distanced. On that first Tuesday night of the fall semester, last year, masks were required. We used QR codes to check people

in, chalked instructions on the ground, and used signs indicating the number of people allowed at each carefully sited picnic table. When students arrived, they meticulously followed our instructions. Yet after picking up their food, they walked right past our elaborate arrangement of picnic tables and sat down in a giant circle on the lawn. After six months of isolation, they wanted nothing more than the opportunity to see one another and to reconnect. It was wonderful. We found a way to continue feeding students during a particularly uncertain time.

This success would not last. A few weeks later, after a student-driven spike in COVID cases, the city of Boulder issued a weeklong stayat-home order that applied only to those ages 18 to 22. With only three days before our next Tuesday night dinner, we adapted again.

Our regular meals are provided by dinner hosts, most often members of St. Aidan’s and local Lutheran congregations. We put the word out to our regulars. If students couldn’t come to us, we would bring the food to them. Thus BreadEx, Boulder’s nonprofit food delivery service, was born!

This project had logistical challenges on par with the Feeding of the Five Thousand. (I kid, sort of.) Instead of feeding just our Tuesday night regulars, we realized we needed to feed their roommates as well because we were bringing dinner to their homes. It was important to us. Suddenly we found we needed meals delivered to more than 50 students, many of whom had complex and sometimes conflicting dietary requirements, all with three days’ notice. We were overwhelmed by the response of our dinner hosts! By Tuesday afternoon the carefully labeled meals began to pile up and with lots of coordination and communication, we found a way to keep feeding students. The stay-at-home order was then extended by a week, then another, and another until students had spent nearly a month stuck inside their homes. Still, our dinner hosts, alumni, and friends responded each time. They kept preparing meals for students, they connected with their assigned students to order takeout, and they gave funds to support the project. Over the course of September, we fed over 200 students who were isolated from their friends, families, and campus ministry.

This fall we look forward to welcoming a new class of students in a relatively normal, hopefully post-pandemic way. We eagerly anticipate that first Tuesday night when our staff and student leaders can welcome and feed the coming year’s freshmen and new students. We will engage in this ministry anew, nourished by the work of our dinner hosts, our donors, and the wider church that have so graciously fed us.

Originally located near downtown Denver, and founded in 1864 as Colorado Seminary, the University of Denver (DU) moved south to its present location when one Rufus “Potato” Clark donated a generous plot of land. Nicknamed for his notable success as a potato farmer along the Platte, Clark had built a reputation both as a successful businessman and as a profligate philanderer—on all accounts, a raging alcoholic and frequenter of the brothels that dotted downtown. That is, until he met Jesus at a Methodist tent revival. The rest of his life would be spent giving his possessions away, turning him into one of the more noteworthy philanthropists in the history of Denver.

At the heart of DU’s history is, you could say, the transformative encounter with Jesus: we are nourished with the spiritual food of Christ’s forgiveness and grace, then sent to do the work God has given us to do.

Located just a mile and a half south of DU on University Boulevard, Christ Church is endeavoring to reconstitute and revitalize a currently quiescent ministry—The Foundation at DU (https://thefoundationdu. org). Once known as “The Wesley Foundation” (a Methodist chaplaincy rooted in University Park Methodist, just to the east of the iconic University Hall), The Foundation became a mainline ecumenical collaboration decades ago. Struggling with the same forces of disaffiliation and secularization we are all facing, the ministry dwindled into dormancy just before COVID hit. We are now praying the Spirit would breathe new life into this campus ministry, building on our one foundation—Jesus Christ— as we endeavor to live and love like Jesus among the students, faculty, and staff at DU and the surrounding community.

Our main goal is to recruit, equip, and support two “Dyer Fellows,” lay student leaders empowered to live out their baptismal ministry among their peers. Named after “Father Dyer,” the snowshoeing itinerant Methodist minister considered one of the sixteen founders of Colorado, we are hoping these students will help us recover the best of the pioneer spirit (while, pray God, avoiding the notable mistakes of the past).

We are hoping, too, to recover The Foundation’s history of feeding the hungry—spiritually and physically. For years, students would gather to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for AfterHours Denver (https://youtu.be/ T0Z9DYLCtGk), a Methodist ministry started by a bartenderturned-pastor that meets in pubs for frank (sometimes colorful) conversations about faith and distributes meals to the homeless in Civic Center Park. Continuing that tradition of encounter and mission, as the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi reminds us: “it is in giving we receive” (BCP, p. 833).