A new approach to student ministry is changing the Catholic presence on the quad.

A young man and woman stop short of the Arizona State University Memorial Union. It’s lunchtime. James Timberlake asks Jessica Peterson to lead the two of them in prayer. She asks the Holy Spirit to guide them, to give them the right words as they set out to evangelize students.

Peterson spies a female student sitting alone outside of ASU’s Memorial Union. She walks up to her and says, “We’re from the Newman Center. Would you mind if we ask you five survey questions?” The survey is pretty informal, and no one is taking notes. Peterson asks general questions about religious practice. The young woman is a non-denominational Christian. To many of her responses, Timberlake simply smiles, nods, and says, “That’s awesome.”

Eventually, Peterson invites the student to a Bible study on Wednesday night, and the young woman agrees to attend. Peterson gets her number dialed into her iPhone.

Timberlake and Peterson are missionaries with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), a national organization that sends missionaries, two by two—a man and a woman—to college campuses. FOCUS represents a broader, growing trend in Catholic campus ministry.

For decades, campus ministry has been characterized by a “we’ll leave the light on for you” or a “light on the hill” approach. That is, campus ministers maintained a welcoming environment for students. They were there for students, wherever they happened to be on the faith spectrum and whenever they were ready to come through the church doors.

FOCUS and similar groups—like Evangelical Catholic and Opus Dei—have more of a “we’ll bring the light to you” approach. They’re on campus, too, but are more actively seeking out students and getting them to talk about their faith. FOCUS missionaries organize retreats, invite students to Bible studies, and enter into one-on-one mentor relationships.
Since its founding in 1998, FOCUS has quickly grown in influence and today enjoys the support and appreciation of many U.S. bishops. In December its founder and president, Curtis Martin, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as a consultor for the new Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.

So far, the organization has already set up bases at nearly 60 university campuses, and they plan to add 30 more next year. The Catholic Campus Ministry Association estimates there are more than 400 Catholic campus outreach centers in the United States, though an official tally hasn’t been taken in more than a decade.

The missionaries do their recruiting once or twice a week. Most of their time is spent on developing friendships with students, through which they hope to serve as mentors and evangelize by example. Observing a holy hour, praying the rosary, and daily Mass attendance are all part of the job description.

Success, such as getting a student’s phone number, isn’t achieved every time, Peterson admits. Sheena Byrne, who works alongside Timberlake and Peterson, says some students don’t want to talk about faith at all. “But it’s rare,” she says.

New focus

In 2009 Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted communicated a new vision for campus ministry. Arizona State’s Newman Center is in Olmsted’s diocese and directly experienced this change. Diocesan leadership explained the transition as a renewed focus on vocations to the priesthood, and the FOCUS missionaries, in their first year on ASU’s campus, are part of that. The organization boasts of having brought about more than 330 vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

FOCUS missionaries won’t enter a diocese without permission from the local bishop, and often work in conjunction with existing campus ministers. Timberlake says thus far they haven’t been able to get into California. While Olmsted has welcomed the missionaries, some bishops and campus ministers simply aren’t interested in having them in their dioceses.

“The root of being welcomed or rejected is a question of the orthodoxy of a Newman Center,” Timberlake claims rather boldly. The implication that a center of Catholic campus ministry that does not welcome FOCUS missionaries cannot be orthodox reveals that there’s more at stake than just competing visions for how to be a presence on college campuses. Rather, there are two different styles of ministry—and resulting tensions—that accompany these different visions.

“I’m interested in spiritual growth, not so much jumping on the bandwagon of a cause,” say Father Rob Clements, the new director of Arizona State’s Newman Center. “I’m interested in knowing God and knowing what he wants of me by knowing him better.” This emphasis on a particular type of spirituality is echoed on the website of FOCUS, where the mission statement reads: “To know Christ Jesus, and to fulfill his great commission by first living and then communicating the fullness of life within the family of God, the church.”

Dominican friars served the ASU community for 41 years before being replaced last year. Clements says the move wasn’t from any dissatisfaction with the Dominicans. “This is a whole new vision for campus ministry as opposed to what’s been here in the past. It’s been culture shock for a lot of people that have been here.”

One size fits all?

Emily Kempe, a junior at ASU, has struggled through the transition. Dominican Father Fred Lucci, former director of the Newman Center, invited Kempe to a social gathering while she was walking through campus one day. She wound up getting involved with the Newman Center, serving on a student leadership team, and receiving the sacrament of confirmation. She was also hired as the social justice intern, but that fell through.

She remembers attending a program called Theology Underground, which consisted of students discussing church teaching with Dominican Father James Thompson. “Father James wouldn’t do a lot of talking until the end. It was an open, free, safe place to get your questions answered,” Kempe says.

Students didn’t always agree with church teaching “100 percent,” Kempe says, but it was accepted as part of  “a process.” After the transition at ASU, Kempe felt other students rejected her passion for social justice. Her peers even called her a heretic. She’d hear students banter about liturgical norms and just threw up her hands.
“Don’t you think feeding someone is more important than whether or not we hold hands during the Our Father?” she recalls saying. She says some of her peers are “like canon law police. I feel like I don’t fit in there anymore.”

Kempe’s sense of isolation may be an indication that the “whole new vision” for campus ministry doesn’t appeal to all students, but only to a particular kind of student who already has an interest in a certain model of spirituality and responds to the FOCUS style of ministry.

“If Bible study is all that’s offered, that’s a problem,” says Lourdes Alonso, a former campus minister at Arizona State. “You’re going to attract students that are already engaged.” She estimates that 80 percent of students at Stanford University in California, where she serves now, aren’t currently involved with their faith.

FOCUS, for which a primary effort includes organizing Bible studies, is “a piece, but not the whole,” she says.

After leaving ASU, Alonso learned that community members had secretly accused her of “watering down” the faith. She felt undermined. “People want to do it one way. We all think we know what people need, but we really don’t know until we listen.”

Now, Alonso attends rallies—including recent Occupy Wall Street demonstrations—seeking out and finding many Catholic participants. Catholics are drawn to service, she says. “It’s not our job to indoctrinate everyone. It’s our job to witness love.”

Alonso helps Catholic students plug into service opportunities already offered through the university. She’s also getting Stanford groups, such as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, a progressive Latino student organization), to “invite the Catholics.” Students from the Catholic community go on missionary trips to places like El Salvador and an HIV/AIDS center in Las Vegas.

Kempe has also seen many non-practicing Catholics get involved in social justice and sees it as another avenue for evangelization. “It’s not more important than the rosary or eucharistic adoration, but they can work together.”

Stanford has an active rosary group, too, which Alonso has been working with. Where some members used to say everyone “should” pray the rosary, now they say everyone “can” pray the rosary. “It’s not where everyone connects, and we want everyone to connect,” Alonso explains. “That’s the important thing.”