Enjoying the Privilege: Campus Ministry as Cross Cultural Work – Abby King Kaiser

I have been a campus minister for roughly nine months—one academic year. My first day on campus was also the first day of classes for the class of 2016 at Xavier University. The Class of 2013 graduated just a few weeks ago. I am still taking a deep breath and trying to recover from the madness.

I love it.

The nudges that pushed me towards seminary and ordained ministry started, as they did for many folks, with a fabulous campus ministry experience. I worked with a progressive woman pastor (the first such leader I had ever encountered), someone I wanted to be like. She nurtured my leadership skills, as well as transformation in a wide variety of students. Her work felt like real, meaningful, life-changing stuff. Maybe I would think about seminary after all.

At seminary, I didn’t figure I would ever work in campus ministry. Where I come from, campus ministry was dominated by large, para-church ministries that lean more conservatively than I do. (At one time, my alma mater boasted the largest cru chapter in the country, with a staff as large as the congregation I used to serve.) That is definitely not a paradigm that fits my faith or my leadership. Everywhere I looked, my denomination was de-funding campus ministry, so serving college students seemed like a fantasy. I discovered my call to pastoral ministry the congregation I interned with and took a call in small, struggling urban church. I loved congregational ministry—and still do. Now, my “congregation” just happens to all go to the same school.

My role is not a unique one. I am an ordained Presbyterian on a Jesuit campus. Most of the large and many of the small Jesuit schools have added “ecumenical” ministers/ministries of some sort, often paying that staff as a part of their campus ministry department. I am not the only Presbyterian in such a post around the country (check out Tad Monroe at Seattle and the wonderful program Aimee Moiso built at Santa Clara in her time there). I am moved by the depth of the Jesuit values that commits these institutions to the growth of students of all faiths.

In my nine months of ministry hear, my biggest lesson has been this:

Campus ministry is cross-cultural work.

Now, just before starting this job, I spent months in a colleague group that examined the missional nature of our leadership, including repeated, intense readings of Luke 10:1-12. I will admit that after that, everything looks like cross-cultural work (that is another post) but hear me out.

Keep in mind, I just turned 30. Young, young, young was all I heard in my last call. Not anymore.

The students listen to the music we got down to in high school the way that we listened to eighties music. Throwback parties now throw back to the 90s. I didn’t know what Snap Chat was until I worked here.

I work with a wide variety of Christian students (and students of other faiths). I have sat in mass needing translation; I have to ask what words or traditions mean often enough to stop feeling stupid when I do it. I have learned not to assume anything theologically, as I have found myself with my foot in my mouth any time I assumed that x, y or z was true for everyone gathered.

If you are working, serving, or volunteering in campus ministry, unless you are 18-22 and a student leader in ministry on the same campus where you go to school (or an adult student working on a campus of primarily adult students), you are doing cross-cultural work. Doesn’t matter if you are an alumni, doesn’t matter if you just graduated from this very school last year. Doesn’t matter how much you liked college the first time around. Doesn’t matter how cool you are, how much you use facebook (or how little you do). Doesn’t matter how long you have been around. This is their community; their day-to-day lives. We are guests. We are privileged to be welcomed into their spaces, into their lives.

I didn’t consider going to Xavier as an undergrad—too close to home. Interviewing here, I felt like I should have considered it (have you seen the PPP program?). When I was in high school doing community service, I looked up to the Xavier students at the sites where we served as if they were rock stars. I carried all of these assumptions with me as I started to serve, only to find more.

Isn’t Xavier all rich kids?
But it’s a Catholic school?
That generation isn’t interested in church.
They see college as a way to escape from the religion their parents forced on them.
College will drain them of their faith.

By approaching my work as cross-cultural, I began to see all of these assumptions as evident of the underlying stereotypes and prejudices that fuel them. I began to listen, not to these outside voices, but the students (and their cultures) directly. I began to see how I could engage with my unique gifts and challenges in a community with its own unique gifts and challenges. I also saw how much of the leadership needed resided in the community of students itself—and not in our office.

Our students are powerful community organizers. Our students are people of faith who have struggled to grow with in God despite challenges along the way. Our students are philosophers, poets and musicians. Our students are ministers of hospitality, generosity and compassion. They read Scripture and ask hard questions. They interpret world around them and seek God in their midst. They are interpreters, cultural innovators and leaders.

What then is my role?

My role is to travel light, to stay with those who welcome my presence, and to pray for God to send workers for the harvest—those student leaders who will truly be the ministers on this campus. My role is as a fellow traveler, taking hospitality, offering my gifts, being in community for the time that we are called to be together.

What a privilege it is.

Rev. Abby King-Kaiser is the Assistant Director for Ecumenical and Multi-faith Ministry at the Dorothy Day Center for Faith and Justice at Xavier University. Try saying that five times fast. She is blessed to again be living in her hometown, after spending most of her twenties in the Bay Area. Always a mom, occasionally an artist, she is spending the summer trying to tame her tiny, but insane backyard. Her high hopes include fresh, homegrown vegetables and weekly, ecumenical Protestant worship (which begins at Xavier in the fall). Check out the CFJ blog to be amazed by the students she is blessed to work with.