Smith College

Sharing a Vision for Campus Ministry

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 20:56:22 +0000

Gordon Govier

Sharing a Vision for Campus Ministry

Both Kyle and Danielle VanEtten entered their respective colleges with career visions that included the possibility of becoming a missionary in some far-off land. They were both invited to get involved in ��ñ��, Kyle at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and Danielle at Smith College. They both learned how to lead small group Bible studies and share their faith.

Kyle ended up leading the UNH chapter as a junior, when the chapter was without a staff minister for a year. By that time he already knew he wanted to apply for ��ñ�� staff. As for Danielle, “When it came time to think about what to do after college, and I realized ��ñ�� staff was an option, it seemed like a dream job.”

Kyle and Danielle met at Toah Nipi, ��ñ��’s Retreat and Training Center in New Hampshire, at the New Staff Training day that preceded their Regional Staff Conference. Danielle was impressed by Kyle’s vision for campus ministry. Kyle remembers thinking that Danielle was tall.

They became friends and started dating about a month later, as Kyle became a campus intern at the University of Connecticut (UConn) and Danielle began planting an Athletes ��ñ�� chapter at Smith. They continued dating and got engaged as Danielle temporarily left ��ñ�� to become a Fulbright Scholar and teach English in Brazil for nine months. They got married ten days after she returned from Brazil, and settled in Connecticut.

Kyle and Danielle say a shared vision for ministry—of seeing students become lifelong disciples of Jesus—is one of the strongest bonds of their marriage, since their ��ñ�� jobs are quite different. Their experiences as ��ñ�� students were also somewhat different.

As a high school senior, Kyle was encouraged by friends to check into ��ñ�� when he got to UNH, so he made contact with a staff worker before he arrived. He was invited to Summit Week, a retreat at Toah Nipi the week before classes started. He had attended family camp at Toah Nipi as a child, so he was familiar with the venue and the events of the week held up to his expectations. “After that retreat I was pretty much sold on being a part of ��ñ�� in my time in college,” he said.

Danielle also connected with Smith Christian Fellowship (as it was called) right away but didn’t discover its affiliation with ��ñ�� until her junior year. And because she was on the crew team with a heavy schedule of practices and regattas, she missed just about every ��ñ�� conference that she might have attended.

A variety of skills are needed for campus ministry to thrive. Kyle likes to teach and disciple students; building the chapter at UConn is his main goal. He’s also nurturing a chapter replant at the University of Hartford.

Danielle likes to talk with strangers and invite them to activities. Four years ago she started planting a chapter at Eastern Connecticut State University. Now she’s leading chapter plants at Eastern plus four other area community colleges. “All of these other campuses came from open doors, her natural gifting as a planter, and God making a way for her to make connections,” Kyle said.

Danielle finds it ironic that on community college campuses, community seems to be the thing that students hunger for the most, and is so hard to find. “Students really don’t know each other,” she said. “When we go around to invite them to join us for a Bible study, a lot of times they just say yes because they are eager to get to know other students on campus.” Even though it may be comparatively easy to get students to sit down for a Bible study, coordinating meeting times with students as they balance classes, jobs, and families is challenging.

At the UConn campus, Kyle works with a chapter of about 60 students. “The thing that has made the biggest difference in my career on staff has been learning to develop student leaders and empower student leaders in their callings on campus,” he said. Val Gordon, now ��ñ��’s Program Management/Strategic Planning Officer, coached him and helped him identify that developing a team of trained student leaders to partner with him would be his most effective ministry.

The wisdom of that decision grows more and more evident with each passing year. “It’s really cool to see the “world changers developed” part of ��ñ��’s Vision Statement come out of that,” Kyle said. “And more than that on campus to see students owning the vision, owning the mission, and recruiting their friends.”

Last summer Kyle and Danielle bought a house in Hartford to extend their ministry by living in intentional community. Their new home opens up opportunities to minister to students after they graduate, as well as host meetings of their ministry teams, ministry partners, and church groups. As they visit in the home, current students have an opportunity to see modeled ways that they can continue to live lives of mission after they graduate. Three of the four people who live with them right now are ��ñ�� alumni or current students.

Kyle and Danielle are eager to see campus ministry grow in central and eastern Connecticut. There are 17 colleges in the area but only four staff. They are looking for partners who will share their vision of reaching all 17 campuses with the gospel message. To donate towards helping to spread the gospel to more campuses in Connecticut, follow this link.

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Chapter Challenging Chapter

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 21:14:04 +0000

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Gordon Govier

Chapter Challenging Chapter

Elizabeth Booher was near the beginning of her 2011 semester abroad at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, sitting in the first class of the day, when the building started shaking. The university was heavily damaged by the earthquake that struck and ended up being shut down for the semester. Amidst the destruction and casualties in the city, Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to do.

Officials from Smith College, her school back in Massachusetts, called every day, wanting to know if she was returning to the U.S. She decided she was not. A transfer was negotiated to the University of Otago in Dunedin.

Not long after arriving at Otago Elizabeth stumbled across two women having a Bible study in the student center and found out they were part of a campus Christian fellowship, like ��ñ��, affiliated with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). As she got involved in the chapter, the inductive Bible studies felt very similar to what she was used to in her ��ñ�� chapter back at Smith.

While at Otago, Elizabeth had an honest and deep conversation with a former Campus Staff Minister and confronted the uncertainties and worry she was feeling about an invitation to join ��ñ�� staff after graduation. While she had “majored in ��ñ��” and been very active in the Smith Christian Fellowship (SCF), she was doubtful about her capacity for ministry. But the conversation was very clarifying and when she got back to Smith to begin her senior year, she was ready to start the application process for coming on staff with ��ñ��.

Also at Otago, Elizabeth deepened her appreciation of Christians from other cultures.

“I don’t think I realized how mono-cultural my life was—even though I had friends from so many different ethnic backgrounds and countries as a student at Smith—until I engaged in my faith with students from other cultural experiences,” she said. “It helped humble me and encourage me. It's hard to describe how encouraged I was, especially by my friends from Malaysia and the faith they had. I realized we were really missing those students in our fellowship back home.”

She began her senior year at Smith with a plan to start a Bible study for international students. “At every New Student Outreach event that fall I met at least one international student who was not a Christian who had been wanting to study Scripture,” she said. A local family who lived near campus opened up their home for the Bible study and each week students from a half dozen different countries participated.

Elizabeth is now in her sixth year on staff with ��ñ��. She was a full-time staff minister at Smith for three years but has been part-time there the last two years, as she also became the Area Director for the Five College and Greater Springfield areas of western Massachusetts, now known as the Pioneer Valley Team.

SCF is among the growing number of chapters that no longer have a large group meeting during the week. “It’s clear that at Smith the model of ministry that is working best is small intimate communities with people you already have trust with,” she said. Focusing on small group Bible studies has been a key component of SCF’s growth. But the proximity of vibrant ministry on other nearby campuses has also been key.

The student leaders from Smith and from the chapters at other consortium schools that Elizabeth oversees meet together monthly for training and to pray together. The students are used to taking classes at these nearby campuses, so there’s a lot of unity in the area. “Through the sharing of stories and testimonies, prayer movements have spread from campus to campus,” Elizabeth said. “Students have been encouraged to take risks, and they’ve visited each other’s campuses to learn from each other.”

The spiritual climate is different on each campus but the hunger to see God at work is growing. “There’s a lot of conviction being imparted from schools that are seeking God’s face more earnestly than others,” she added.

As she reflects on her study abroad experience as a student in New Zealand, Elizabeth is thankful for the opportunity to observe the world, and faith in a university context “down under.” She received a new perspective on campus ministry, and grew her appreciation for international student ministry and small group Bible study. It helped form the foundation of what she does today, and challenged her to grasp the scope of both God’s people and his desired work on the campuses of the Pioneer Valley area of western Massachusetts.

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