First Trinity Lutheran Church,Pittsburgh,PA ✠CHRIST ON CAMPUS CHAPTERS ✠University Lutheran Church,Bloomington,IN ✠CHRIST ON CAMPUS CHAPTERS ✠Lutheran Student Fellowship,Berkeley,CA
✠ CHRIST ON CAMPUS CHAPTERS ✠ University Lutheran Chapel, Minneapolis. MN ✠ CHRIST ON CAMPUS CHAPTERS ✠ St. Andrew’s Luth We’ve heard it said before that Lutherans are good at taking care of people up through confirmation and after college but not in between. Not so! From the magazine, conferences, and Web site, you know that Higher Things is there for you in high school. Did you know we’re also there for you at college? With this article, Higher Things is excited to announce that we are launching a new column in the magazine devoted to college and everything you need to know about it—while still daring to be Lutheran. Here, Pastor Marcus Zill checks in to tell you a little bit about Higher Things’ Christ on Campus. -The Editors
Confessing he college campus has always been a melting pot of ideas and a place to debate and discover truth. It is also no secret that the worldviews of many young Lutherans are shaped, or reshaped, between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five on college campuses. Ask any campus pastor. More students lose their faith than are strengthened in the faith during their college years.
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There is genuine concern in the Church to want to keep our young people in the faith at this formative time in their life.There is also a genuine need for the Church to have a presence in the public square and at such incubators of ideas as our public institutions of higher learning. Clearly confessing the truth of Jesus Christ on a university campus is nothing new for Lutherans. After all, the Lutheran Church was born on the academic turf of a German university at Wittenberg when a young man named Martin Luther challenged the religious and campus community with his 95 Theses. Yes, you could say, Martin Luther was a campus pastor! The Lutheran Church cannot escape the campus. Throughout her history she has not forsaken the campus.The need is too great. As the campus ministry arm of Higher Things, Christ on Campus seeks to help young people mature in their faith at one of the most formative and crucial times of their lives and while they acquire the learning and useful skills necessary for life lived “in” but not “of” the world around them. The college campus also provides us with a challenging training ground where young people may be equipped to live as faithful confessors of Jesus Christ and His Word. Like Athens of Acts 17, the university is a place permeated with religion. It is not a
matter of religion being on campus but which religion it is! Our young people will be ministered to, but ministered with what, and ministered to by whom? The flat out anti-Christian attitude that exists on most campuses today is a powerful tool of Satan. Even the most grounded will find their faith tested.Those who are not incorporated in the life of the Church on campus will be incorporated elsewhere.That is ultimately the challenge. We believe that campus ministry should not exist to serve as a Campus Crusade chapter with a Lutheran twist or as just another organization among many to provide students with free pizza. Pizza is great, but it isn’t the Gospel! The answer also doesn’t lie in some watered down generalized ecumenical involvement either, which is so common on our campuses, nor is the answer written in some new program or gimmick. The answer is just where it has always been—in Christ’s Word and His Gospel gifts. We at Christ on Campus seek to help our Lutheran college students remain rooted in Christ’s gifts and provide them with opportunities to deepen their knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and Lutheran doctrine at such a formative period in their lives. We want to encourage college students to apply their learning to their vocation to live in Christ by faith and in their neighbor by love. Such opportunities are boundless. We believe that this life of God’s people on campus begins and flows from the Divine Service. Our Lord’s gifts enliven and sustain even in an environment that is often hostile to the truth of the faith we confess. Thus, in a culture marked by pluralism, we have a unique opportunity to confess that Jesus Christ alone is “the way, the truth, and the life.” In an age of relativity, we can also gladly confess the reliability of our Lord’s words, the truth and certainty of His promises. Of course, this separates us from almost every other philosophy of campus ministry. Needless to say,
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y Lutheran Church, Gunnison, CO ✠ CHRIST ON CAMPUS CHAPTERS ✠ Grace Lutheran Church, Muncie, IN ✠ CHRIST ON CAMPUS CHAPTERS ✠
