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Greetings,
This Wesley Foundation Update
will let you see some of the many things that are happening at the
Wesley Foundations in Iowa.
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Iowa State University
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"This I Believe" is an international project
engaging people from all walks of life in writing and sharing essays
describing the core values that guide their daily lives. The project is
based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by
Edward R. Murrow, The contemporary version has resulted in over 70,000
of these essays being archived on the project's website (http://thisibelieve.org/), heard on public radio,
chronicled in books and television programming and featured in weekly
podcasts.
Last semester Kimberly Ferguson, a Senior in Aerospace
Engineering at Iowa
State, shared a message at Collegiate UMC/Wesley
Foundation's faithspring worship about "This I Believe". This month,
Kimberly extended that sharing by facilitating a 2-part Sunday School
class. The first session of the class found 46 participants, ranging in
age from 12 to 88, learning the basics of the essay-writing process and
sharing their initial thoughts.
Participants will have
several weeks to write their 3-5 minute essays before gathering March 28
to share them aloud in small groups. Plans are being made to preserve
the essays in booklet form so they may be shared with an even wider
audience.
Experiences like this, where students have the
opportunity to hone their leadership skills, interact with people of all
ages in worship, fellowship, study and service projects and, most
important, deepen their relationship with God, happen literally every
week at the Wesley Foundation at Iowa State.
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Drake University
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We have a modest goal at the Drake Wesley House. We are out
to transform of the world. Granted, that may seem like an unobtainable
goal,
given that we have a staff of one and an annual budget that is less than
that
of most churches. But we are animated by a sacred story that relishes in
the
absurd. Jesus did not limit his focus to the feasible and neither shall
we. We
are out to transform the world.
The method we employ to bring about this transformation
comes from the pen of Matthew and the mouth of Jesus, "Go therefore and
make disciples."
Simply put, and not the least bit original, we seek to make disciples
for the
transformation of the world."
Which is not to say that we are on campus launching an aggressive
takeover of our neighbors' belief systems. Drake University
is the most diverse community many of its students will ever encounter.
It is
not uncommon to have a Muslim roommate or a Jewish sorority sister. No,
we
would have to go about transforming the world by some way other than
wholesale
conversion all of its inhabitants. We found a clue hidden in the
grammar. Mathēteuōis a verb. The NRSV
translates mathēteuō
as "make disciples." A more faithful rendering of the word is, "to
disciple,"
meaning, "to teach, or to show by example." The passage reads; "Go
therefore
and disciple the nations."
The transformation of the world comes when we show the world
the love Jesus showed us. Transformation comes when we teach what we
were
taught. Our goal is not out of reach. The Drake Wesley House is pleased
to offer
hospitality to the Drake Jewish student group Hillel. Shabbat is
celebrated
every month at the Wesley House. Justice For Our Neighbors offers free
legal
counsel to those seeking to navigate the turbulent waters of
immigration. They
do this important work from their offices at the Wesley House. A diverse
group
of campus ministers gathers for mutual support, and a shared commitment
to
address one of the major issues facing Drake University:
religious intolerance. They meet at Wesley House. We offer a weekly
inter-faith, contemplative prayer service for peace. It is an oasis of
silence
in a noisy world.
If the kingdom
of God is at hand, as
Matthew proclaims, then our absurd goal to transform the world is surely
within
our reach.
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University of Northern Iowa
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For Spring Break '10, The UNI Wesley Foundation is involved
in a couple of projects, neither of which actually is happening this
week! First we have completed the arrangements for
a Spring trip to Miami. We have observed that our students enjoy
taking the trip right after the semester is over, rather than squeezing
it in
during Spring break. This is the 4th
year of Spring Trips. We have
experienced homelessness and poverty in Washington
DC in '07, Immigration in New
York city '08, Urban Justice (ethnic, environmental and poverty) in
San Francisco
in '09. This year we are going to Miami and working with
DOOR Ministries. DOOR stands for
Discovering Outreach Opportunities and Reflection. In all of our trips,
we stress reflection on
the experience as much as the actual experience.
The second project at UNI Wesley is finishing up the
remodeling and recovery project from our summer windstorms. We are
seeing signs that the work is nearing
the end for this phase. We have new
windows, new paint, new insulation. We
have carpeting waiting to be installed, lighting waiting, and furniture
ordered. We have applied to be
designated a Green project with the
Greater Cedar Valley Initiative. We have
applied for grants from Cedar Falls Utilities.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY WE ARE PLANNING OUR CELEBRATION!!!!!!
We considered whether we actually needed a building to do
ministry and came to the conclusion that our ministry needs be out on
campus
more and that we need our building! Due
to the changing context in Cedar Falls (the ELCA student center is
changing
operations and making Wesley one of just 3 mainline campus ministry
centers),
we could very well make a much more powerful ministry statement with our
"renewed" building this year.
Thank you for your support.
If you are interested in hearing more about the energy efficiency
changes at Wesley, or to invite someone from the UNI Wesley Foundation
to come
to your church and talk about the recovery process or to share the
process of
deciding that our building is an asset, contact us at 310-266-4071 or
Wesley.dave@cfu.net.
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Campus Ministry
Teaches Sense of Community, Social Justice
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by
Renee Elder
Most top college students are
independent thinkers whose achievements help them stand out from the
crowd. That's why some at Duke University may be hesitant to join a
faith community that puts "us" ahead of "me," says the Rev. Dr. Jennifer
Copeland, United Methodist chaplain and director of the Duke Wesley
Fellowship.
"I think
the biggest challenge we face on the college campus, and probably local
churches, too, is combating the sense of individualism bred into us as
Americans and as college students," Copeland says. "Duke strikes me as a
place where everybody is expected to be highly successful. In order to
be successful, one cannot appear to be dependent or come across as
vulnerable."
Students
who get involved in the campus ministry eventually see how the welfare
of the larger community at times outranks their own ambitions, says
Copeland - who holds three Duke degrees, including a recently acquired
Ph.D. "The students
who choose to be involved in any faith community have to be willing to
say, 'I want to be part of something bigger than myself,'" Copeland
adds. "And they have to lay down the ego side that says, 'I can do it
all by myself.' We try to teach that your greatest joys are going to
come when you experience a sense of community." That sense of community
was
lacking when Copeland arrived at Duke as a freshman in 1981. "There was
no specifically
United Methodist campus ministry at that time," she recalls. A new group
formed during
her junior year, and Copeland, who was raised in the United Methodist
tradition, quickly
joined. "I had started Duke as a biology major and flirted with computer
sciences.... Then I decided to start taking classes I was interested
in, and lo and behold, these tended to be English and religion classes."
She realized the work that interested her always centered on the
church. About that
same time, Duke recruited the Rev. Dr. William Willimon (now resident
bishop of the North Alabama Conference) to serve as dean of Duke Chapel,
and he brought in a female associate, the Rev. Nancy Ferree-Clark.
"I
was a junior in
college, and I had never seen a woman preach," Copeland says. "Then, my
senior year, I saw worship led every Sunday by a woman in Duke Chapel.
Prior to that, I had assumed if I went to work for the church it would
be doing something in education or journalism."
Thus inspired to
seek
ordination, Copeland went on to seminary at Duke, then moved back to her
home conference of South Carolina, to accept a parish appointment as an
associate pastor. Copeland later served as pastor-in-charge at both
rural and urban churches before moving into part-time campus ministry at
Converse College and then Furman University. In 1999, she was appointed
as the United Methodist chaplain at Duke, returning to the campus
ministry community she had helped to launch as a college student.
"Because this ministry had been so formative for me, I felt it was
something I wanted to do," she says.
Among the biggest
differences between parish ministry and campus ministry are the hours.
"Students want to start their meetings at 8 or 9 o'clock at night,"
Copeland says, "where church meetings are usually wrapping up about that
time."
"One of the
challenges on a campus like Duke is to help students articulate the
difference between charity and social justice," Copeland says. "It's
charity if the point is 'I'm strong, and I'm smart; I have a lot of
money, and I'm going to work on a Habitat house this weekend.' That's
one way to be involved and make a difference, but it doesn't affect your
life. You still live in a 3,500-square -foot house and have two cars in
the driveway.
 "Those who seek social
justice
do the volunteer work, but they're also asking the bigger questions:
'Why are there homeless people in Durham? Why can't everybody go to the
bank and get a loan like me?'" Knowledge
of such issues breeds understanding, Copeland says. "Once we get a
student
engaged in our ministry, then what I hope for in their lives is a shift
in how they see the world," Copeland says.
The goal is not to make
students anti-establishment, but to help them realize the world is more
complicated than they might think.
Ideally,
involvement in the United Methodist campus ministry provides students
with knowledge, inner strength, and the support of a large faith
community - just what they need to become outspoken advocates for
justice.
"If they
don't have the confidence that the things they care about are the things
God cares about, they won't speak out," she says. "And they have to
know there are resources behind them. They are not lone rangers out
there."
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