The Beer Gods are Smiling: The Case for Campus Ministry



Those of you who watch television with any frequency -- and I know you're out there -- have seen the advertisement for a certain brand of beer which features a group of very hip young men and women partying and grooving to the sounds of a jazz saxophone laying down a gutteral riff. No words are spoken during this ad, but at one point the following words flash onto the screen: "The Beer Gods Are Smiling."

My name is Matthew Lawrence -- I am the Episcopal chaplain at the University of Michigan, and I am here to report to you that at the University, the beer gods are smiling indeed.

That television commercial is one of the most effective apologies for the cult of Dionesius I think I have ever witnessed; it illustrates nicely what I call the neo-paganism of our culture. And it points out at least one dimension to a crisis that I want to talk to you about this morning; a crisis that is amplified by the following statistics:

Statistic number one: One in three college students across the country drinks primarily to get drunk. The number of women on campus who reported drinking to get drunk more than tripled between 1977 and 1993, a rate that now equals that of men. Statistic number two: the teenage suicide rate has tripled over the past three decades. Suicide is now the third-leading cause of death among 15-24 year-olds.

The American Medical Association has this to say about our teenagers: "Never before has one generation of American teen-agers been less healthy, less cared-for or less prepared for life than their parents were at the same age."

Now, let me offer another set of statistics and ask you if you think there's any connection: Since 1969, the percentage of college students who considered it important to develop a meaningful philosophy of life has dropped from 83% down to the current level of 43%. Meanwhile, during the same period, the number of students who said that one of their highest goals was to be "well off financially" rose from 43% to 74%. Making money is now the single highest goal of our college students.

So obviously there has been a very significant shift in values among our young adults -- a shift from finding meaning to making money.

Now, there's nothing wrong with making money; God knows somebody's got to pay the bills around here. But to what end do we make money? Is there a higher purpose, an ultimate meaning to our lives? And do you suppose there's any connection between this shift in values away from meaning and toward the making of money, and this increase in teenaged suicide and alcoholism? Are these not all symptoms of a profound cultural despair?

One study of students on campus came to this conclusion:

The three most visible symptoms of the crisis in higher education are: 1) substance abuse, 2) indolence, and 3) excessive careerism. Underlying these symptoms are three fundamental problems: 1) meaninglessness, 2) fragmentation of a student's life into unrelated, incoherent components, and 3) the absence of community.

It is impossible to look at these statistics and not conclude that, in some fundamental way, we have failed our children. Not just we parents; but we, the church; we, this culture; we, the schools and universities. One author put it well when he said that we are all facing "a growing poverty of meaning in [our] personal and communal lives."

Meanwhile, the beer gods are smiling.

Here's another statistic: "70% of Generation Xers say there is no such thing as absolute truth." Which is not surprising when you consider that half of all grown-ups who say they are Christians do not know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Nor, one might infer, do they care. For a lot of college students, there is only one thing they know about Christianity and one thing they need to know, and that is simply that it is uncool.

...and the beer gods are smiling.

We live in a time when even some of my most devoted undergraduates won't come to a Bible Study that conflicts with any one of a half dozen of their favorite TV shows; when the most popular bit of personal data found on the electronic student directory is "favorite beer"; when a student retreat takes on an eerie resemblance to an episode from MTV's "Real World."

We live in a time when hostility toward Christians is a badge of honor: when Marilyn Manson, on live national television, obscenely berates Christians and wins applause; when HBO's Mr. Show portrays televangelists as Satan worshipers; and popular songs routinely deride churches and preachers and Sunday morning Christians.

... and the beer gods are smiling.

So what are we to do?

One bright piece of news comes from a study that was released just a few days ago that says that, despite all evidence to the contrary, parents do actually have a profound effect on their teenagers' lives and moral choices. Even though our teenagers sometimes do everything they can to make us think they aren't listening to us and they don't care what we say, the teenagers in the study who were most successful in making the transition into adulthood -- the ones least likely to get pregnant, get into drugs, or drop out of school -- were the ones whose parents were emotionally available to them; the ones whose parents made their expectations and values clear to their children; the parents who were committed to communicating with their children no matter how indifferent their children pretended to be.

Those of us who are parents need to remember that; we express our love through our emotional and ethical engagement with our children; no matter how painful and fruitless it might seem at the time: we don't give up on our children.

And on a very fundamental level, that means we can't give up on ourselves. Insofar as we despair, our children despair; insofar as we fail to learn about and communicate our best understanding of the meaning of life, our children will suffer the consequences.

Now what does this have to do with campus ministry? Well, just as it is true that parents must never give up on their children; a church must never give up on its young adults.

A study a few years ago found that 60% of the non-cradle Episcopalians received their first significant introduction to the Episcopal Church through a campus ministry. Campus ministry is by far the most effective evangelical force in the Episcopal Church.

So why is it, then, that across the country and within this very Diocese, funding for campus ministry is being cut, and cut, and cut again? Why are campus ministries across the country having to shut down their doors due to budget constraints?

One bishop put it this way, he says that failing to fund campus ministry is like "eating our seed corn."

At Canterbury House, we no longer receive any funding from the Diocese, which has been forced to cut back on a variety of programs; we receive no funding from local parishes, which are in their own ways scrambling to balance their budgets. And of course, we receive only very small donations from our students. We survive through the generosity of previous generations -- my salary is paid from an endowment established around the turn of the century, and supplemented by a major gift in 1957. There has not been a major gift to Canterbury House in 40 years.

The income from our endowment is sufficient only to cover the cost of my salary, and that just barely; all other expenses -- my secretary's salary, our musical budget, any program expenses, our renovation project -- has to be raised from individual friends and supporters.

Nonetheless, I am proud to report that in the year since I've been at this job, our student congregation has grown from two students to between 35 and 50, thanks mostly to the commitment of some dedicated student leaders, and to the terrific jazz quartet we have every Sunday evening at our worship services. There's a new life and energy at Canterbury House these days, the kind of energy that turns skeptics into believers and disciples.

I know all about this process of turning skeptics into believers because when I started out in college I was in full rebellion from Christianity. I thought Christianity was just a bunch of fairy tales that my parents used to keep me from misbehaving. But then I met this Episcopal priest who changed everything for me. First of all, he was really cool. He drove a red Jaguar. His wife was a former model. He had a PhD in Systematic Theology. And even better than all that, he took an interest in me. He asked me to help out around the church. He helped me think through the papers I was writing. And when my life was in crisis; when I was in despair, and drinking too much, and thinking about suicide, he was the one that I turned to.

It was his presence on my campus that made all the difference in my life. I guess you could say that now I'm just trying to return the favor.

It is time for all of us to return the favor.

Because we can talk and talk and I can preach and preach but the truth of Christ is communicated through relationship, one to another; it's communicated by the experience of God mediated through companionship; it's communicated in God's good time at the interesection of our own personal stories with the steady, ongoing presence of the church in our lives, communicating the presence of Christ in the sacraments and in the Word. And that is why we need campus ministry.

Against the rootlessness of life on campus, we offer a place where students are grounded and made whole. In our worship, we meet students where they are, with music and language students know and understand; we speak of eternal truths and ancient wisdom and what happened last night on MTV.

And day by day we develop, through Bible study, service projects, retreats and spiritual direction, a deeper and more meaningful relationship than is typically found at the clubs or the parties; a relationship that will last them beyond their four years of college, into adulthood and old age and eternity: a relationship with the living Christ, as interpreted by the Episcopal Church.

We're making a difference at the University of Michigan; we are growing at a phenomenal rate; and with your support and God's blessing, we can build Canterbury House into what it used to be, one of the most outstanding campus ministries in the country, in the heart of the best public university in the land.

If you are interested in becoming a part of this exciting time at Canterbury House, I would encourage you to speak with me after this service; take my card, pick up one of our brochures; drop a check in the mail; whatever feels right for you.

Sure, the beer gods are smiling; but their pleasures are short; and the joys of the living Christ spring eternal. Thanks for listening. AMEN


The Rev. Matthew Lawrence
Chaplain, Canterbury House
Director, Institute for Public Theology