Good Work in Good Company – Campus Ministry Blessings 1979-2025

Good work in good company has made a good life for me in campus ministry.

At the end of June, I will complete eleven and a half years serving as the Chairperson of the West Michigan Conference Board of Higher Education and Campus Ministry (BHECM) and then Michigan Conference Division of Higher Education and Campus Ministry (DHECM).

I shared these reflections at my final DHECM meeting on April 22.

Twenty five years and four months of my young adult life and vocational ministry service have been profoundly shaped by relationships in campus ministry:

• • As a student at CMU Wesley with Rev. Tom Jones, 1979-83; Tom baptized our oldest daughter in my first appointment
  • As a member of the WMU Wesley Board, Fall 1992
  • As the WMU Wesley Director, Spring 1993 to June 2002; our middle and youngest daughters were baptized at Wesley
  • As the BHECM/DHECM Chairperson, 2014 – 2025

I feel such good grief because of the goodness of all that time. In November 2024, Naomi Garcia told us in a transitions seminar to attend to the grief in our transition. I know grief has been a companion in my call to ministry and personal spiritual journey all along. I encourage you to hold your grief gently.

The outer bounds and sometimes out-of-bounds nature of campus ministry frames it for me as a perpetual new church start. It needs to be innovative and creative, always running the risk of getting into good trouble. I have the wonderful memory of overhearing at Annual Conference some years ago something like, “Don’t let the Wesley people get to the microphones,” because of how well we were organized in our communication and networking.

At my very first meeting as BHECM Chairperson in January 2014, our host Director at WMU Wesley, Rev. Lisa Batten shared that we are the cutting edge of campus ministry in the United States. We’re being awarded grants based on merit and our strategies are being lauded and populated around the country (not just at Wesleys but in campus ministries in general). We are doing good Wesley ministry in our conference.

What was true then, is still true now in contemporary ways. I am so grateful for our good work in this leadership transition. Each of you has stepped up with the many dimensions of our work. I celebrate closing this chapter of ministry as you have already begun writing the next one.

Campus ministry has truly been a boundary experience for me. My life with this Board/Division started in a critical time. I was asked in November 2013 to join the Board. I was asked in December 2013 to be the Chairperson. I suggested that I would observe the winter meetings and be ready in July 2014. Then I was told I would start as the Chairperson in January 2014. We were facing a budget cut and feeling pressure to close one of our ministries. Instead, we advocated for, and received increased funding in 2015.

In leaving, I know some things are undone and under-developed. I look forward to how you will grow your ministry.

Horizons for my post-DHECM good life may include:

• • Scholarship promotion
  • Local church UM student communication and promotion
  • Financial review services

I praise God for each of you and all of us. This has been the most rewarding work in my ministry. And I am ready to go because of how I know you will carry on.

(At the final formal worship service for WMU Wesley in their old building I took off my shoes when sharing my reflections. I gave thanks for the holy ground of Wesley’s ministry at that location since 1964.) Before receiving a motion to adjourn, I offer a portion of Jan Richardson’s “Blessing at the Burning Bush”

You will know your path
not by how it shines
before you
but by how it burns
within you,
leaving you whole
as you go from here
blazing with
your inarticulate,
your inescapable
yes.

Thank you for saying YES to campus ministry!