Conventional wisdom and years of campus ministry suggest that a private liberal arts college is one of the most encouraging environments for an InterVarsity chapter. And that a commuter college is one of the most challenging. Chad Britten works on both types of campuses.
Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has about 2,500 students. Most live on campus. The University of Wisconsin-Parkside, just four miles away, has about 5,300 students. Most live off campus.
Two Different Worlds
“At Carthage, it’s like doing a ministry at a resort,” Chad said. “It’s right on the lake and it’s beautiful. Parkside is more like doing ministry at an airport, because students are almost always on their way to the next thing.” But Chad likes the ministry potential at both schools.
Carthage is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, so many students have grown up in church-going homes. “They come to campus and they’re trying to figure out who they are and they’re also trying to figure out what they believe about God,” Chad observed. “They have a lot of foundational teaching but maybe haven’t really wrestled with how to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. I try to come alongside them and help them understand what it is to follow Jesus and have a relationship with Him now that they’re entering adulthood.”
At Parkside the students usually work 20-30 hours a week off campus and are often the first members of their family to attend college. They are highly motivated but don’t have a lot of spare time, except maybe between classes. “It is challenging to reach them,” Chad said. “But when I see students waiting for their next class, I’ve found that’s a great time to have conversations with them.”
Basic evangelism, having conversations about God, is one of the things that Chad enjoys most about campus ministry with InterVarsity. “As a staff worker I think it’s a really exciting time to be on campus because more and more students haven’t really had significant conversations about the Scriptures and who Jesus is,” he said. “Even if they know the right answer and give the bumper sticker response about faith, and you ask them what that means, it seems like more and more students don’t know. It’s exciting to be one of those people that they can have a significant conversation with.”
The Road to Campus Ministry
General conversations about faith and related issues with a fellow student was how Chad became a follower of Jesus while attending Carroll College. His best conversation partner happened to be president of the InterVarsity chapter. He became active in the chapter for the remainder of his time in school. Upon graduation he began a career in sales.
Two years later he married Sara, who he had met through the InterVarsity chapter. They were invited to join InterVarsity staff, particularly because Sara had been a chapter leader. They declined the invitation.
But a few months later, in January 2000, their church started the new year with a week emphasizing prayer and fasting. At the end of the week Chad and Sara talked about what they had discerned and discovered they had both felt called to ministry with college students. When they called their staff worker they found out that he had tried to call them the week before to ask them to reconsider coming on staff, but hadn’t left a message.
So when Sara and Chad joined staff in late 2000 and early 2001, Sara worked at Carthage and Chad worked at Parkside. But as their family began to grow (they now have four children), Chad assumed more and more of the ministry responsibility for both campuses.
Similarities and Differences
Despite the different dynamics on the two campuses, Chad has found that the InterVarsity Evangelism Department’s Launch website resources have worked well in both locations. Every other week the Large Group meetings on both campuses use the Launch video, testimony, and Bible study as the starting point for their discussions. “It’s really changed our large groups a lot the last semester,” he said.
At Parkside, Chad’s goal is to establish a vibrant witness for Christ on campus. The witness can change from year to year, the chapter currently numbers about 30. At Carthage there is a stronger tradition of campus witness and the chapter numbers about 100.
“It looks different at both schools but I think the desire is the same, to see students encounter God wherever they’re at, whenever they come to campus,” Chad said. “From that amazing things can happen, and we can be part of that.”
SIDEBAR: Two years ago Chad took almost 50 students from Carthage to InterVarsity’s Urbana Student Missions Conference in St. Louis, and many of the students got class credit for attending. The story is at the Urbana.org website.
