Halloween in Columbia, Missouri, is much like Halloween anywhere else. Pop-up stores appear in non-descript strip malls, filled with the standard array of ghoulish kitsch: witch masks and Jack Skeletons, string cobwebs and tombstones. At dusk, trick-or-treaters swarm neighborhoods like costumed locusts. Candy is given out and eaten, as often by parents as by the children that collect it.
If you ask Campus Staff Minister Jamal Morris what makes his ministry unique, he’ll laugh and say, “It’d probably take an outsider to tell you . . . It’s just second nature to me.” When he came on staff with InterVarsity almost 12 years ago, he kept encountering the same problem. Students he met at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga (UTC) didn’t want to have anything to do with Christianity because they didn’t see how it made an actual difference in the world. They wanted to be a part of something real, particularly something that could alleviate pain in the inner-city.
InterVarsity students at the University of Oregon partner with different organizations to care for their campus–one way is through a Free Store for students.
When InterVarsity chapters at Russell Sage College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute began giving away cookies as an outreach, responses they received included, "keep it up" and "I now know there's a group on campus who cares."
Campus Staff Minister Rashawn Ramone began family dinners at San Juan College to serve Native students on campus and that now have become a place for many to experience, not just family, but also healing.