Category: Sabbatical

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here. 

Starting a faith-based, peace and justice-centered campus ministry from scratch had to start somewhere. As far as we are aware, 3rd Way Collective was the first Mennonite campus ministry at a non-Mennonite college, university, or graduate school. We did not have a road map for how things should look or work, just some energy to try and see how things would unfold.

In June of 2014, after being selected by the search committee at University Mennonite Church as their first choice for a new Anabaptist Campus Pastor position at Penn State, I had my candidating weekend with the congregation. In the Mennonite Church, a pastoral candidate for a job opening is often brought in after being selected by the search committee for one final weekend in which the hiring congregation is introduced to this individual in a more face-to-face way. This is an opportunity for the candidate to be seen by the congregation, and for their questions to be asked and hopefully answered by the candidate in ways that confirm they are the right fit for the job. The weekend went really smoothly, and both my family and the congregation felt like this was in fact the right fit for me.

In July I began sharing this news with my colleagues, coworkers, mentors, youth, and youth sponsors at Salford Mennonite Church. In August of that same year I made an announcement in front of the congregation that I had accepted this new position and would be moving on to this new role later in the fall. Before officially moving to State College, I made the three-hour journey to State College to participate in on-campus events welcoming new students, and trying to spread the word about this new organization called 3rd Way Collective, even though we did not have any clear sense of who we were or what we would evolve into.

Early in October my family and I moved into our new home, and that month I began serving as the campus minister for 3rd Way Collective. I spent the first month meeting with students, faculty, and community members, and decided together with my advisory team that our first official event would be something we called “3rd Way Conversations”, an evening in which we would discuss a relevant peace, justice, or faith issue, inviting members of the community to be present as a way to connect students with older adults with more life experience.

Getting to this moment in time took several official steps. First we had to find students willing to be listed as members of the club and club officers. Next steps included finding someone to be a faculty advisory, write an official charter, apply for and obtain club status with Penn State, and then in order to be listed as a faith-based organization we had to apply to become an affiliate with the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on campus. Once all these things were accomplished we were able to reserve space for our first event which took place at 7:30 pm on Monday, November 3rd.

I was eagerly anticipating this moment. More than standing at a table at the Student Involvement Fair, or attending meetings with my advisory team or having coffee with students, a real event signified in my mind that 3rd Way Collective was real and active. It meant we could finally offer an answer to the question, “What exactly does your club do at Penn State?”

I was also expecting that this event would confirm that I was the right person for the job. I had a theological background that included peace and justice work, and classes on Christian ethics. I was a global traveler, and someone who had real life experience and many connections in faith-based activism. I spent a significant amount of time and energy in those first few months making sure we had the right organizational name, logo, status on campus, social media presence, advertising within the student body, word of mouth awareness, faculty connection, church support, and affirmation of my advisory team.

I had risen to the top of a national search for the right person for this unique campus ministry position, and I was hired because I was expected to be good at this kind of experimental work.

I reserved a modest space for our first event.  A multipurpose room in the Spiritual Center that could comfortably hold 20 people around a table, and be expanded to fit even more if we were surprised by the turnout.

It turns out there was little need to be in a room that was even that large. Just one community member and two students showed up – one who wasn’t sure exactly what or who we were, but was intrigued by the faith-based peace and justice focus, the other student and community member were both long-term members of University Mennonite Church. My hope was that this first group would help define what 3rd Way Collective would become, but the small size meant that little discussion took place that evening. Most of the conversation was a response to questions they had about what my vision was for 3rd Way Collective. I spent a decent amount of time that night worrying that this new student would never return, and wondering how helpful it was to invite community members if they ended up equaling or out-numbering the students I had been asked to serve.

That first event taught me several important things.

First, I must never assume that a campus of 46,000 students meant that every and any event would automatically be well-attended. My assumption was that simply being present on campus would lead to a decent number of curious people. Second, it confirmed a fear that had been nagging – that Penn State’s significant Mennonite student population were either not aware or not interested in what we were doing. Third, I realized that having the right club name, and social media presence made little difference on a campus with more than 1000 clubs and organizations. Just being different was not enough to separate ourselves from the hundreds of other choices students had with how to spend their evening time.

I also learned that night that while I may be qualified to launch a peace-, justice-, and faith-based campus ministry, I could not rest on that fact alone. Building connections and creating meaningful spaces for students to belong was going to take far more time and energy than I had originally anticipated. It was also humbling to learn that my ideas about what students might want were not as important as figuring out what they actually needed or wanted.

That night was not a complete failure. The two students continued to attend and were attracted to something that we created in that space. Both went on to be student officers for our club in its earliest years, and helped me re-imagine what a club like that could be.

I would go on to learn many new things in those first few weeks and months trying to start something new with 3rd Way Collective, but perhaps no memory crystalized how much I still had to learn about this work than that first event, and how different it ended up being than my own expectations.

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here. 

So… Meredith wasn’t thrilled with the idea of moving to State College.

And frankly, I can’t really blame her. Our two-plus years of ministry had not been easy, nor had our transition to southeastern Pennsylvania. We left behind our community and a rich and vibrant southern California for rural suburbia. We had expected our transition to be a homecoming of sorts… we had both grown up in country close to the city, and assumed that it would feel familiar even if it wasn’t the exact area we grew up in. What we did not count on was how much Pasadena had changed us.

Before we left for Pasadena the largest town either of us had lived in was our college town of Harrisonburg, Virginia. We were still trying to make sense of what we believed, and also trying to make sense of living in a marriage commitment (we had only been married for one year). We left behind Virginia’s rolling green mountains for the arid and rugged San Gabriel Mountains beyond Pasadena. We arrived not knowing, or having never been clearly challenged by living in a diverse community, never thought much about the extent of our ecological impact on the earth, had rarely considered the politics of immigration, had little interaction with people from other faith traditions, and had yet to determine what we really felt about LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

We met many people during our four years in Pasadena that challenged us to think differently on these things, and many more. We experienced what it meant to be a Mennonite in an area where few people had ever heard of that tradition. We became friends with people with different religious ideas, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and sexual or gender identity. We ate and fell in love with foods we never knew existed, explored cultures we’d never experienced, and met people from all over the world. We expected to be ready to leave Pasadena after a quick three year program, and ended up staying for four years, and left feeling like we were leaving part of ourselves behind.

It isn’t surprising then that southeastern Pennsylvania felt different and challenging. We went from having only one car that we used infrequently, to having to depend on two vehicles for pretty much every aspect of our new lives. We shifted from having almost every culinary food at our fingertips to limited restaurant offerings of pizza, hoagies, and meat-and-potato dishes. While we found many wonderful new friends, most people seemed similar to who we were – white, middle class people from a Mennonite or Swiss-German heritage.

Salford Mennonite Church was an incredible congregation with a great depth of resources, but those first few years of ministry were challenging in ways we did not expect. We didn’t anticipate feeling a cultural disconnect – both with the transition from Pasadena, as well as a new area that had a deep rootedness that was hard for an outsider to connect right away. We also had several circumstances that were unexpected. I lost a close friend from college due to cancer in my first year. We moved in to our first home, and then had to move again within months due to a complication in our living situation. We got pregnant with our second child and then experienced the pain and trauma of a stillborn daughter. I had some incredible experiences with the church and our youth group, but also some painful moments of tension and pushback to the way I fit with the broader community.

My reaction to all these complications was to start to think about what else we might do, and where else we might go. Meredith, on the other hand, was more inclined to stay put and wait for a calmer moment in our lives.

When University Mennonite Church posted the campus pastor position we talked with friends and mentors and tried hard to discern what was best for us. We decided to let the process help guide us… I decided to be fully transparent with the hiring team about my sense of call, but also some of my reservations with a transition like that, and if they still felt as if I was the right fit we would consider that to be a sign that we were meant to move in that way.

In the meantime, we started to see small signs that a pathway was unfolding in strange ways. Friends were forwarding the job description to me, asking if I knew about the position and wondering if I had applied. Folks at Salford seemed to have a decent number of connections to folks at University Mennonite Church, and were able to get a strong sense of what I might bring to the job. My visits and candidating went really smoothly, and before we knew it the position had been offered. After making the announcement that we were leaving for State College, there were many people who were sad to see me go, however many of those same people told us that they totally understood why I was being called in that direction. THere was almost a sense of lament that the congregation hadn’t been a better fit for me to lean in to my unique set of pastoral gifts. A few of my youth were curious about why I was leaving and assumed it was for more money. When I assured them that I was actually taking a pay cut to leave, they were really surprised. It gave me an opportunity to talk with them about a sense of call and purpose, and to get them to imagine that there may be more to life than wealth.

One of the most touching moments for me was that the lead pastor at Salford spoke at my ordination service at University Mennonite at the end of my first year. Pastor Joe explained that I had a unique calling to use my faith to stand up for peace and justice, and he commended UMC for being a congregation that was willing to hire me to be their prophetic voice in the community, speaking out when it was called for. People from Salford made the journey to my installation service, and then again to celebrate when I was ordained by the congregation and Allegheny Mennonite Conference.

I had a lot of ideas about what I was being called to, and some of those have turned out to be true. But many of the aspects of this unique campus pastor role have turned out to be far more surprising and unexpected than I could have imagined.

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here. 

During the summer of 2013, in my role as Salford Mennonite Church’s pastor for youth and young adults, I traveled to Phoenix, Arizona for Mennonite Church USA’s biannual national gathering with my youth group in tow. Our week of service, learning, worship, and networking were all deeply moving and meaningful. We got to spend some quality time together attending the Youth Convention workshops and activities, and our hotel had a rooftop pool. I lost and found (and lost and found) my wedding ring while at a local water park with our students, and on one of the hottest days some students tried frying an egg on the sidewalk during the heatwave hitting Phoenix that summer. It was a great week, exemplifying the experience of being in youth ministry and walking with young adults.

Despite all that occurred, one experience still stands out above the rest.

On a whim I decided to go check out a seminar presented by Jim Rosenberger (a person I had never met) from University Mennonite Church (a congregation I’d never heard of) in State College, PA (a town I knew little about). At the heart of that seminar was an important question for the denomination to consider – why was it that Mennonite campus ministries only happened on Mennonite college and seminary campuses?

Jim shared that UMC was considering trying something new on the campus of Penn State. Their hunch was that the unique Anabaptist tradition may have something valuable to offer the campus ministry landscape in their community.

I was intrigued for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I had been interested in campus ministry almost as long as I had been considering a call to pastoral ministry. After graduating from Eastern Mennonite University I got a job in the EMU admissions office, working to recruit high school students to my alma mater. In that role I felt honored to be walking with students as they made big decisions, and as they stepped away from their families and home communities to try and define who they were becoming. Even though my job was not to be a minister to the students I worked with, it felt deeply pastoral. I realized during those years that if I was going to become a minister some day, I really wanted to work with youth and young adults.

From there my journey took me to Pasadena, California and the campus of Fuller Theological Seminary. Los Angeles County was a really interesting place to study theology. It provided a backdrop that illuminated many society complexities, and prevented me from assuming there were easy answers to my questions – both theological and societal. In southern California I watched cultures collide. I marveled at the weird way that part of the country could be both passionately progressive, and staunchly conservative. It was home to some of the wealthiest people in the nation, and also some of its poorest. It was a melting pot of cultures, and a home for many people who were just passing through the region. Highways were clogged with gas-chugging oversized SUVs, and tiny eco-friendly hybrid vehicles. Just about any kind of food, music, religion, art, or sporting event was within a short drive.

Fuller provided me with an incredible theological training, and it also afforded me the chance to explore some options for what ministry could be. I found an incredible opportunity at Occidental College to immerse myself in religion on college campus. Rev. Susan Young mentored me for a year as I watched the amazing way she directed the Office of Religious and SPiritual Life, moving with sensitivity between various religious groups and the students who found homes there. Susan taught me that there was a way to be authentically true to yourself and the tradition you represent, while also being present for students from other faith traditions and backgrounds. Occidental College also gave me a chance to see how religion was changing on college campuses. Fewer and fewer students identified as “religious”, and the Christian label was becoming synonymous in the minds of many young people with being narrow-minded, conservative, and fundamentalist. Being present in students lives as an alternative to that assumption was exciting. It provided a unique challenge to flip the script… to demonstrate that it was possible to be both a person of faith, and also be open-minded, progressive, and willing to appreciate new ideas and concepts. Fuller’s multi-denominational context provided with examples of how people from many different traditions worked collaboratively, while also holding true to their own tradition, and as a young and still-forming progressive Anabaptist I was able to borrow from this model to figure out how to collaborate and coexist while still being true to myself.

As seminary drew to a close I realized one major barrier stood in my way in becoming a campus minister or campus chaplain: my denominational tradition. It wasn’t that Mennonite Church USA was against people becoming campus ministers, just that the system was limited to one particular pathway. In 2010-11, as I was completing my MDiv at Fuller, the only Mennonite campus pastor positions were those found at the seven American Mennonite colleges and seminary institutions. Almost all were occupied by ministers who had been in the role for several years, or planned to be in the role for the long term. There did not seem to be a pathway to a role with one of those schools.

My focus shifted to positions beyond my tradition, but in doing so I discovered another challenge. Every campus minister opening I could find required ordination in some sort of Christian tradition. The Mennonite ordination track works somewhat differently than other traditions in that the candidate is first called into a pastoral role, and then after years of service and experience ordination is granted at the request of the local congregation. I was not ordained, and without a job chances were slim that my denomination was going to ordain me.

This winding road was how rather than starting my pastoral journey in campus ministry I ended up at Salford Mennonite Church, in a more traditional role of pastor for youth and young adults. I figured while waiting for ordination to be granted, I would continue to work with young adults and wait patiently for a time when ordination could allow me to apply for campus minister or campus chaplain positions. I arrived at Salford excited to begin that role, however with the thought that if a campus pastor role opened for me, I would consider moving on.

It was with some surprise then, that after a few years at Salford, before being ordained, I learned about this new Mennonite Campus Pastor position possibility at Penn State University.

Before the seminar had even ended I sent a text message to my wife Meredith – would she ever have interest in moving our family to State College for me to do campus ministry at Penn State? Her response was a single word with just two letters: NO.

To be continued….

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here. 

Dear Rachel Held Evans,

I’m writing with a long-overdue note of appreciation. Last week’s news of your passing shook me at a deeper level than I anticipated, and I wondered if putting words on paper would help me process some of what I felt.

I think my first memory of you was hearing about your second book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I’m guessing that my reaction to hearing about an effort to live according to a legalistic reading of scripture was typical of many short-sighted folks at the time… hadn’t AJ Jacobs already tried that and written a book about the experience a few years prior? Was yours just going to be the female version of that?

Despite my reservations I picked up your book anyway.

In its pages I found a powerful narrative of your journey to make sense of a biblical text that was both life-giving, and also frustrating. You had the ability to weave humor in with frustration, sarcasm in with reverence, all the while blending a passion and commitment to scripture even when it didn’t seem to make much sense. Your writing felt like sitting down with an old friend, and you invited your reader to share in the journey and experience with a candid intimacy that I had rarely experienced in theological texts.

It wasn’t long after finishing that book that I ordered your first published book, not wanting to let go of that experience. I was pleased to find that your first book was just as compelling as your newer one. It provided my own faith transition and journey with context and perspective. It reminded me that we were all on a journey, from wherever we begin, to wherever we are now. Again you gave permission to your reader to share in your frustration with church tradition, and to examine a better way of engaging Christian faith and spirituality. Your most recently published book was your best one yet. When you read a passage from your not-yet-published book during your visit to State College, not a sound was made in the venue space. Everyone hung on the words you had written, as they illuminated the biblical story of Hagar in new and profound ways.

Rachel, your honesty validated my own journey. Your transparency about your own childhood allowed me to own my conservative upbringing and understanding of theology as part of who I was, and helped me make sense of who I had become through high school, college, and seminary. Your story was validating because you were also (without realizing it) telling my story, and the story of so many of our peers.

Your commitment to a God of Love and inclusion, rather than a God of anger and exclusion provided me with words that gave clarity to who God could be. And thanks to Amazon’s book-suggesting algorithm, finding and buying your books led me to many other authors I would later learn were some of your dear friends – Nadia Bolz Weber, Sarah Bessey, Pete Enns, Austin Channing Brown, and many others.

It is not an understatement to say that you helped to make me into the kind of minister I am today. In fact it is a very good possibility that without your influence, and the influence of many of your peers and my own mentors I would not still claim my Christian identity.

A few years ago I finally got to meet you in person when 3rd Way Collective co-hosted your visit to Penn State. I ended up with the privilege of picking you up from the airport. I remember texting a few friends with a celebrity-influenced kind of enthusiasm, hardly believing that I was going to actually meet you face to face. Minutes into our short drive you were cracking jokes about how hard it is to keep cars clean when you have kids making Cheerio dust, sharing with me your excitement about having just found out you were going to have your next child (and worried about feeling nauseous during your time with us), and asking deep questions about my work and my personal call to campus ministry. You spoke clearly about your own need to find personal time in your unique kind of ministry, and how you had been learning to set boundaries that provided yourself and your family with space to rest. I was amazed by your ability to make people feel feel valued almost instantly, and your presence made even a 15 minute car ride feel like sacred space.

It was a gift to watch you interact with the people who had shown up to hear you speak. You took countless photos, and answered far too many questions. You took even the most narrow-minded or naive questions and answered them with sensitivity and honesty. Your time with us felt like watching someone who had so clearly discovered exactly what they were meant to do and who they were called to be.

At the end of your visit I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. In that space, and for the many months until recently hearing about your death, I had assumed that I’d have your voice with me for the rest of my life. My assumption was that you would continue to author relevant books about how to re-imagine faith, theology, and being a part of humanity. I expected you would continue to use social media to widen the circle of inclusion, and to speak out against hatred in so many different ways.

Even though your life was cut far too short, you have given the world and incredible gift in the many ways you spoke out for what you believed to be good and true. Thank you for your willingness to continue to wrestle and engage with a faith and a tradition that was often not ready for your prophetic words. Though our hearts are broken, you will continue to inspire.

Rest in peace, rest in power, and rest knowing that you have had an impact on countless lives who will continue to work for a better world in your memory.

Sincerely,

Ben