Overview of our activities
Canterbury chaplain Berkeley Johnson wrote the following in July 2008 for our governing board and for potential donors.
Canterbury Club Ministry Components
1) Peer Ministry: this process involves training students, through the use of a curriculum, to be peer ministers. The chaplain meets weekly with students who are interested in learning more about how to minister to and with their peers. Currently, we have two students trained as peer ministers and we hope to add at least two more this coming school year.
2) Vocational Discernment: this is an important issue for our college students and young adults. It culminates in a vocational discernment retreat each February with students from the Lutheran and Presbyterian campus ministries. The purpose is to explore what vocational discernment means and to develop a greater understanding of who we are and who God may be calling us to be.
3) Centering Prayer: this is part of our weekly discipline and has become an important part of our ministry together. We have even attracted young adults not affiliated with the Episcopal Church to our meetings out of their desire to find a community with whom to share this practice. Our contemplative time together has led to a discussion about Anglican Prayer Beads and learning about different ways of praying.
4) Worship: our weekly meetings also include a worship component. Ordinarily we have a priest from the deanery join us for our service of Holy Eucharist. When a priest is not available, we close our meetings with Compline from our BCP or Night Prayers from the New Zealand BCP.
5) Bible Study: this is an important part of our weekly ministry together. We have done this several ways: we have studied and discussed texts from the weekly lectionary; we have read articles and discussed them from a theological perspective; we have studied biblical themes; and we have read and discussed particular stories or passages from the Bible.
6) Space: Canterbury Club currently meets in the Library at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, which is located in downtown SLO, about ten minutes driving distance from the Cal Poly campus. The Library is small and intimate and thus works for now, but if the group grows much in size we will outgrow this space and have to use another room in the church. Because of the distance from campus, we don’t get students who might walk over or “drop by” to “check things out”; however, several of the students who come to Canterbury meetings attend different schools or come from neighboring towns, so this is not an issue for them, and St. Stephen’s has ample parking and meets our needs for meeting, cooking and eating meals, and worship space.
7) Mission Trips: the students have expressed interest (and it is my hope) to have Canterbury participate in at least one mission trip this coming year. We have contacted the Sierra Service Project and hope to have greater student interest and involvement this year. We will be focusing on this in our Bible Study and theological-reflection time in order to build support for this transformational ministry.
8) Retreats: the students have expressed interest in taking time for a weekend retreat (Fri. to Sun.) at a monastery. I would also like to see us get up to St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco and possibly combine that visit with some form of outreach as well.
9) Province VIII Higher-Ed Gathering: this is an annual gathering, usually in March, of Episcopal Campus Ministries from Province VIII. It includes students and chaplains and is comprised of workshops and small-group discussions.
10) Deanery visitations: the chaplain and students visit each deanery parish 1-2 times per year. These visits take place during Sunday morning services with the chaplain preaching and then meeting with students and parishioners afterwards for coffee hour, questions, and fellowship. These visitations are a reminder to the deanery that this is a deanery-wide ministry and so this is a primary source of finding donors and doing fund-raising.
11) Labyrinth: we have instituted (in partnership with PCCO, see below) a quarterly labyrinth ministry at Cal Poly. We have obtained access to a portable labyrinth and bring it up to campus for people to walk it. This is becoming an important and popular ministry with the students. Eventually, it would be good if we could obtain our own labyrinth, rather than having to rely on borrowing one. There are also some permanent, outdoor, labyrinths here locally, and we are planning to take trips to walk those as well.
12) Weekly Dinners: we have offered free, weekly dinners as part of our ministry. To date, the chaplain has been primarily responsible for the dinners, so we are definitely in need of assistance in this area. It would be great to have someone – an individual, a couple, or a rotating group of people - step forward and take over this ministry.
13) Music: we are also in need of someone to assist us with our music program. To date, most of our music has been comprised of songs that can be sung without instrumental accompaniment; but we would like to make music more of a central feature of our worship and ministry together. We would like to utilize a college student or young adult as our music person, so to that end, we will seek out potential musicians from the music departments at the local schools and/or ask local music teachers for possible referrals.
14) Fellowship with Lutheran Campus Ministry (LCM) and Progressive Christian Campus Outreach (PCCO): this past year we established an important connection with LCM. On the third Tuesday of each month we would meet with them at Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church for dinner, Bible Study, and worship. As time goes on, and as our Canterbury ministry grows, we hope to be able to host LCM at St. Stephen’s as well.
We also formed a solid partnership with PCCO, comprised of students and the minister from the SLO Congregational (United Church of Christ) Church. We had weekly lunches together on campus where we discussed relevant topics and planned various joint ministries, including the labyrinth ministry.
15) Participation in University Christian Community Board (UCC) and Interfaith Campus Council (ICC): the chaplain and two Canterbury Ministry Board (CMB) members serve on the UCC Board. The Board’s primary function at this point is to manage/raise funds to support the annual (above-mentioned) vocational-discernment retreat.
The ICC meets about three times a year and is a good way for the chaplain to network with other campus ministries and members of Cal Poly’s Religious-Studies Department.
16) Outreach: we participated in two outreach/service projects this past year, the local Crop Walk for Hunger in Los Osos and “Get On The Bus” a prison-ministry project that brings children and families from throughout the state by bus to visit their parents who are incarcerated here locally. We are also planning to be involved with the upcoming Habitat for Humanity build in Atascadero.
17) National and Diocesan Events: there are a number of annual, triennial, and other events sponsored by the national Episcopal Church’s Higher Education and Campus Ministry Department. Berkeley just returned from his first annual conference of Episcopal Campus Chaplains. We have not yet participated in any national events involving students yet, as we are a new ministry; but there is an event coming up this December in Colorado.
There are also three other campus ministries in our diocese: San Jose State, CSU Monterey Bay, and UC Santa Cruz. In terms of networking, there is a U2charist scheduled for the fall. Also, we will have a presence at Diocesan Convention in November.
18) Week of Welcome (WOW) and Open House: these are two events at Cal Poly that are important in terms of recruitment and our presence. WOW is Cal Poly’s orientation week held in mid-September. It introduces incoming students to all the various aspects of campus and community life. There are two events for meeting students and introducing them to our campus ministry: SLO-Bound on Tuesday and the Block Party on Friday afternoon.
Open House is held on a Thursday–Sunday in the spring for potential incoming students in the fall. Staffing the interfaith table in the UU Plaza on Friday and hosting a booth at Farmers’ Market on Thursday evening and again at the fair on campus on Saturday are the two main ways of meeting and greeting potential students and their families.
The chaplain will seek to work with Cuesta College students as well this fall to determine what similar opportunities exist for meeting/recruiting students on that campus as well.
19) Publicity: we obtained a banner this past year; we have a brochure to hand out at events; I am looking into getting some business cards; we have a Facebook page and a website. We are making sure to take pictures at all events and add them to our web presences and plan to create a tri-fold poster board for the Library and to display at events. Weekly e-mail announcements go out to the students and deanery parishes. Our weekly meetings are listed each week in the bulletin at St. Stephen’s and we will ask all deanery parishes to do the same this coming year. Additionally, we now have posters to publicize our meetings and worship services.
20) Outings: in terms of getting together for fun activities, we have discussed a beach barbeque/bonfire at Avila and a trip to Six Flags this summer, a bowling night at Cal Poly, attending the Monterey Jazz Festival (perhaps in ’09), and a hike up Bishop Peak this fall.
21) Projects: some projects discussed with students include fixing up the library to make it more welcoming/“homier” for our meetings, making sets of Anglican Prayer beads, designing Canterbury Club t-shirts, and possibly making our own labyrinth (fairly ambitious…but you never know…).
22) Hospitality/Connecting students with St. Stephen’s: one event that has been discussed is a “welcome” barbeque at St. Stephen’s this fall on Sunday morning after church. This past year we also changed our weekly meetings in Lent to Wednesday evenings to coincide with the Lenten Series.
23) Fund-raising: as mentioned above, one of the primary ways of reaching potential donors is through our deanery parish visitations. We have created a fund-raising letter seeking to create a 20/12 community (twenty donors who would contribute $1000 over the course of a year) and are in the process of sending out another letter to the deanery parishes reminding them to please send in their pledges. We are contemplating an annual newsletter and fund-raising envelope. We need to create an endowment in order to solicit bequests and other legacy gifts.