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Campus Ministries Expanding at North Park University
Craig Pinley
CHICAGO, IL (August 2, 2000) - North Park University (NPU) is one of the more unique Christian liberal arts universities in the United States, perhaps a somewhat unusual institution that espouses open enrollment and offers optional chapel services.
However, don't get the idea that NPU doesn't take its Christian faith seriously, say school administrators. A new University Ministries configuration will give North Park a Christian foundation rivaling any institution in the country.
Thanks to a sizable donation from an anonymous donor, the university has initiated a major expansion of its ministry programs, with $600,000 allocated to the task over four years. The donor portion will cover about 85 percent of the new funding for university ministries in year one, 70 percent in year two, 30 percent in year three and 15 percent in year four.
"We think this is a significant commitment and investment to the institution and we're very pleased that someone has come forward with the dollars to make that a reality," said Mark Olson, now North Park's Dean of University Ministries after serving as campus chaplain last year. "This is an area that has been a priority for North Park in the past, but is moving to a new level of commitment."
In the summer of 1999, NPU President David Horner and Evangelical Covenant Church President Glenn R. Palmberg discussed how to better serve the campus through its university ministries. The result of those discussions is an entirely new and expanded approach to campus ministry.
"This has been a year of transformation for us in terms of what it means to be a Christian campus," said Olson. "It's a transformation from an old model of campus ministries - a chaplain's kind of model, a chaplain-based model of ministry - that really is somewhere around 50 years old," he continued.
"For a long time, ministries on campus have been focused on the ministry of the chaplain or the chaplain's office as whole," Olson observed. "The problem with that image, in my mind, is that it doesn't tell you very much (of the ministry as a whole). I think of somebody sitting in an office somewhere and it doesn't cast a very good picture."
Olson said the new configuration will branch off in two directions: campus ministries and outreach ministries. It is hoped that more staff support and more efficient programming will allow students to engage in more hands-on ministry. In the accompanying photo above (identified from left), Olson is pictured with After Hours staff members Jamie Staples, summer camp director, and recently hired director Charles Newman.
"We have a lot of programs, mostly student-developed, student-led, student-run, and in many cases students have taken them as far as they can go qualitatively and quantitatively," said Olson. "What we want to do is improve quality and also make more penetration into the student body."
The campus ministries program will continue to be directed by campus director Paul Johnson, now in his fourth year. A key component of this area is College Life ministry, a spiritual formation entity that has engaged about one-third of the campus student population in some form of student-led activity. A spiritual formation coordinator will be assigned to assist the Bible study component and facilitate a fairly recent mentoring program that connects students with adults in the workplace.
Other programs include a one-week festival called Week TwentySix, a host of concerts and worship services that focuses heavily on evangelism on campus. NPU also hosts chapel services twice weekly in a format geared toward more devout Christians. The university expects to add a Wednesday night service that will give students a variety of intellectual and worship experiences.
A campus pastor will be assigned most of the speaking duties for chapel worship services, as well as providing pastoral care for students. The university hopes to expand a part-time worship director position into a full-time slot, with responsibilities including worship service coordination and the administration of campus touring ministry teams, an entity that has been a regular staple of NPU ministries in past years.
The Outreach Ministries program, directed by Jill Lind, is anchored by nationally known Urban Outreach, an organization that included nearly 300 NPU students last year working with approximately 20 agencies near campus. The After Hours ministry has reached out to a local school and students have developed a thriving junior high ministry involving 100 volunteers near the university campus. Science programs, tutoring and sports are among the activities offered to students.
Mission trips are also part of Outreach Ministries - about 60 people traveled to various sites all over the world to participate in service projects. "We think that with our cultural value system and our relationships with the church, we can involve a lot more than 50 to 70 students in mission trips," Olson said. "We think mission trips taken at the college level have far more impact than at the high school level. Talk to students who've taken mission trips at the high school level and they'll tell you that," he continued.
"We have a tremendous opportunity to really shape lives, both nationally and cross culturally, and take that 50 to 70 and make that grow to 150, 250, 300 and maybe even 400 (students) in some kind of cross-cultural mission experience, rural or urban, U.S. or international."
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