Editor’s note: This reflection is part of a series by chaplains in the Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities (NECU) about the ways in which God is at work on NECU campuses.
I serve as a pastor at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, and like the campus ministry departments of many ELCA colleges and universities, ours offers a spring-break service trip. Student leaders begin gathering in the fall to identify a city, reachable by bus, that they want to visit and learn about in the spring. Our department’s endowment, paired with several generous local grants, keeps this trip affordable and accessible for all our students (a majority of whom are Pell Grant–eligible).
Augsburg’s campus ministry serves all students, regardless of religious affiliation or belief, creating opportunities for our diverse student population to encounter welcome and belonging across their differences. Our neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside, which was densely populated with Scandinavian immigrants over 150 years ago, today is home to the largest concentration of Somalis and Somali Americans in the United States. Religious life on campus, therefore, is interfaith by nature, with our Muslim Student Association being the largest student religious organization on campus.
In 2023, a group of 27 Augsburg students boarded the bus for a week of service in New Orleans. They comprised the usual mix for us: several mainline Protestants, several more people who identified as nonreligious, a few nondenominational or charismatic Christians, a couple of Jewish students and a few Muslim students. Though varied in identity and belief, these 27 young people were united in their apprehension and anxiety over how this trip would unfold. Few of them knew each other.
Through service, shared meals and countless card games, our time in New Orleans was smooth, meaningful and successful in building a sense of community among our students. We concluded our week with a visit to Jackson Square. Students ate powdered beignets, spent way too much on souvenirs from tourist shops and delighted in the street performers who are such a treasured part of the city.
As we waited for the bus to pick us up, our students began to congregate around a band of musicians drumming on plastic buckets, playing guitars and inviting everyone to dance. The Augsburg crew hopped right in, moving and shaking to the music in the middle of a busy New Orleans sidewalk. This moment was what the trip—and campus ministry—is all about. A spontaneous feeling of joy and belonging in each other’s presence emanated from the square as students danced to the beat. They trusted one another enough to be silly, to let loose, to become beloved community united across culture, belief and experience.
They trusted one another enough to be silly, to let loose, to become beloved community united across culture, belief and experience.
But this feeling came to an abrupt end when the band started putting words to the rhythm and percussion. They sang of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, who died for the sins of those who believe in him (and only them). They issued a challenge to the dancing students to give their hearts to Christ, then and there. We suddenly realized that these weren’t local buskers; they were campus ministry students from a fundamentalist Christian college on a mission to New Orleans to win souls for Christ.
My students stopped dancing. They sat down. When the song ended, these student musicians approached us with Bibles, beginning with those wearing hijabs. When they asked my students about their beliefs and found them insufficiently Christian, they began preaching, trying to persuade them to repent and be saved.
Our group rallied. Some of the Christian students sat next to the Jewish and Muslim students, shielding them from the proselytizers. Others simply walked away. A few delighted in the presence of these students and consented to being prayed over.
As the fundamentalists began ramping up their end-of-days language, I decided to gently intervene. When I pulled these student missionaries aside, I noticed that, of all the students there that day, these were the most anxious and out of their depth. As our group boarded the bus, I tried to reassure the missionaries: “You don’t need to worry about these students. I know you feel concerned about the state of their salvation. But let me tell you, as a fellow follower of Jesus: they are wonderful, they are loved by God, and my faith tells me that God is pleased with them. So, please, don’t worry.”
After we boarded the bus, my students’ reactions to what had happened varied widely. Everyone agreed, however, that something had just happened: something strange and confusing that needed unpacking. As we rode back to our host congregation, the bus conversations were active and organic. Students talked about religious differences, about respect and about the most effective ways to share one’s faith—having just experienced something they found ineffective. They checked in with each other and offered care to those shaken by the experience.
From “for” to “with”
In a seminar on Christian vocation that I co-teach, we read an essay by Samuel Wells, “Rethinking Service” (Cresset, vol. 76, no. 4, Easter 2013). A priest in the Church of England, Wells argues that everyone from Christian missionaries to higher-education institutions are formed around a core assumption that the problem from which we must be “saved” is mortality. Our schools educate students primarily to solve problems, to reduce suffering and to extend life. Similarly, missionaries such as our fundamentalist siblings are often motivated by fear of what Wells calls eternal “hell, or oblivion, or nothingness,” which will come after death if we are not individually good enough on this side of the grave.
Wells points out that when the primary problem is mortality, we are compelled to do things for others. Service, evangelism and study all become instruments for accomplishing the greater goal of saving, fixing, solving and improving. They operate within the same set of aims and incentives valued by the individualistic, capitalistic world that our students are being trained to live and thrive in.
While doing for is often noble and good, Wells asks: “What if it turned out that the fundamental human problem was not mortality after all? What if it turned out that all along the fundamental problem was isolation?”
The world our students are preparing to serve is simultaneously more pluralistic and more isolating than ever. In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general declared loneliness to be an epidemic and isolation to be a public health crisis. More than ever (for a variety of social and historical reasons), our students lack the tools for connection, community and belonging. As Wells points out, when we understand the fundamental human problem as isolation rather than mortality, the operative preposition changes from “for” to “with.”
For Lutherans, the saving act of Jesus on the cross, of course, includes a “for” but, even more powerfully, it reveals a God called Emmanuel who is “with,” even in death. As the apostle Paul writes, the good news of Christ is to be found in the truth that nothing will separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39).
I’m not sure whether my pastoral theology was convincing to those student missionaries, but I think of them often. When I do, I’m grieved that they missed an opportunity to encounter my students as equals and friends. What a loss that their training prohibited them from experiencing joy on the streets of New Orleans with a cohort of interfaith friends learning how to dance together, serve together and be at home with one another. This is the beloved community to which God calls us and in which Jesus has promised to always be present.
