Archive for the ‘Church’ Category

  • 18 Dec

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    More J23 thoughts

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    Things have been so unbelievably busy over the last 10 days, and between finals, work, J23 & NCSC activities, blogging fell pretty down on my priorities list, but hopefully I’ll be able to catch up a bit and allot some more time in these coming weeks…

    The most pressing issue I’ve been facing on this blog (and arguably in my life right now) is this J23/NCSC storm I’ve been trying to weather my way through.  Since my meetings, many developments have taken place.  So I’ll try to breeze through them and start from the beginning.

    My blog may have gotten some traffic throughout the weekend, because I ended up sending the link to the "Locker Room Reaction" entry to a few interested parties that I’ve been keeping updated: J23′s former Pastor, our UMAC Chairperson, and our former Campus Minister at J23 – all of which have been extremely supportive of Campus Ministry and NCSC.  Aside from some advice from my former Campus Minister, I didn’t receive any immediate reaction – which was to be expected during this busy time of year.

    By the time Monday rolled around I hadn’t received any reactions to my "Reaction", but I did receive a response from the Campus Ministers from the meeting.  To summarize: the jury is still out as to whether we can support NCSC as a campus minister.  We’d like to help the people that are going, but we don’t have $100.  If you’d like the four of you can give us the money and we’ll register, or you guys can do a fund-raiser and we can get the registration money that way.  What I took away from it was that if I didn’t do anything, we weren’t going to be registered.

    At that point I felt pretty frustrated and conflicted.  Truth be told, I had the $100 that I’d be willing to put towards this, but I struggle with buying University Ministry something that they don’t really want.  In their email they cited financial reasons, but it seemed more like an excuse than a complication.  It’d be one thing if they wrote me saying "We love NCSC!  We really want to support it, but we don’t have any money available.", but the email I was seemed more like "Well, we don’t know… I guess can renew…. if you come up with the money.."

    At that point I continued to weigh my options, contacting the students immediately impacted by this issue, emailed the former Pastor, UMAC Chair, former Campus Minister.  A few days passed and I was leaning more towards the option of registering our NCSC membership at another parish.  Then Wednesday passed…

    Finals ended for the UMAC Chair (who is also a professor at CSU) and he finally got a chance to check his email, resulting in him writing a spontaneous, eloquent, passionate letter urging the CM staff to reconsider their decision regarding the NCSC Membership.  The email was excellent, one definitely worth saving in a file drawer somewhere.  I felt very supported and was hoping positive change could come from this.

    Sure enough I got a call Thursday, from the Campus Ministry staff saying that they read the Chair’s email and would like to meet with the two of us on Friday.  I wasn’t really quite sure what to expect.  I told a few people that after the email the Chair wrote, if they were going to say anything besides "We’re sorry, here’s your check." I didn’t see any point in being there.  Things didn’t go that easy.

    The meeting Friday was interesting to say the least.  I spent 75% of was a waste of time, and we shifted from dead end to dead end.  First they weren’t willing to concede that any changes were going to result from this meeting – that the point was for us to accept and understand their decision (with no opportunity to change it).  Then we went around in circles about how they never said they weren’t going to renew the NCSC membership, and how we got that out of their email was beyond them.  There were so many times where I just wanted to go Eric Cartman on them: "Screw you guys, I’m going home…" – so many points during that meeting that I wanted to just get up and leave.

    About 3/4′s of the way through the meeting things started to turn for the better, we came to a partial understanding, and hammered out a short-term solution I could live with.  Apparently the issue still comes down to funding, and that they still can’t come up with $100 from their budget to pay for this.  We agreed to go to the Pastor as a united front and ask for money out of the general parish funds.  I left it up to the CM Staff to schedule the meeting and kept my availability open to them.

    I’m optimistically predicting that our Pastor won’t see this as a big issue and just sign the $100 check, but we’ll see what happens.  If the meeting somehow goes south, or doesn’t even happen (by Thursday) I’m going to just fill out the registration form and put the supportive (other) Parish as our membership parish.  I’m sick of dealing with this crap..  It’s funny to think about how much time I’ve wasted on this, and when you think about how much I make an hour, just how much money this has cost me in my productivity (granted, none of this time was done during work hours, but this could have been time that I could have gotten caught up on work), and that’s not even considering how much the time the Campus Ministers have wasted on this – we could have paid for this membership many times over… 

    So that’s the short version of this issue…  Yes, I have been doing other things in my life this past week, and I will post updates (and pictures) as well, but I needed to get this off my chest and hopefully out of my hair…

  • 08 Dec

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    NCSC – J23 Meeting Locker Room Reaction…

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    I am literally writing this on the heels of my NCSC/J23 meeting, and I’m basically processing my meeting on my blog while in my head.  You could say that you’re getting the "locker room reaction".  I base this analogy off of football games, where the media goes into the locker room right after the game.  At that point adrenaline is high, emotions are rampant and every once and a while you’ll get an outburst of emotion.  It could be anger, to exuberant joy, to crying (unless you’re Kansas City Chief’s coach Dick Vermeil, who cries after every game).  Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn on the faucets today, but the point I’m making is that right now I’m led by emotion, and after reason sets in I might feel differently…

    The meeting went about as I expected – which isn’t necessarily good.  It could have gone better than I was hoping for, but then again it could have gone worse.  However, I did leave disappointed with the result.

    Good Things: I think I did a pretty decent job of going in with an open mind.  I didn’t make any personal attacks or belittle their opinions by any means.  I think they made an honest effort to listen to what I had to say.  They asked some very good questions, made some very challenging statements; and I manged to give them an appropriate response for each of them.  As far as discussions go, I think it was quite effective.

    Bad Things:  Well the worst thing - I went in there hoping that there would be some change, and I left believing that there won’t be a significant change any time soon.  I really didn’t hear any logically objective concerns about our church’s involvement with NCSC.  All of the concerns I got were emotionally-led subjective concerns that namely one of the campus ministers had.  This person went to NCSC last year as a student, and I think when they went they had the expectation that the conference was going to be more like the FOCUS Conference.  While he was making his case he drew direct comparisons to the FOCUS Conference, alleging that the NCSC Conference was not as "spiritual" as FOCUS.  This person went home with a "bitter taste in his mouth" about the Conference and felt that his time would have been better spent attending the FOCUS Conference rather than the NCSC Conference.

    Both Campus Ministers spoke about the fact that they didn’t know much about NCSC, and because they didn’t know much about it they didn’t feel comfortable "endorsing" NCSC with our campus ministry’s membership.

    I responded with both of those concerns, conceding that perhaps the Conference didn’t meet the Campus Minister’s expectations of what "spirituality" meant.  I told him that I think that he connects with spirituality through catechises and liturgical sacraments, and while both were present at NCSC (there was daily Mass, two "big" Masses, Reconciliation, praise & worship, etc.), they were also integrated with all six aspects of Empowered By the Spirit.  There was so much more diverse programming available: from the opportunity to network with students from all over the country – with a variety of Campus Ministry programs and types, there were opportunities for students to have discussion about various international and social justice issues, there were opportunities for students to discern for leadership and connect with Campus Ministries more on a regional and national level, and I went on and on.  The point I was making that just because that particular student/campus minister didn’t get much out of the experience doesn’t mean other students took away much more.  It also doesn’t mean that this may be an unique opportunity to involve students who may not normally be involved in programming at J23.

    In regards to their concern that they may not know much about it – I was deeply challenged by their sentiment in this statement.  Our campus ministry’s affiliation with NCSC was there before I came around to Campus Ministry, and was there long before any of the current campus ministry staff came around.  I struggle because they’re leaning too much on the inclination to fear something that they do not necessarily understand.  I attempted to draw some comparisons between our campus ministry’s affiliation with CCMA (Catholic Campus Ministry Association) and NCSC.  They hardly know anything about CCMA programming, yet somehow it’s very important that they become and remain members of CCMA.  Yet they use the same argument against the NCSC, even though these two groups are partner organizations.

    I could go back and forth on points and counter-points, but I think that would be too tedious. However, I think that this issue is broken down in two ways: Methodology/Programming & Financials.

    In regards to Methodology/Programing, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to come to a common understanding, or if they even want to.  The campus ministers speak about their lack of knowledge and experience in NCSC, yet they do not want to take the time or resources needed to learn more about it.  It was to my dismay to find that they actually had quite a bit of literature about NCSC, as well as all of the copies of the Collegian, the NCSC newsletter, yet they didn’t appear to read them or make their student leaders aware of those materials.  If you’re not going to break open the materials, it’s pretty hard to find value in them!

    I think they feel threatened because 3 of the 4 students going to NCSC Conference are students that don’t regularly attend their weekly programming..  At the same time I would venture to say that all of these students who "got something" out of NCSC remain actively engaged in Parish life, are strong members in the Catholic Church, and through their NCSC involvement still have a strong connection to Campus Ministry.   There is part of me that is tempted to think that they’re prejudging the NCSC, simply based on the affiliation of myself and other students like me, who are no longer part of their programming.

    I struggle with this because their role as Campus Ministers is not only to provide transforming and life-giving programming for college students, but to also identify and utilize resources and opportunities that would serve ALL students in their Campus Ministry.  This is a tried & true resource for Campus Ministry that has been around John XXIII for 15 years, yet they want to close the door on this because "students who are currently involved probably won’t get much out of this".  This is incredibly short-sighted and goes against what it means to be a campus ministry – you’re turning students away because you’re not willing or able to offer programming that serves them.  I’m not a relativist, two years ago John XXIII was a very life-giving, nurturing and challenging place, but now it’s no longer that for me.  Granted, I have changed over the years, but I think our faith community has been doing most of the changing.

    Finances – this one should be a no-brainer but somehow this is a big issue.  Simply: THERE IS MONEY IN THE BUDGET FOR THIS!  There has always been, and unless they’ve made drastic cuts, there should be money for it this year.  Yet somehow they pedaled me this story about how they need to raise money for everything that they do – and they cannot do an activity if they don’t have a way to fund-raise for this.  I simply countered by asking them where their money to pay for CCMA dues comes from, do they have to fund-raise for it?  They didn’t have an answer to that question.  I asked them to discuss this with the Pastor and truly explore if there’s funding available.

    I’m pissed because I’m lobbying heavily for our church to find $100 to renew our NCSC membership, yet someone behind the curtain can whip up $40k+ to keep FOCUS here.  Give me a break!

    The finances are the least of my worry because I was graciously offered money to pay for the NCSC membership from our previous Pastor, who is now at another church.  While it’s very generous and a testament to how important experienced Campus Ministers consider the NCSC, it’s strange that another church is giving their offertory money to fund something that our church should automatically be doing.  At the same time this isn’t so much about money as it is about principle.  Truth be told, I have money from my Christmas bonus that I could use for the CM Membership renewal – but what’s the point if I (or another church) give our hard-earned money if the people receiving it aren’t willing to understand why it’s important enough for us to do this.  It’d be one thing if they couldn’t understand – education can fix that – but for them not willing to understand is the heart of the problem.

    I guess they’re now going to go talk to the Pastor to see if they have the money available, but they indicated that they’d want to meet with me (and it would be great if "I could bring students that actually got something out of NCSC") to discuss this further.

    I really don’t know where this is going to go…  Something tells me that NCSC will have Colorado State University membership in Lafayette, CO or we may end up forming the "Colorado State University Catholic Student Coalition" before this is all over.

    Perhaps more to come as emotion subsides…

  • 08 Dec

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    Big Meeting Today

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    So today is a relatively big day for me, NCSC/J23-wise.  Today I have to meet with the Campus Ministers and convince them that being in NCSC is a good thing, that we need to renew our membership, and that they need to continue to receive emails from the NCSC List-Serve (and should be passing them along to student leaders as well).  Like I’ve said before, I’m really struggling with needing to have this meeting in the first place, and I’m praying that this is hopefully just an educational moment.

    Today they rescheduled on me for the second time.  This meeting was supposed to take place last week, then they rescheduled on me the day before (postponing this by a week), and now I got another email today saying that they’re going to push me back 20-30 minutes to have a Alternative Spring Break interview…

    Maybe I’m reading into this a little too much, and being a bit too sensitive – but it’s not very respectful to keep jerking me around like this.  And what does it say when I want to have this meeting about the NCSC and you reschedule this meeting for other things that are popping up AFTER we scheduled our original time.  This makes me realize where I fit in their priorities.  I’m kinda pissed I’m being jerked around like this, and I hope this isn’t a preview of what’s to come in today’s meeting.

    I’m still about nervous about what’s going to happen.  I have a good sense of what I’m going to say and how I’m hoping this will go, but I really hope that all of us can go into this meeting with an open mind.  What I really hope is that I don’t need to take a defensive position during this meeting and basically defend against their ignorance and pre-judgement.

    The benefit I have is that I have an assured end-result.  CSU students will become members no matter what.  Our former Pastor, who is now the Pastor of another church about an hour away has offered to cover registration expenses – so I have a last-resort option.  I really don’t want to use this though, I think it’ll fix things in the short-term, but in the long-run this won’t be a good thing.  It’ll become another way our community is split and I don’t want to build up this "resistance/alternative campus ministry".

    So please say a prayer for me today at 4:20ish MST.  I’ll update on how things turn out.

  • 06 Dec

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    Blowing off some steam… with “so much to say”…

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    This is a blog..  When I started this blog, I had no idea who would read it (or if someone actually would take the time to read it), so I’ve always written with my own intentions in mind – and essentially with an audience of one – myself.  I have so many random things floating through my head all day that sometimes I need to "Open up my head and let me out" as Dave Matthews would say.  I’m not a wannabe columnist, nor am I writing an manifesto over here, I’m just pouring out my thoughts, so please take everything that I write here with a grain of salt.  You’re welcome to reflect and offer your comments, but I’m not here to convince anyone of anything – simply just to express my thoughts and what’s going on in my life.

     

    That said, I’m pretty frustrated this evening, and it comes back to an all-too-common topic that never seems to escape me – FOCUS and specifically the impact it has on things in campus ministry that I hold dear.  I’m frustrated tonight because I’m not really feeling like my experiences with this matter are being seriously considered when discussions about how to deal with FOCUS are raised.  And I get frustrated trying to understand why.

     

    On one hand, I’m pissed that people don’t appreciate the situation and perspective that I offer.  They aren’t the ones that had their thriving, life-giving campus ministry gutted the way ours has been.  They didn’t have their wholesome, professional staff replaced by a shrink-wrapped, out-of-the-box ministry replica.  They haven’t had to watch their own faith community transformed from self-thinking, strong, quality student leaders - into a " ‘Yes’ man" system, where students are formed more through peer pressure and heirical authority.

     

    I don’t think that people who disagree with me are being naive, but I do believe that this situation just simply is not close to them.  When it comes closer, and they watch their life-impacting and trans-formative ministry change before their very eyes – they’ll get it.  My fear is that it’ll be too late, and I pray that it doesn’t happen to anyone.  I don’t think that any students should have to go through the drastic changes that students in our ministry have.

     

    And I still believe that FOCUS is a serious concern for NCSC…  When I see what I’m going through in my own campus ministry.  On Thursday I have to meet with my campus ministers to convince them that we need to renew our NCSC membership, as well ask humbly ask that they retract their request to stop receiving NCSC emails (and hope that they’ll pass them onto our student leadership team).  We’ve been members for years, long before our last campus ministers were there, and I have records of members from J23 serving on past regional teams.  It’s hard to believe that this would ever be an issue at our church…  And yet I don’t believe this is a coincidence.  I think what’s happened is that our campus ministry staff has become so immersed on FOCUS programming, that they feel comfortable in closing other windows of opportunity. 

     

    Additionally the was FOCUS works – they don’t really have student leaders.  They do have their students that lead bible studies, but when it comes to any visioning/programming it’s all done by their FOCUS missionaries.  I struggle because their vision of leadership is self-sustaining to the group.  I believe when they speak about developing leaders they talk about grooming people to some day become FOCUS missionaries and help feed their organization.  I don’t think there’s much discussion about how to be a well-rounded Catholic lay-person.  I’ve watched students who went through the FOCUS program (and not become missioners) struggle with trying to integrate into Parish life, and years after their FOCUS time they’re still looking for their place in the church. 

     

    The point I’m trying to make is that they’re not ministering to the type of students that can really dialog with the student-led NCSC, and for us to try to work with them on a grass-roots level is not going to produce much fruit.  FOCUS runs a pretty tight ship, and I’ve found they keep a tight grip on their programming and who interacts with their students.  I think the key is to work through their leadership to identify and make connections with their student leaders.  Only by getting their leadership to understand will we be able to have a productive relationship with FOCUS.

     

     

    On the other hand, I’m really questioning whether my contributions are meaningless.  I’m wondering if I’m so immersed by this experience, and have been harmed so much by this whole situation – that I’m to bitter to stay partial about this.  I don’t trust this organization (which I feel is for good reason), but should that really allow other people to look at those in the same way?  We should go into this situation with an open mind, and are my prejudices preventing this group from doing this?

     

    This adds a level of complexity in my discernment for NCSC Leadership and this next year…  I’m seriously wonder if I’m one of those people that should be carted off to one of those islands that bitter and old people go and "retire". I wonder if my feelings about this situation will never change, and thus I cannot make any meaningful contribution regarding this subject.  More so, I wonder if my presence in the discussion would actually hinder a meaningful dialog between the two groups.  I always thought that I had an insight that I could offer from my experience, but now I’m wondering if I was wrong…

  • 16 Nov

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    Team West Retreat Successful!

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    Last weekend was a very exhausting and jam-packed, but also was one of the most amazing weekends I’ve had.  Last weekend we had our fall NCSC Team West retreat, bringing our regional team over to Fort Collins for the weekend.  Unfortunately our California members weren’t able to come out due to the distance, so our team was a big smaller this time, but we made up for our numbers through our accomplishments! 

    With all of the chaos leading up to the retreat, I was getting nervous about what to expect.  In all of the difficulty of locking in a place, I wasn’t able to do all of the busy-work until Thursday night.  But through the grace of God I managed to get everything done, with time to spare.  I took Friday afternoon off from work to grocery shop and to get everything gathered.  Leanne came up early and was a big help as well.  We actually got done early enough to watch Batman Begins while we were waiting for everyone to drive in – not bad!

    Everyone from New Mexico arrived about 7:30, and we got everyone settled and took them down to everyone’s favorite Fort Collins watering hold – Old Chicago’s!  It’s kinda funny because Old C’s was the first place the National Team went when everyone was in town.  We had a good team dinner and then we went to Walrus for ice cream.  We tried to keep Friday low-key considering we had to be up early the next day for the retreat.

    Saturday we got up early (7:30ish) to eat breakfast and head over to the Scotch Pines Clubhouse for our retreat.  The clubhouse turned out to be pretty decent.  In some ways it was nicer than the space we would of had at Heatheridge – the view was a bit nicer and the rooms were broken out giving people more privacy if they wanted it.  They had this ugly red and green carpet, which basically looked like someone laid wrapping paper all over the floor. 

    There was also this weird sculpture that was hung above the fireplace:

    But during one of our breaks team members decided to decorate it (they called it "decorating the Christmas tree") with all of the random stuff that we brought for the retreat – mainly snack food.  Here is their work of art:

    Ummmm Yeah….

    The retreat was fantastic.  We ended up covering everything that we had in the schedule (wow!), and our discussions were engaging and thought-provoking.  I am really excited about our plans for our Regional Time at Conference.  I think we’ve put together the magic formula to keep students interested, to make them stakeholders in our regional success, and also to make discernment a worthwhile and life-giving process for everyone.

    We also got our shirt design and banner figured out, began planning for LA Congress, and actually did our own leadership discernment process.  One of my favorite parts was at the end of the day, when one of the members of the Spirit Fire student leadership team at John XXIII joined us.  First he asked us some questions about our Conference experiences, and it was really neat to hear the diversity and wealth of experiences that everyone on the regional team has experienced.  Afterwards we had a good conversation about Evangelization, FOCUS and what are some things we can recommend to the future National & Regional leadership teams.  By the end we were all really tired, but we accomplished so much.  I am really happy about this weekend.

    That night we went out on the town to celebrate our accomplishments, eating dinner at Hu-Hot Mongolian Grill, then went over to the Drunken Monkey, the new bar down the street.  They opened up a few weeks back, and they’ve really cleaned the place up.  The bar stools are actually swings hanging from the ceiling, and there’s actually a cage by the door, that I guess you need to dance in order to get out.  We had a lot of fun, as you can see below:

    Again, we tried not to stay out too late, because we had an even earlier morning on Sunday.  We woke up at 6am (ugh) and drove down to Lafayette to go to Mass with Fr. Bob.  It was such a nice experience and a very enjoyable Mass, we then went out for our team breakfast (where I had to break out of early) and the team went home.  The rest of my Sunday was awesome as well.  I planned on going to to Sophia’s (my Goddaughter’s) dedication, which also happened to be in Lafayette.  But because of my inability to follow directions (arggh), I ended up being a 1/2 hour late and missing her dedication.  I was so bummed out and frustrated with myself.  I got to hang out with Sam and Sophie for the rest of the service, and we went back to their house afterwards for a nice lunch and some good times with their family – an awesome Sunday morning!

    Needless to say I was tired when I got home, and ended up dosing off watching the Broncos game later on…  I was so blessed to have this weekend go so well.  In the last few days I got some really nice emails from my regional team members, which really affirmed me in my decision to stay back from DC and do the meeting.  I’m thankful that everyone was able to be there, and we had such a productive and fun time.

    However I’m still recuperating from this weekend, and I feel sickness knocking on my door.  I need a little more rest to fully recuperate, but so far so good

    See all of my Team West Retreat Pictures

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