College Union

Many of you know about the Chinese character that stands for both crisis and opportunity.  Such fork-in-the-road moments reveal God’s providence to teach and guide.  They’re also darn difficult.

We have been going through such a “moment” the past few months at Southwestern College.  It started last Spring semester and carries into the present.  We have two same-sex couples (one out, one still [mostly] in the closet) who are struggling to be faithful Christians and who are highly active in campus ministry.  They would be known as among our Christian leaders on a very small, closely-knit campus.  This situation has posed a number of crises/opportunities.

Let’s take the legal one first.  Our school–a United Methodist-affiliated college–has an office policy of non-discrimination in order to comply with federal law.  This policy covers hiring and other such practices, but it also extends to campus organizations and it is precisely at this point that we meet our dilemma.  Do we go with the law or with the United Methodist disciplinary stance?  In order to be recognized as an official student activity, does our campus ministry organization have to defy the church’s standard?  I don’t have a good answer but I can tell you, we’re walking a very thin line.

Then there’s the pastoral crisis/opportunity.  Fortunately, our campus ministry staff all have very good relationships with these couples.  If we did not know them so well, it would be easy to let the same-sex attraction hide all the other developmental issues characteristic of college students.  These students are more than their sexual attractions, their thoughts of love for another person.  How do we help them sort out all their churned-up feelings?  I’ve talked at length with one student about putting the feelings (for a wide variety of concerns, from “the relationship” to anger to depression) into their proper place, sort of like sorting items and putting them in boxes.  My goal has been to lower the anxiety just a bit.  When we’re anxious, everything is magnified.  The truth is, college students, gay or straight, have a number of growing-up challenges in common.

One of the most interesting aspects of these conversations is that the couples know that none of the (campus ministry) staff approve of these relationships.  I do not believe that God created same-sex attraction, yet we know these students well and we love them and want them to grow and prosper.  So, we keep talking…and listening.  For now, we have stressed with the couples that they must abide by the same moral standards we expect of our opposite-sex couples.  We have also tried to help them understand the conflicted feelings of their friends who do not know how to respond to this moral/ecclesial dilemma.

This last point leads to the final crisis/opportunity–the communal one.  How does the Body of Christ live and act like the Body of Christ?  Most of the students in our campus ministry and Discipleship groups (at least the ones talking about it) do not approve of same-sex activity.  When the couples’ friends began to hear of “the realationship” (one couple came out to their respective covenant groups), some thought we should kick them out.  Others wanted to leave themselves, putting distance between them and the “sin in the camp.”  But how do you leave friends?

Yep, it’s darn difficult handling this crisis/opportunity.  Every organization needs policy to govern its behaviors, but the church is more than an organization.  It’s organic.  We are connected one to the other by our faith in CHrist and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  We are bound together by love’s strong cords.  We want neither to be morally lax or precipitous in policy.  This seems especially important in light of the young people with whom we work–whose adult identities are forming and who sometimes seem so fragile.  God give us the grace to reflect his holy love.

Categories: Nurturing the Soul of the Campus Minister
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