Mission territory: Renewed Catholic campus ministry begins at IUPUI

Alexandra Kale, right, hands a survey to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) student Ryan Burke of Elwood, Ind., during an activities fair on the university campus on Sept. 1 while Father Rick Nagel, IUPUI chaplain, looks on. Kale and three other recent college graduates are missionaries to IUPUI from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). They are joining Father Nagel, Echo apprentice Joe Pedersen and a handful of Catholic IUPUI students in renewing Catholic campus ministry for the 30,000 IUPUI students. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is a bustling campus with 30,000 students on which the Catholic Church has had no formal presence for several years.

It is mission territory.

But one priest, five young adults dedicated to ministering on the campus and a handful of Catholic IUPUI students are heading into that mission field determined to proclaim the Gospel and bring students to Christ.

In July, Father Rick Nagel began his ministry as chaplain of IUPUI, along with his other assignment as archdiocesan director of young adult and college campus ministry.

Working alongside him is Joe Pedersen, a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame in northern Indiana and an Echo apprentice, the school’s program that trains future catechetical leaders.

Also ministering on IUPUI’s campus are four recent college graduates who are missionaries from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), an organization that seeks to help college students come to know Christ and the Catholic Church. (Related story: FOCUS missionaries to proclaim the Gospel at IUPUI)

‘Total mission territory’

Father Nagel is excited about the prospect of ministering to Catholic students with such dedicated young adults.

“To see the students early on and our new missionaries with their zeal and the fire to establish a [Catholic] student organization has brought me great joy,” he said. “What more could we ask for than peer-to-peer relationships that bring people to faith? All of that is just a bundle of excitement.”

At the same time, Father Nagel knows that great challenges await him.

“It’s brand new,” he said. “So it’s mission territory, total mission territory. There’s nothing established. There’s not a physical home—a Newman center, a Catholic center—in which to gather.”

Because of that, nearby St. John the Evangelist Parish in downtown Indianapolis will serve as the hub for campus ministry at IUPUI. It will host a weekly young adult Mass at 7 p.m. on Sundays for IUPUI students and young adults who have moved downtown in recent years.

Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein is pleased with the interest in the renewed IUPUI campus ministry, and he has taken a particular interest in reaching out to Catholic young adults and college students.

“The early response to our initiative [at IUPUI] is very encouraging,” Archbishop Buechlein said. “Interest in the introduction of a 7 p.m. Sunday Eucharist for young adults at St. John’s downtown is positive and indicative of the desire of young adults for support in their faith.”

Father Stephen Giannini, pastor of the parish, said that the parish’s established outreach to visitors to Indianapolis—it is across the street from the Indiana Convention Center—and to those who work downtown make it a perfect fit for being a center for campus ministry.

“Many of the students of IUPUI are going to be there for their four years, and then they’ll graduate and off they’ll go,” he said. “It kind of fits into St. John’s current approach to welcoming [visitors].”

Kelly Summers, a graduate student in pharmacology at IUPUI, is helping to form the new IUPUI Catholic Student Organization, which will sponsor some events at St. John.

She did her undergraduate studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., where there is a vibrant Catholic campus ministry centered on campus at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center.

She hopes to see similar vitality in the new campus ministry at IUPUI in the years to come.

“I would hope that it would be extremely welcoming and available because, right now, there’s just nothing,” Summers said. “It’s kind of sad because there have been those days where I would love to just walk into a church and go to Mass or go and have some place to pray or just go and talk to a priest and ask questions.”

Bridge builders

Creating a welcoming presence from the Church at IUPUI for its Catholic students is a major part of what Pedersen described as building bridges.

Pedersen said that campus ministry can be a bridge between the faith formation that college students receive up through high school and their entering into parish life when they start their own families after finishing their studies and starting a career.

“There’s no bridge right now,” Pedersen said. “Who knows where people are at, what they’re doing, and who’s befriending them, and where those people are leading them?”

According to Father Nagel, studies show that only about 40 percent of Catholic college students on campuses where there is little or no campus ministry remain active in their faith after their college years.

On the other hand, he said that where a strong campus ministry is present, those numbers double: 80 percent of Catholic students will stay active in the Church after graduation.

“That’s not to say that this 80 percent doesn’t search or doesn’t look at other faith traditions or doesn’t question their faith in God,” Father Nagel said. “But it is to say that they’re still connected to the Church that they grew up in and, because of that, there’s a link that allows them to come back home, even if they’re searching.

“That’s our goal, to help them continue to grow in their faith, but also to be sure that they know that we’re there for them and that we believe in their faith journey.”

Forming future leaders

Father Nagel said the renewal in campus ministry at IUPUI is happening now in part because, over the past year or so, he has been approached by graduate students like Summers and medical students with ethical questions related to their fields of study.

They want help on their faith journey.

Establishing an active Catholic campus ministry at IUPUI, Father Nagel said, would help to ground firmly in the Catholic faith many prospective health care professionals, lawyers, businessmen and women—all future leaders of society.

“You have the opportunity to make a really ethical impact on the professionals of the greater Indianapolis area,” Father Nagel said. “The ethics would flow out of their Catholic faith.”

Along with Summers, David Isaacs is helping form the IUPUI Catholic student organization.

He is a third-year medical student at IUPUI who is expecting to become a neurologist, a specialty fraught with ethical pitfalls, but also filled with opportunities to do great good in people’s lives.

Isaacs thinks the renewal of campus ministry at IUPUI will help him and others navigate through the ethical challenges and blessings of his field.

“It’s just so great to have that network of people who are looking for the same things that I am looking for,” Isaacs said. “I can talk to them about it. That community and that network are a big part for me.”

Isaacs expects that the new Catholic student group will organize social events, but also presentations by experts on various fields of study from a Catholic perspective—something he thinks will draw people to the new campus ministry.

“Having more talks on topics in a … student’s area would also attract people,” he said. “Things that spark debate also seem to attract attention.

“In the end, though, witnesses are the biggest draw.”

Witness protection program

Helping IUPUI students become witnesses for Christ and, in a sense, protecting them from a campus culture that can often be opposed to the Gospel is at the heart of the renewed campus ministry there.

Father Nagel, Pedersen and the FOCUS missionaries will work hard at this, but they can only do so much.

“There are 30,000 people on this campus,” Pedersen said. “We don’t have the ability to reach all of those people. But we have the ability to reach the people who can reach those people.

“If we can ask some of those people to really be committed to their faith and to being a witness, then those people can really evangelize the people that are around them, just by the very fact that they’re living out a Christian lifestyle that’s very different from the lifestyle that a lot of their peers are living.”

Father Nagel realizes that if he really wants to form strong Catholic leaders for society at IUPUI, the best way to do it is through the students themselves.

“If a young person really joyfully lives out the call that God has given him in life, it makes someone take pause,” Father Nagel said. “[They’ll ask], ‘What’s up with that person? What’s that joy? What’s that peace that they have about them?’ They’ll want to know more.

“That’s the greatest evangelization that any of us can do.”

(For more information about the renewed campus ministry at IUPUI, log on to www.archindy.org/youngadult or send an e-mail to archindycatholic@gmail.com. Their Facebook group name is “indycatholic.”) †