Episcopal Press and News
Costa Ricans Study U.S. Campus Ministries
Episcopal News Service. February 16, 1989 [89028]
Ruth Nicastro, Editor, The Episcopalian News, Diocese of Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (DPS, Feb. 16) -- Ronny Morris is an architecture student at the University of Costa Rica in San Jose. Verny Wilson is a psychology student at the Autonomous University of Central America, located on the University of Costa Rica campus. Rosa Brown is a theology student and executive assistant to Costa Rica's Episcopal Bishop Cornelius Wilson. All of these students are deeply involved in the Episcopal campus ministry program at their university.
Through a partnership arrangement between the Diocese of Costa Rica and the Episcopal Society for Ministry in Higher Education (ESMHE), the three recently spent a month in the United States visiting campus ministries in Southern California, Texas, Minnesota, and Colorado. They also attended the ESMHE-sponsored national Gathering of Students at Estes Park, Colorado, during the Christmas/New Year holidays.
According to the Rev. John Worrell, Episcopal chaplain at Rice University in Houston and president of ESMHE, the partnership between his organization and the Diocese of Costa Rica began at the 1985 General Convention in Anaheim.
"Bishop Wilson came to our meeting during convention to invite us to collaborate on a project to encourage the beginning of campus ministry in his diocese," Worrell recalled.
The bishop had a grave concern for Episcopal students at the university, the majority of whom represented a minority in Costa Rica -- blacks of Jamaican background, whose traditions dated back to the days of British colonialism. Many of them were culturally and educationally disadvantaged, and he worried that they would be "lost" on the growing University of Costa Rica campus (which now serves some 30,000 students). He wanted to help in setting up a "home away from home" for these students.
"We began with a prayer partnership," Worrell said. "Then each of the Ministry in Higher Education centers in the United States pledged $5,000 to enable the launching of a five-year program."
With that money and a United Thank Offering grant, the bishop bought a building to house the chaplaincy center near the university campus in San Jose. A nucleus of students who were already active in the Church became a core group to plan the initial program for the center.
The Capillania Universidad Episcopal, or Episcopal University Chaplaincy -- CUNEP -- at the University of Costa Rica is a cultural center where minority students can feel comfortable about their own cultural backgrounds and traditions, and students from many ethnic groups can learn about each other.
CUNEP is totally run by students. The center is a friendly meeting place where a helping hand is always outstretched in Christian welcome to any and all students. Recreational opportunities are provided. There are also enrichment and remedial classes as well as special tutorial help for those who need it. Volunteer teachers come from the university faculty, which is very supportive of the program, and diocesan clergy celebrate the Eucharist at the center as often as can be arranged.
However, it is the Episcopal students who do all of the scheduling, planning, maintenance, and running of the center. The students are enthusiastic about the center and about their Church.
"You can't live without the Church," Wilson explained. "The Church needs you, and you need the Church."
The Rev. Giles Asbury, Episcopal chaplain at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), said this deep feeling of commitment to the Church comes from the high value placed on campus ministry by Bishop Wilson (Verny Wilson's father) and the Diocese of Costa Rica. "This program," Asbury declared, "is the only systematic effort at campus ministry by an Episcopal diocese."
The reason the campus ministry program is so successful, Asbury said, is because the bishop has declared that it is one of the highest priorities for evangelism and mission in his diocese. He added, wryly, that he wished the Episcopal Church in the United States would take note of what the program is accomplishing.
Exchange visits began with a group of ESMHE chaplains who went to Costa Rica to assess needs for the new center and plan for further visits. The projected five-year partnership is now in its third year. Several groups of students from the United States have gone to Costa Rica. The present delegation is the third Costa Rican group to visit campuses in the United States.
"We each have something to learn from the other," Worrell emphasized.
Certainly the students and chaplains from the United States have been impressed by the commitment of the Costa Rican students and by the fact that they run virtually their entire program by themselves. The first Costa Rican visitors to the United States were amazed at the degree to which many campus ministries in the United States depended upon full-time or part-time ordained chaplains in residence. "This was a new idea for them," Worrell said. "They were also surprised to find that most of our chaplaincy programs involve the whole university community."
From exposure to these aspects of campus ministry, the Costa Rican program is increasingly addressed to faculty and staff as well as students; and celebration of the Eucharist in the CUNEP center is more frequent.
Asbury and Worrell both expressed hope that the exchanges will help students in the United States deepen their own appreciation of Christian values in their almost wholly secular world. "The Costa Rican program is teaching these young people to use their education for the good of society instead of their own enrichment," Asbury said.
Of course the young visitors from Costa Rica learned a lot of other things on their recent trip, too. They were amazed at their first experience with ice and snow, spellbound by the Los Angeles freeways, impressed by the distances between campuses in Southern California and by the vast distances they traveled to other campuses in the United States. "It's a long way from Houston to Colorado in a car!" remarked Morris.
The visitors were duly excited by the campuses they visited, by dining hall food, and by UCLA's sports centers. They especially enjoyed their time at the Gathering of Students with its theme of "Provocation." The intended double meaning points to the importance of vocation, and at the same time the content of the workshops aimed at provoking discussion.
Morris said he found the gathering very challenging. "For every situation you must find a vocation," he said. "The workshops gave a lot of opportunity for that."
The gathering also gave the Costa Rican students their first experience with women priests. "We don't have any in Costa Rica," Verny Wilson explained, "although we are not opposed to them. It was very interesting to experience women participating in the liturgies. The Church is changing, and we must accept these changes."
The three visitors made their own contribution to the gathering when they were asked to put on a workshop on news from their country.