Campus ministry has been part of Eric VanMeter's life since he first set foot on the Arkansas Tech campus as a freshman. The pursuit has taken him to seminary in Wilmore, Ky., to School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, to Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Ark., and finally now to Dakota Wesleyan University, where he began as campus pastor in 2014. After so many years of campus ministry, Eric still thrives on the fearless energy of college students and believes in their ability to change the world through faithful Christian action. Eric shares some insights and reflections to this past year of campus ministry at DWU.

Dakota Wesleyan University is affiliated with the Dakotas Conference of The United Methodist Church. There are 119 schools, colleges and universities in the United States recognized by the University Senate of The United Methodist Church.

DWU campus ministry is a 2015-16 grant recipient of a Young Adult Ministry Grant awarded by the Missional Leaders Link of the Dakotas Conference.

Photos are courtesy of the DWU Campus Ministry Facebook page.

“No way that just happened,” Ashton said.

She was standing in my kitchen waiting for a cloud of cinnamon to settle around her suitemate Rachelle, who stood holding the now empty container and staring at the bowl in front of her. Without a single word, Rachelle dumped more sugar on top of the cinnamon mountain and began to stir.

 “What are you doing?” Ashton asked.

“Balancing it out,” Rachelle said, as though she’d meant to mix two gallons of cinnamon-sugar topping to use on the dessert for our student ministry leadership meeting later that night. “Think it will be enough?”

“Unreal,” Ashton said.

On that September afternoon, none of us at Dakota Wesleyan student ministries knew how often we would echo Ashton’s words—not me, not our student leadership, not our staff or student body. “No way that just happened” would become for us a statement of sorrow and wonder and everything in between. We just didn’t know it when we started.

That lack of foreknowledge is part of life everywhere, of course. But it seems particularly acute D-Dub (aka Dakota Wesleyan University-DWU), a place small enough to feel like family but large enough to bring together all kinds of different people. The school year gets going and appears normal enough—classes and sports and outings with friends.

Then, all at once life dumps itself out all at once, surrounding you with a hazy cloud. We had to face the deaths of Beau, a freshmen member of our Student Ministry Council (SMC) team, and Pam, a beloved human services professor—and these not ten months after our friend Hali had also died unexpectedly. Residents in the dorms dealt with a lice outbreak worthy of an Egyptian plague. And all of this on top of the normal stresses of learning and teaching and interning and figuring out life.

These are the stories people reference when they ask me about our year at DWU—the tragic or sensational ones. I can’t entirely blame them. If what you know is limited to what the papers cover, you view of this year’s student ministry is bound to be skewed.

But media outlets didn’t see the most important things that went on. The RA who stayed up half the night with her residents, many of whom were going through a deeper grief than they’d ever experienced. The sixty students who gathered to pray and sing in Farwell Chapel, filling the old church with sounds of praise it had not witnessed in perhaps two generations. The strangers who became friends, whose friendships transformed their understanding of Christian community.

The story of DWU’s student ministry is far more than the crises we endured, more even than the nearly 200 individuals who participated in campus ministry during the 2016-17 year. Rather, ours is a story of God’s grace made real in our midst. Whatever clouds may sting our eyes are mixed with the sweetness of sharing our journey with people who love each other.

Just after spring break, I came down with a mysterious illness that knocked me off my feet for almost two months. I ended up in the hospital for the first time in my adult life, as weak and discouraged as I’d ever been.

But the show had to go on, of course. My wife picked up my class sessions. Two students took over preaching duties, and two more organized worship. Some stepped in to lead service projects. Others put together small groups and freshmen ministries. The SMC leaders never cancelled a single event, never left a single person to struggle alone.

When I finally came back to work before finals, I learned that the SMC leaders had finally gone through the vat of cinnamon and sugar Rachelle had made. It turned out to be one more in a list of resources we thought we could never use, but that we needed every ounce of.

During my first couple of days back, more than one student stopped by my office to report on what I’d missed. And almost all of those asked the same teasing question. “What do you really do around here, anyway?”

It stung a little to think I was not so indispensible, but overall it was a good thing to hear. The student ministry at DWU is not centered on a single individual or a program, much less the campus pastor. Rather, it is held together by people dedicated to living as Jesus did, the best we can discern what that means in our context.

Can a bunch of 18-to-22 year-olds really live together in Christian fellowship? Can they really model for the church what it looks like to be a redemptive community, to love God and neighbor in a truly authentic way?

I can understand those who think that’s far fetched, who say, “No way that could happen.”

But I assure you it did, just as it does every year among the students at DWU.