From Served to Servants: Developing Leadership with College Students

Team Members/Contributors

Stacy Alan Brent House - The Episcopal Center at the University of Chicago Contact Me

About this pastoral study project

I will explore ways to encourage students who are fed and nurtured by an open and welcoming campus ministry (the served) to engage in a robust and rich program of discipleship and leadership with an eye to developing leadership for the campus ministry and for the Church at large (the servants). This will be done by looking at a leadership degree program at a Jesuit university (Matteo Ricci College at Seattle University), focusing particularly on the relationship between the intellectual and spiritual components of such formation. In addition, I will explore other programs in the Seattle area that develop shared lay and clergy leadership in congregations (The Diocese of Olympia’s College for Congregational Development, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and Church of the Apostles) and the adaptive leadership model (Whidbey Institute’s Powers of Leadership program) as resources for both structuring the campus ministry itself and its leadership formation programs. How can a richer, more integrated faith and leadership development program provide better leaders for the campus ministry (both present and future)? How can we develop those skills and habits in such a way as to encourage our students to offer them back to the service of the wider Church? This project will give us ways to strengthen and integrate the leadership development programs for our students into other, more concrete kinds of leadership, in the academy, the Church, and the world.