Recent Reads

Working on a college campus, I see students struggling with life in various ways. I found this article to be eye-opening. Here is one quote:

"The 2009 National Survey of Counseling Directors, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, found that 94 percent of directors reported an increase in students with severe psychological conditions, including depression, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol addictions. In addition, 91 percent believe a greater number of students are arriving on campus already taking psychiatric medications."

Also, if you want a nice summary of the importance of campus ministry, I found this article to be helpful. Here's the fact that churches need to face today: "In the past, churches would expect that people who dropped out of church during their college-age days would come back once they were married with kids. The problem is they're not coming back."

Perhaps not as unrelated to campus ministry as we might think are articles on the greed of banks (and many college students are still pursuing the American dream of more, more, more) and an article on forced abortions in China (a rare issue that might bring pro-life and pro-choice Americans together as neither life nor choice is getting a hearing here).

If the Phillies win today...

If the Phillies win tonight, which is a big if, we will have a game seven tomorrow at 8 PM. This will leave me with a problem. CSF meets on Thursdays at 7:30. People were distracted last Thursday when it was only game 2, no one will be focused when there is a game 7! So should we just cut our losses, cancel CSF, and watch the game?

Some might consider this a sacrilege: canceling a Christian worship time because of a baseball game? Wouldn't have CSF be a test of the students' faith, do they care more for Jesus or the Phillies and Yannkees? That seems like holier-than-thou pontificating to me. The whole point of CSF is to build a community of Christians on campus who can effectively reach out to their peers. Will this community be damaged that much if we set aside our normal routine to join those peers in a rare cultural experience (after all, game sevens are rare)? The right thing to do is probably to cancel CSF and encourage the students to watch the game with their friends. Those who do not like baseball can still get together for fun times.

Of course, if the Yankees end it tonight this whole thing is a moot point. We'll see.