Connections

Serra’s College Connection Program Links Catholic Youth with Church on Campus

Parents are often dismayed when their kids go off to college and wander away from the Catholic faith. The USA Council of Serra International saw the need to connect young people with the church on campus and developed the College Connection program to forge that bridge.

Catholic and Collegiate

The College Connection program was initiated seven years ago by Dick Stolly of SerraUSA and the Lima, Ohio, Serra Club. The program works through local Serra Clubs around the country that coordinate with their Catholic high school principles, youth ministers, and parish priests to obtain the names of graduating seniors and provide them with information about the Catholic presence at their college of choice. The clubs in turn give those students’ names to the Catholic campus ministries so they can invite their participation at Catholic events and liturgies. The program will reach approximately fifteen thousand students this year through sixty participating Serra Clubs, up from ten thousand students last year.

“Our hope is that these young people will meet other like-minded Catholics and grow in that faith community, and that the church will influence their lives during these very important formative years,” said Homer Radford, vice president of Vocations for USA Council of Serra. “When young adults have a strong prayer life, there is an increased potential that some will be open to hear God’s call to serve the church.”

NFCYM executive director, Robert McCarty, said the College Connection program responds to the United States bishops’ goals for Catholic youth ministry: “To call young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ,” and to “draw young people to responsible participation to the life, work and mission of the faith community.”

Continuum of Faith

As the director of youth and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Evansville, and a former youth minister, Steve Dabrowski said that after confirmation, young people typically “fall off the face of the earth” until they get married or want to baptize a baby. National statistics show that eighty-five percent of kids do not come back for additional formation after confirmation.

“They get to college, have some freedom and if they don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ, why would we expect them to go to Mass? Then when they start to question is God calling me to do something with my life, that’s when we see young adults get connected to the church again,” said Dabrowski. He also started a similar diocesan initiative to solicit the names of graduating seniors so that high school, college, and young adult ministry is a continuum.

“Programs such as College Connection are important because they offer a personal invitation and one of the key points in any relationship is knowing that someone is interested in you,” he said. “A lot of young people float away because there’s nothing there to keep them connected; others do because they’re ignorant and are easy targets for Campus Crusade. Having someone on the college campus that calls you up and says ‘I’m your Catholic minister and we’d love to have you join us for pizza at the Newman Center’ establishes a relationship so they can explore their faith. Getting them connected is crucial because it’s such a gaping hole in Catholic Church ministry.”

More than 1.2 million Catholic students graduate from high school each year, and ninety percent of those going on to higher education will attend a secular college or university. Catholic campus ministers are blocked by privacy laws from obtaining the religious preference of incoming students. The College Connection program would solve that issue for people like Lisa Campbell, director of Catholic campus ministry at the University of Texas, Arlington. “Other than bulletin inserts and orientations, we have no way of identifying these students,” she said. “If the Serrans are willing to do this in our diocese and have the resources to do the legwork in the parishes, it would be extremely beneficial. We all have a common mission here—raising the next generation of practicing Catholics.”

Radford said the important work of youth and young adult ministry is a continuous process of being community, serving one another and reaching out through our Baptismal call to help build up the kingdom of God. “We have to make sure these young adults continue to hear that message.”