“Canterbury House attracts people who are looking for spirituality, looking to re-find their Christian heritage, or for something spiritual but they don’t want to be tied down by the conservative dogma,” Lee said. “They don’t want the church experience that you read about and cringe, but they still want to be part of something.”

Young people at college are thinking about their past, present and future, so the chaplaincy is an opportunity for evangelism, not only to Episcopal students but to all students on the campus, said Reid Hamilton, Episcopal priest and chaplain who began his fifth academic year at Canterbury House this fall.

“It’s a place where we are very intentional about being the body of Christ to a world that is suffering and in need of God’s mercy and God’s justice,” said Hamilton. College students have a considerable amount of pressure in their lives, especially at a highly competitive school like U of M. In addition, they’ve grown up in a culture where every free minute is filled and they are exposed to huge amounts of information via television and the Internet.

“It’s important to provide a welcoming place where they have refuge, time and quiet, and are encouraged to think about who they are, where they have come from, and where they are going. A really important part of what we do is give them the support to do that, and encourage them to do it,” Hamilton said.

Canterbury at MSU has been a true grounding force in her life, said Christina Farnham, a senior studying philosophy and communication who has been involved with the campus ministry for four years.

“No matter what, there is a Sunday service and a home-cooked meal. As transitional as life in college is, going back and forth between home and school, classes changing every semester, having different classes each week, the drama of living in the dorms, it’s nice to know that Canterbury is always there. With people graduating and leaving, faces have changed, but at least the service is always the same.”

Being a college campus minister is “the best kept secret in the church, the best job,” said Chaplain Sarah Midzalkowski, who is cele-brating her one-year anniversary at Canterbury at MSU. “I am working with people who are excited and happy to be Episcopalian and students who could be doing a million other things. They certainly have a huge choice of other campus activities, school, and working; but every Sunday night they choose to be together in this community and worshipping God as Episcopalians —and I think you can’t beat that.”

During the school year, students at Canterbury MSU worship together on Sunday nights in the chapel at All Saints, East Lansing, then have a home-cooked meal provided by volunteers from Lansing area churches. On Wednesday nights they meet at a local pub or restaurant for an informal discussion on faith, the Bible, or a topic of their own interest.

“We have beer and munchies, and spend a couple of hours talking about anything from Church history to theological issues to life in the world. A discussion of the Holy Trinity led to a discussion about the work of the Holy Spirit and how we understand it in our tradition. On Valentine’s Day we talked about love and sex and being a Christian,” said Midzalkowski. “Having something in a non-church venue encourages them to bring their friends who see us enjoy fellowship in casual settings. It brings those in who might be wary of campus ministry.”

“Everyone is very intelligent and ambitious, so it can be very enlivening. We can have conversations ranging from football on Saturday to what Canterbury can do for the [Millennium Development Goals],” said college senior Chris Kline, a lay leader at Canterbury at MSU who is majoring in international relations and Chinese. “One student is a political science doctoral student, and three or four are in international relations, so we have more of a global awareness of the issues, things like the MDGs and human rights. I think we go a little deeper than ‘happy, slappy’ [religious groups on campus]. We do more action-wise, carrying out the Gospel.”

Once a month on Saturday, students at Canterbury MSU participate in an outreach activity, such as working at a food pantry or soup kitchen, or on a local project. “We also have fun evenings—movies or putt-putt—to marry the needs of the individual students to relax with Christian education and outreach. There is a balance,” Midzalkowski said.

At U of M, students are always welcome to drop in for home-cooked leftovers and conversation. But Canterbury House is also a place of prayer and music.

“We have the formal worshipping structure of the Episcopal Church,” said Hamilton. The Sunday evening Jazz Mass incorporates the Book of Common Prayer, the New Zealand Prayer Book, and other resources. Other services include a Wednesday evening Solemn Evensong, Taizé services, and Daily Offices.

“I encourage students to come in and decide when they want to do morning, noon, and evening prayer, and I encourage them to lead those at specific times during the week so Canterbury House has a deep and intentional prayer life as a community,” Hamilton said.

Allie Wills, a U of M sophomore majoring in psychology, grew up Presbyterian but was confirmed in the Episcopal Church as a teen. When she began looking at colleges, she checked out which ones had Episcopal churches nearby.

“I never felt so at home as at [my home] church, and I wasn’t going to let that go,” said Wills. “I started looking for a church the moment I got into Ann Arbor [as a freshman].

“I was anti- the idea of Jazz Mass because it’s associated with pop culture and the whole ‘church-lite’ that is big lately. I’m very high church and didn’t think it would be a proper mass,” Wills said. “I tried Canterbury House and fell in love immediately. It was wildly different on some levels from services I’m used to—it’s jazz—but not in theology. It is a serious church. Reid is strict on liturgy even if the music is wild and crazy.”

Canterbury House Music Director Stephen Rush has developed a powerful ministry around its music. A U of M faculty member with a deep familiarity with students and their academic issues, he is also a gifted musician. In addition to music that is part of worship, a concert series draws not only students but the entire Ann Arbor community.

“We have a ministry that uses creative liturgy and good music, thanks to Stephen Rush, that really is a model for the kinds of things that campus ministry can do both in worship and service to the world,” said Hamilton.

In September, the book Better Get It In Your Soul: What Liturgists Can Learn from Jazz, written by Rush and Hamilton, was published by Church Publishing. “Steve and [former Canterbury House chaplain] Matt Lawrence had had it in mind for quite some time. They felt that the Jazz Mass, as a principle of creativity and improvisation in worship, rather than a style of music, should be shared as a model of creative, contextual liturgy,” Hamilton explained.

With a background in theater, Hamilton was interested in discussing liturgy in terms of light, space, sound and “mood,” he explained. “I felt I had some things to say about preaching extemporaneously ­—something that requires lots of experience, lots of thought, and lots of preparation. Steve and I felt that all of these ideas, together with our principles of collaboration and demanding performance values, could be brought together in a book that would be of general interest to church liturgists. God and God’s worshippers deserve high quality liturgy.”

Wills recalls singing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” at the last Easter Vigil. “It was probably one of the few Episcopal churches where you’d see that many people dancing,” she said. “You have really strict high-church, old-school Episcopalians but also people who never thought they’d be interested in religion again. And people who probably show up for the food and stay for the community and religion.

And people who come for the music and stay for everything else. You end up with a lot of different people.”

As a freshman at Wheaton College, Lee said, she was more conservative and less experienced in matters of faith. “I was really looking for a concrete answer to what does it mean to be a Christian; God, Jesus—what does that mean to me? Trying hard to nail it down almost killed it. I’ve come to the conclusion you don’t need to nail it down. Reid doesn’t do that at Canterbury House. A lot of people appreciate that.”

“You can have your doubt and opinions and your ideas and no one will chastise you for them. ... In our church you can think for yourself. You don’t have to take the minister’s word as gospel or truth,” said Kline. “In today’s world, where religiously speaking people try to set things in stone and try to make you think you can’t budge from certain ideas and ideals, you don’t have to feel like you’re wrong. You don’t feel that pressure.”

“Students are hugely skeptical and you have to be aware when you are working with them that they’re going to insist that you tell them the absolute truth as best you see it,” Hamilton said. “Their irony detectors are very sensitive. So if you aren’t completely honest in your own part about what you believe and what you are saying, they’re going to know it and they simply won’t put up with that. I view that a positive challenge because it keeps me very honest in my own faith and beliefs.”

At least once a semester, Hamilton is visited by a student who tells him he or she no longer believes in God. Most often it’s the case that what they’re saying is they are no longer able to believe in the image of God provided by their parents or previous church culture or that contemporary culture expects them to maintain, he said. “What brings on the crisis for them is the encounter of other images or expectation of God they see in this hugely diverse community, or have seen and studied in class. It shifts the ground out from under their assumptions. It’s an opportunity to grow in their faith and take on a larger understanding of God than they’ve previously had.”

Half the students at Canterbury House are Episcopalians. About a quarter come from other denominations, particularly Roman Catholic. The rest are from an Orthodox tradition, from a fundamentalist practice, or have “never darkened the door of a church before they came to Canterbury House,” Hamilton explained.

“It’s really important for us in the way we think of ourselves as a community that we are not exclusive Episcopalian,” he said. “We are clearly and strongly grounded in the Episcopal Church, and it is the Episcopal Church that forms our identity and provides the structure that makes our ministry possible. But we are bringing people to Jesus any way we can.”

Students at both Canterbury House and Canterbury MSU value opportunities for hands-on social justice work. “There is sort of a balance between being social justice-minded and being condescending, as in ‘I know what you need and I’ll give it to you.’ Everyone is working on that balance, but we are aware particularly of that at Canterbury House,” said Lee. “It’s a place where everyone can feel safe and defended, [despite] race and sexual orientation and even creed, and different shades of belief.”

“One of the things Canterbury House does is support students strongly in their own passions, whatever that may be,” Hamilton said. “A student comes and says ‘I am interested in justice for gay and lesbian people,’ and I immediately help them find other people who are interested, connect them with resources on campus and off, to develop whatever they want to do.”

One student just spent her third summer on the U.S.-Mexican border rescuing people who are risking their lives trying to cross the desert into the United States. Canterbury House students raise scholarship funds for a family with children in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, for tuition, books and school supplies. “And we’re all about fair-trade coffee,” Hamilton added.

On the MSU campus there is a natural sense of wanting to learn about other cultures and people and wanting to be involved, said Midzalkowski. “This generation in college right now are some of the most politically astute and motivated you’ll find. They come in asking what kind of outreach are we going to do, what is the trip planned for alternative spring break [where students do a mission trip rather than the typical partying spring break]. They judge campus ministry on what they do and what they can be part of. As a campus minister, I have to be prepared to harness and direct the passion they have.”

This past Lent, Canterbury at MSU students went to Bay St. Louis, Miss., where they worked at Mission on the Bay doing Hurricane Katrina relief. “They came back able to speak about the presence of God, how they saw God working on the mission trip—that is just gold. It just changes their lives profoundly,” Midzalkowski said.

She recalled one student who had never been on a mission trip came saying she didn’t know what help she’d be. “When she got down there, she realized her presence—just who she was, just to take the time to go down there—was very important,” said Midzalkowski. “She said she had been praying that God would reveal himself to her in a new way. On the trip she realized every time she was at Canterbury, every time she was with friends in the community, God was revealed in a new way. Clergy live for that. To see a 19 or 20 year old put that together, that’s just golden.”

“It sounds like a cliché, but it really was life-changing to see three years after Katrina how hard Mississippi had been hit. Some places were like the hurricane went through a week ago except the water was dried up,” said Farnham. The students helped a man clear his lot so he could rebuild. He had been the caregiver for his mother, who is mentally and physically handicapped, and he had to put her in a facility where she could be cared for. “He is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and has no prospects for a job, but he was still hopeful. Lots of people would give up. He was looking for jobs two hours away so he could pay off bills to rebuild the house and bring his mother home. When we finished he wanted to make us dinner. The hospitality was amazing. If they had nothing they’d give you half. It makes you grateful for what you have.”

“The initial shock had worn off. You could see the psychological trauma, the grief coming through,” said Kline, who joined Farnham at Mission on the Bay this year. He also went to New Orleans the two years prior. “On our missions to New Orleans we saw a lot of underlying social and political circumstances you don’t see when you watch mainline news programs or media. You see things like poverty in a completely different way. You could see the social stratification very specifically and right in front you. New Orleans provided greater learning experiences than a text book. It’s one thing to read and another to experience.”

Despite their value, funding is almost always a challenge for campus ministries, said Midzalkowski. “The number-one [concern] outside immediate planning and being with the students throughout the year is long range planning: how will we continue doing what we’re doing?”

While college chaplaincies in the Diocese of Michigan receive funding from the diocesan budget, churches, and individuals, whenever she has the chance Midzalkowski talks about Canterbury at MSU with new people throughout the diocese “so they are motivated to help us, feel connected and a part. We’ve had tremendous support from the bishop and staff, and we’re hoping to be ever-faithful, reach out and encourage other people’s support.”

Without Canterbury House at U of M, the Episcopal Church “would have lost me. There is a market for people my age who want religion,” said Wills. “There’s so much vitality in people my age, new ideas, a totally different enthusiasm. Students are trying to get aware of the world and the community. We get involved and we pay attention and that hugely benefits the church and the community.”

What Farnham will miss most when she graduates from MSU is the very close-knit group that is Canterbury. “It’s hard to think about leaving and finding another congregation. It will be a hard transition to leave people behind and enter ‘the real church,’ as we call it,” said Farnham, who entered college as a pre-med student and is now looking at seminaries.

“Canterbury has really filled in a lot of questions I had. My faith has grown exponentially.”

“I think campus ministry is so essential to the life of the church that if we’re going to try to decide where to put our energy and our resources, it should be there,” said Hamilton. “It’s campus ministry where we are forming the people who are going to be the next leaders in the church. They’re passionate, they have a lot of energy, they’re very bright, and they have a lot of desire.

“If we can be working with them while they’re in college, we can cement a relationship with the church that is going to last a lifetime.”