By J.A. Dunn

LAKELAND — Cindy Guiles has a little bit of advice she wants to pass on to high school students—it’s cool to be a Christian.

“We want them to know we are here when they get to college,” Guiles said. “We want them to seek us out.”

Guiles is director of Stetson University’s Wesley Foundation.

In an effort to create a spiritual link between middle, high school and college students, Guiles and active students in the campus ministry hosted three United Methodist youth groups from the DeLand District in March.

The goal of the one-day event, themed “Extreme,” was to familiarize young people with campus ministries and have fun doing it. Guiles said about 50 youth attended.

Guiles said partnering with local churches is an excellent way to “pour back into the local church.” She said the Board of Higher Education and Campus Ministry (BHECM) is aware of the criticism that campus ministry is too disconnected from local churches.

That is the farthest thing from the truth, according to Guiles, because many of the students involved in campus ministries go into full-time ministry. She said this year alone six graduating seniors are going into the ministry, while others went into mission work.

“We are training leaders for the church,” Guiles said.

Jana Hart, executive director of the Florida’s Conference BHECM, said the ministry’s goal is reaching out to young adults, who many times are searching for their identity or becoming disconnected from their local church once they go away to school.

“These students are spiritually hungry,” Hart said. “We do all kinds of things to minister to them. There are weekly worship services, fellowship dinners, counseling in small groups and special events throughout the year to introduce college students to what we do.”

The ministry calls students into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, trains them to become servant leaders and sends them to serve God through the local church.

A new component of the BHECM is creating partnerships with local young adult ministries surrounding each campus site to assist the conference in developing young disciples as ministers/servants in the United Methodist Church. BHECM has also decreased its 2004 budget, encouraging campus ministries to raise more of their ministry funds, and continues to evaluate its structure of accountability for its board and local units.

Hart said the ministry voluntarily began restructuring in 1996, moving from the Conference Council on Ministries to a freestanding board relating directly to the conference.

One of the first goals was to completely revise how the local campus ministries are evaluated.†Board member teams do extensive on-site visits to each campus ministry every two years, according to Hart.† Both the program content and campus minister are also reviewed annually by the ministry’s local board of directors.

“We also made guidelines for the local boards of directors to help them in their day-to-day guardianship of the ministries and created local board training resources,” Hart said. “We now require local boards to be incorporated and provide yearly annual financial audits.”

Hart said for some reason there is always an issue with accountability when it comes to campus ministry and acknowledges the why is difficult to explain.

“When you are a major budgetary line-item, I think it's natural for people to look toward you for cuts when the economy is lean,” Hart said.†“Campus ministry is easy for some people to cut…it seems so distant, not related directly to the local church.†These are the attitudes we've been working so hard to overcome.”

Randy Casey-Rutland, treasurer and director of the conference’s administrative services, said all of the budgets were questioned and BHECM was never requested to reorganize. He said the ministry has been cut in the past because there’s more money in that budget to reduce.

“We wanted to know if this was the wisest and best use of our money,” he said. “We were questioning how much bang we’re getting for our buck.”

What the conference is getting is a faith-based approach to reach unchurched young adults, as well as maintaining contact with young adults who sometimes fall away from the church once they go away to college, Hart said.

The Rev. John Denmark, BHECM chairman, said many students involved in campus ministries have entered post-graduate ministry programs. He said college students in the future will work more closely with United Methodist churches near campuses to add fresh life to either their youth or young adult ministries.

“We want to bridge the gap that happens sometimes when kids go off to college; they fall away [from their faith],” Denmark said. “We have students who were unchurched come to know the Lord. We are preparing a new generation of Christian leaders. We’re excited about the future of campus ministries.”