Grace Chaves is a second-year multimedia journalism major. She’s a devout Christian and one of the co-leaders of Love Does in Action, a non-PLNU-affiliated club.
A quick search for “ministries” on the MyPLNU app will show that there aren’t any student-chartered ministries listed. For Point Loma Nazarene University being a Christian institution, there’s a major lack of ministries outside of those already sanctioned by the school.
The reason for this is complex and stems from a messy history PLNU has had with student-chartered ministries. According to Scott McGowan, director of community life, some issues made the school decide to limit student ministries.
“There were ministry commitments that students were making (when we did have student-run ministries) that were not being fulfilled,” McGowan said. “This [invoked] major concern around our students being able to, on their own, self-run, follow through and provide quality ministry without adequate supervision and support.”
McGowan said that it would be analogous to if a student chartered a ministry and said their group would provide sack lunches to the Salvation Army. He said that if the student were to show up empty-handed, this would be a poor representation of PLNU’s campus and community.
“[This analogy] is a great example of how helping can hurt,” McGowan said. “I don’t even know if those things specifically happened, but I do know that was part of the concern.”
It’s not completely impossible to start a student-chartered ministry. According to Elena Yoder, third-year theology, justice and peace major and ASB’s director of student relations, all student-chartered ministries have to get the stamp of approval from Mary Paul, vice president for spiritual development, and Esteban Trujillo, PLNU university chaplain. However, a ministry is more likely to get approved if it’s under the larger umbrella of one of the organizations PLNU has already sanctioned, such as Community Ministries or Discipleship Ministries.
According to Trujillo, this is what students Jazmyn Collins and Torianna Vatcher did in their first year to start Delight, a faith-based club that falls under Discipleship Ministries.
“This provided them with mentoring from Kirstyn Teegarden, who’s our director of discipleship, but also provides them with resourcing like curriculum and sponsorship,” Trujillo said.
Trujillo and McGowan have found that having these student-led ministries under the umbrella of already established organizations at PLNU has been beneficial.
“We hope that once you understand the ‘why’ behind it, you’re able to see the beauty and benefits when you can walk alongside [a team],” Trujillo said. “When I was a student, I wanted to do some things on my own. And there’s something beautiful about how organic things happen, but there’s also some willingness from our staff to walk alongside students and [help them] flourish in their callings.”
Understandably, PLNU wishes to have faculty supervision when it comes to ministries. And McGowan said that compared to most schools, they’re relatively “hands off.”
However, I think it’s time to give students a little more freedom to open up room for all of the ministry opportunities that could take place on and off campus.
McGowan explained nothing is stopping a student from creating their own non-PLNU-affiliated clubs and promoting them on social media. But in my own experience, having a club without the support of PLNU has been challenging.
I’m one of the co-presidents of Love Does In Action Club, a non-PLNU-affiliated club. Our goal is to show tremendous love to our community of San Diego, and this semester we’re donating care packages to foster families working with Olive Crest. But the biggest wall we’ve come up against is that we can’t reserve any PLNU facilities or put up posters around campus.
We were able to use the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC) once, but since it came to the attention of Spiritual Life and Formation that we’re not a PLNU ministry, we’re unable to reserve a room to host our club. So, you can have a ministry without the stamp of approval from Paul or Trujillo, but you can’t reserve facilities or promote it outside of social media and word of mouth.
I believe our campus would benefit from the presence of ministries like Love Does or YoungLife – getting clubs like those approved would be an incredible step forward for our community. It would give students a closer, more hands-on ministry experience. Yet, it’s a challenge to get any ministry approved when there are so many hoops to jump through.
I understand that there have been challenges with student-chartered ministries in the past, but I think PLNU can find ways to safely and fairly lead organizations that will benefit not only our student body but also our city of San Diego.
The ball is in your court, PLNU.
Noah Shaw