In his address to the 232nd Diocesan Convention last October, Bishop Knisely challenged the diocese to invest in ministries for young adults that form a “pipeline” of ministry. At Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, and Providence colleges including Brown University, congregations and clergy are answering that call.
Both the Rev. Savannah Ponder, who serves at the Chapel of Saint John the Divine in Saunderstown three-quarters time and as chaplain at Rhode Island College (RIC) one-quarter time, and the Rev. Drake Douglas, vicar at St. Augustine and campus chaplain for the University of Rhode Island (URI), are new to the diocese and are finding benefits to serving both congregations and chaplaincies.
“Here on campus, I offered Ashes to Go which included education about ‘what was going on here’ and the opportunity for conversation,” says Ponder, who came to Rhode Island from the Diocese of Connecticut, a year ago. “Students appreciated the chance to remember people they had lost, to acknowledge the loss and grief even if they’re not quite sure what God means to them. That night, we celebrated the Prayer Book liturgy with congregants who have been doing this for years and are formed by Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent. The conversations I held in both places informed each other. The questions from young adults on the RIC campus interrogate what is core and what really matters.”
Douglas graduated from Yale Divinity School in May and was ordained to the priesthood in July. His call to St. Augustine and URI, where he served as an administrator before seminary, coincides with the beginning of the academic year. This month, he will begin a schedule of noon liturgies on Tuesdays and Thursdays for students, faculty, and administrators as well as a Wednesday evening service and meal especially geared to students. A grant from the diocese’s Congregational Development Commission will support the new program.
His previous career instilled in him a sense of “how deep-thinking this generation is,” he says. “They are looking for something hard but worth it.”
Ponder concurs. At RIC, home to many non-traditional students, she has found that “people are open to learning, growing, asking hard questions — deeper questions of meaning. The questions are those that often go unasked by those who feel they ‘should know’ that answer already after a lifetime in church: how do I fit into the world? Who is God for me?”
While Ponder had strong campus ministry experiences in college, Douglas was formed in early adulthood more by the “absence of something” after leaving the conservative denomination in which he was raised.
Campuses, he says, are “ripe mission fields, full of young adults ready to consider something big. It’s the perfect time to showcase what we [as the Episcopal Church] can do. St. Augustine was built to be a chaplaincy, but every congregation can be a mission field for the formation of the next generation.”
While students are asking existential questions, they also need to be fed. Ponder and the Rev. Benjamin Straley, who has served as rector of St. Stephen’s, Providence and campus minister at Brown and Rhode Island School of Design since 2020, are capitalizing on as they expand their campus ministries.
As a “religious life affiliate” on the Brown campus, Straley offers a Wednesday evening liturgy and dinner that attracts both local students and other young adults. “We allowed the old acronym EMBR (Episcopal Ministry at Brown and RISD) to die away and now refer to the group as ‘St Stephen’s Young Adults,’” he says. Besides food for body and soul, students are drawn by Straley’s three-year old half husky-half Australian Shepherd, Grace, whose exploits are chronicled on her @graceatbrown Instagram account.
Brown students and other young adults also volunteer on Saturdays at the parish’s Epiphany Soup Kitchen, which feeds as many as fifty people who come “looking for a meal and community” each week, Straley says.
Ponder, who this year is forming a closer relationship with RIC’s residential life team, will be offering a monthly dinner in the college’s four dorms that house about 1000 students. “The meals will be designed to create a space for community for students and a place to ask the deeper questions,” she says, as well as “a dignified way” to provide meals for students who are experiencing food insecurity.
A food pantry funded entirely by Episcopal Charities also supports RIC students without enough to eat. Located at RIC’s Unity Center, which Ponder describes as “a brave space on campus for all students to engage in meaningful and critical conversations that challenge systems of oppression,” the pantry is stocked by students Ponder takes to the store to buy goods that can feed their peers who lack access to a stove or the ability to cook.
“In the hierarchy of needs, if students are food or housing insecure, they aren’t going to learn well,” she says. “This is the important witness that the Episcopal Church has here. We feed a lot of students.”
The diocese’s investment in campus ministry is an opportunity to lay a foundation for the future, Ponder says. Her own campus ministry experience “helped with the things you might not learn in class: how to honor and respect others, how to work with folks you may not really like; how to make friends,” she says. “I think it’s invaluable work. We are scattering seeds and won’t know what will take or what will reemerge a decade from now.”