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In the seventh episode of the fourth season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Andrea Summers, Dean of Spiritual Formation and Campus Pastor at Indiana Wesleyan University. Summers opens by offering her assessment of the spiritual ecosystem in which today’s college students find themselves as well as the circumstances that defined the years prior to their arrival on campus. One of the themes Summers stresses is the way COVID-19 and the ubiquitous nature of cell phone usage raised student attunement to and desire for fellowship and community. An additional theme Summers notes is the sincerity of the students in terms of the commitment they desire for the relationship they share with Jesus Christ. Summers discusses her own journey to campus ministry, one which she did not initially anticipate but emerged over time while she served in various roles in local churches. Initially appointed as a faculty member, Summers eventually embraced an appointment to lead Indiana Wesleyan’s spiritual formation programs. Reflecting upon her time in her current role to date, Summers explores the way she and her colleagues in spiritual formation develop programmatic themes and then how they partner with other co-curricular and curricular in service to students. Summers then closes by reflecting upon how the years she spent serving local churches attuned her to the ways campus ministers can be of greater service to the Church as well as how the Church can be of greater service to campus ministers.
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Andrea Summers, Dean of Spiritual Formation and Campus Pastor at Indiana Wesleyan University. Thank you for joining us.
Andrea Summers: Yeah, it’s great to be here. Thanks, Todd.
Todd Ream: As the chief campus minister, you and your colleagues engage in the ongoing discernment of the spiritual needs of students that you serve on an individual but also on a collective basis.
In what ways do you and your individuals discern the needs of individual students? And then in what ways does that differ from, say, the student body as a whole?
Andrea Summers: Oh, man. I think spiritual discernment, when I think about spiritual discernment on a campus, it’s not mystical work. I think sometimes we hear that word discernment, and we think it’s like, a little, I don’t know, fairy dust or something like that. It’s really just deep listening. We listen to students we listen to Scripture, we listen to the Holy Spirit, we listen to each other.
So obviously there’s individual piece of discernment, you know, spending a lot of time discerning happens in conversations and counseling appointing pastoral counseling, appointments, when students are responding in chapel to what’s going on in those worship spaces. It’s paying attention to the patterns of students’ language and behavior.
But when I think more collectively, there is a need as campus pastor, right, to think about the emotional, the spiritual climate of the campus. What are students anxious about? What are they hungry for? What are they avoiding? What are they longing for? What are they complaining about?
And, and yeah, I, I think also there’s really practical things that we do that’s part of that discernment process. Like for example, just this past spring, we did a campus-wide survey that students responded to. I think we had over 800 students respond that gave us feedback on how they feel about our worship spaces, how they feel about opportunities for prayer on campus, and how they feel about small groups and and spiritual friendship.
How are these things helping them, shaping them? And we pay a lot of attention to that, so that helps us a lot. So that’s another way that we listen, right? I think also we’re not the only people who have our ear to the ground on this campus.
We’ve got people in res life, people faculty, you know, all across this campus who are having these same sorts of conversations, who are listening well, listening deeply to students, to each other, to the Holy Spirit. And so just trying to kind of collect and garner all of that wisdom. So yeah, that’s a piece of it. It’s deep listening more than it is something that’s like, know, specially mystically spiritual.
Todd Ream: When seeking to exercise then this practice of deep listening, in what ways can that practice, when exercised in relation to a particular student, complement what is heard from the student body as a whole? But in what ways, you know, might they compete, and how do you sort of work through the tensions that may emerge?
Andrea Summers: Probably a lot of different ways. I think what comes to mind first is, I think there is a way sometimes that just the nature of my role, I end up hearing the very worst and the very best, right. And so, there’s a way that I might be tempted to, and I am tempted to actually put too much weight on, like, one person’s complaint or two people’s problem with something rather than kind of really saying, “Okay, how do I weigh this and balance this against the other 2000+ students that are on our campus?”
And that is, yeah, there’s no science to that. That really does take discernment and wisdom. And I think the longer I’m here, so I’ve been in this role now for six years. I’m going into my seventh year. Like, part of it’s maybe just I’m aging, so maybe I’m just getting a little wiser. I don’t know.
also part of it is just knowing this place and knowing this community and seeing how God works, and is working and continues to work, that I, I have, like, maybe a larger kind of window into all of that to be able to weigh one person’s opinion or one person’s feedback against, you know, the larger picture.
Todd Ream: Yeah. You just mentioned that you have finished your sixth going into your seventh year, which when we do the math means that you came in the midst of COVID-19, 2020.
Andrea Summers: I did.
Todd Ream: And educators have invested a considerable amount of time and energy discerning how COVID, and the ways communities sought to mitigate it, impacted the various, you know, forms of development that students have undergone, the generations that we’re now inheriting.
As a person who was appointed during that time, in what ways have you and your colleagues, you know, sort of, sought to discern how to reach this generation that some may be struggling in unique ways? And then what theological themes have you sought to emphasize through preaching, teaching, or other practices?
Andrea Summers: Yeah, that’s such a good question. Well, yeah, you’re right. I did start so my, my first semester here was fall of 2020, which like, you know, if anyone thinks back to fall of 2020.
Todd Ream: No, no, I don’t want to.
Andrea Summers: We have different visceral, visceral reactions to that.
Todd Ream: Yeah.
Andrea Summers: So yeah, I remember my first day on the job, my supervisor sitting me down and saying, “Well, everything that we have planned for chapel is not going to work, so we need you to figure out what that’s going to look like.” And I’m like, “I, I don’t even know what my extension is yet. I haven’t logged into my email yet,” you know?
But we figured it out, and it was a learning year, a lot of learning for all of us. It’s interesting, though, when I think, you know, six years later now and COVID is, it feels like a distant memory in some ways. But it still is this thread that has woven itself into the psyche of this generation.
So our incoming students, we’re not, like, co-experiencing COVID with them. That’s something that happened for them while they were in middle school, actually. But it’s still, it’s still a part of their, their, the way that they that we all, I think, approach the world. So COVID does make this generation of students unique. There’s no doubt about it.
But I don’t think it’s the only way that this generation is unique. I think there’s several things that kind of threads, that weave themselves together that make for some uniqueness for our incoming students. Their phones, I know that everyone talks about this all the time, and, and actually students get tired of, you know, people my age talking to them about their phones.
But there’s this reality that they have these little shame factories in their pockets 24/7 that are, you know, just feeding them all kinds of things about their identity and about how the world works and what’s important and all that stuff. And they’ve experienced a lot of political upheaval in, in their little lifetimes already. They have watched leadership implosions inside the Church, outside of the Church.
They’ve experienced isolation depression, addiction. If they haven’t personally experienced it, they are close to someone who has. And I think that it has, all these things have kind of like, they weave together to create this little crystallization of discontent in some ways that I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing.
So when I think about this generation who, they all have these shared experiences of COVID and you know, this digital world that they’re connected to and political, all those things. The students who, the young people who have made it through all of that who are still hanging onto their faith, these are, are unique people.
These are unusual people. They have a kind of fire in their bones. They have a clarity of conviction that I don’t think I had at that age. They’re kind of like they are all in. They’re like, “Give me Jesus or I’m out.” They are interested in, like, the manifest presence of Jesus in a way that, and you know, this is remarkable. So yeah, it makes for some interesting opportunities and even challenges.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. You echoed earlier when you were talking about deep listening that there are others on campus that participate in this practice in various ways and with whom you talk particularly your fellow co-curricular educators, but also curricular educators and the faculty.
In what ways do you create collaborative relationships with them that help then meet the needs of this current generation, but also perhaps even feed the appetite that you were talking about for engagement with the Lord?
Andrea Summers: Like in terms of connections across campus, you mean?
Todd Ream: And what ways do you work with them and sort of expand what you’re trying to do and the messages you’re trying to share in other spaces that can be processed, but also maybe draw in lessons that they’re also learning, whether it’s in class or in the residence hall or athletic teams so that they can be refined even more through what they experience in chapel?
Andrea Summers: Well, so, you know, my context, Indiana Wesleyan, it’s a Christian university, Christ-centered Christian university, and I think we’re coming from, at least I am, but I think more than just me, we’re coming from a, we just believe that every space is spiritually formative. And so spiritual formation isn’t something that happens just in chapel alone. In fact, it can’t.
It happens in res life, in counseling appointments, in the classroom, in athletics, like you mentioned faculty. And so I don’t see myself as kind of the owner. I might be the campus pastor. I might be the dean of spiritual formation as my title, but I’m not the owner of formation. I’m more of like a shepherd or a catalyst for that.
It’s happening in all of these spaces across campus. And so, and I’ll just like I’ll mention faculty a little bit because like there’s actual, I can’t recall it from memory, but there’s research out there that shows that, you know, spiritual formation on on a college campus, a Christian higher ed campus, the faculty relationships are among one of the most influential factors when it comes to students and spiritual development.
And it’s, this isn’t just like the religion faculty or the Bible faculty, right? This is all faculty that students are spiritually formed just as much by relationships, by that larger institutional culture than just by ministry programming. And yeah, this is, this means having those collaborative conversations and relationships all across campus.
It means finding creative ways for faculty to have ownership of that shared culture of spiritual formation. It means mission fit is an important part. That’s part of my work at Indiana Wesleyan. I’m part of the mission fit process. We take it really seriously here at Indiana Wesleyan.
And so we’re picky about who we hire and who we bring onto the team because it’s like we, you know, your job is not just to be an RD, a resident director in a hall, right? Or to teach environmental science. Like your job is also investing in the spiritual formation of the culture as a whole and the lives of individual students.
So yeah, I don’t think of spiritual formation as a program that students attend. I think of it as kind of a larger ecosystem that we all have shared ownership over.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. I want to transition now to asking you about your own discernment process that you engaged in as a student, but then also as a professional up to date in terms of your current calling. But you earned an undergraduate degree from Indiana Wesleyan, an MDiv from Asbury Seminary, and then a DMin from Emory University.
At what point did you discern a call to the ministry?
Andrea Summers: I think I had an early sense of calling, like from a pretty young age, I knew I wanted to do some sort of, know, kingdom work. I wouldn’t have been able to give language to it, but that was just what I felt, I felt drawn to that sort of thing.
But honestly, it was when I was a student at Indiana Wesleyan, that, and it was towards the end of my four years. Like, I wasn’t even a ministry major when I was a student here. I, you know, chose something much more practical than that, I think. But I found myself in all my spare time, like wanting to be involved in campus ministry and that sort of thing.
So it really wasn’t until the end of my four years that I was able to articulate that I had a call to vocational ministry on my life. And then spent 12 years serving in the local church, um I ended up starting my doctoral work about 12 years in and and then landed in Christian higher ed as a professor in the religion department. Still very much all, approached all of that from that kind of ministry perspective.
But, I would also say that 12 years in as well, I feel like I kind of got a second call, like a clarified calling, because like for, for those first 12 years, I was really serving the local church in different capacities, and never saw myself in higher ed ever. But yeah, about halfway through, I I was actually at this, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Lausanne Conference, but or the Lausanne Gathering.
It was a Lausanne Gathering. So it was this gathering in Jakarta, Indonesia with global leaders from all over the world. Even though I grew up on the mission field, it was probably the most diverse gathering of global leaders, I, I’d never been in that, you know, that much diversity in one room. Hundreds of countries all over the world represented.
But anyway, God doesn’t often speak to me, like, with this kind of clarity and decisiveness. I can count a small handful of times in my life that He’s done that for me. But apparently He wanted this moment to be pretty clear, because He did speak to me with great clarity and just said, “Andrea this next season of ministry for you is going to be ushering in awakening for the next generation.”
And so I didn’t really know what to do with that. I wasn’t working with college students. I wasn’t working with young adults even at that time. I was connected in other ways to the local church. But really, every decision I made since then has been in response to that clarified calling. And so ended up moving into higher ed in a faculty role, full-time faculty role, and then eventually into this role here at Indiana Wesleyan. And it’s really kind of been on the heels of that clarified calling that I got in 2016 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Todd Ream: Over the course of your career then in ministry, mentors along the way who’ve contributed to helping you discern your calling and be formed in order to be able to serve in the manner that you have?
Andrea Summers: Yeah, I mean, honestly, one of them was a former professor here at Indiana Wesleyan. He was a longtime professor Keith Drury, and he was someone who, even when I was a student, he just he believed in me, saw, I think, gifts and graces and capacities on my life that I didn’t see myself at the time, and called those out.
And so he was someone who really, like I have in my saved, and, you know, he’s no longer with us. He’s gone to be with the Lord. But I have in my inbox, like I’ve saved every email, you know, that he and I, we would go, you know, six months, nine months without communicating, and then I would reach out to him again about some sort of decision I was trying to make.
So he’s a huge one, but there’ve been so many other people along the way who have spoken just a word into my life at just the right time. Yeah, my parents have been a huge influence for me there too, so.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Authors then who have also helped you discern your calling and then have nurtured it along the way.
Andrea Summers: I don’t know. Probably, you know, Dallas Willard comes to mind. Just he, his writing and then there’ve been so many authors I think that have really kind of like branched out of Dallas Willard’s work. Ruth Haley Barton, and even more recently, John Mark Comer, I think trace a lot of what they understand about spiritual formation back to some of the things that Dallas Willard and maybe even Richard Foster were able to put into words and kind of help us understand about how spiritual formation works, you know. That’s been huge.
CS Lewis is still just my favorite, like, apologist, you know, just helping to take something that we want to make so complicated and just make it so simple and remind us that it’s, at the end of the day, like it’s a story and it’s a narrative. So yeah, those are some huge ones that come to mind.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. In 2020 then, you were serving on the faculty at Southern Wesleyan University when you were contacted about the possibility of returning to your alma mater and serving as the Dean of Spiritual Formation and Campus Pastor.
Can you describe now the discernment process that then led you to the current role? And perhaps the decision-making process you went through of serving as a faculty member is important, but then this role would be the more primary way in which you would engage with students and with colleagues.
Andrea Summers: Yeah. That discernment process was so someone reached out to me about that role, I think probably, you know, it, that fall of 2019 or something like that. And it, I was, I was happily teaching and, also our family was settled. We have four children, and so I was like, “Ugh,” you know.
I think my response to that initial reach out was, “That would be my dream job, but it’s just not the right timing for me or for our family.” And, you know, that, that was that. And then I think someone reached out to me again a few months later, and my response was similar.
But this time I, for whatever reason, I came home and I told my husband about it and I said, “Oh yeah, you know, this person reached out to me about this, this position opening.” And, and he looked at me and he said, “Well, why would, why would you just say no and not even pray about it first?”
And I didn’t really have a good response to him on that. And then truly, it was literally days later, maybe, maybe a week later, that the world shut down and COVID happened. Like, you guys remember how quickly that all happened.
Todd Ream: Nope. No, I don’t remember any of that. Blocked it out.
Andrea Summers: Yes. And so our lives just, like, went from kind of plugging along nice and, you know, to just kind of really being turned upside down, and it forced it forced me into this season of, I think we were all discerning. Like, the, it just felt like the way the world paused, whatever was in front of us, we were forced to, like, hold it a little more carefully and ask God about it a little more intentionally instead of just, you know, business as usual.
And so that was that process for me, and it just, over a span of about eight days I had three separate conversations. One of them was with my daughter, actually, who was in ninth grade at the time. And there’s three separate conversations that just really, like, you know, tipped something for me.
So anyway, and so I reached out and said, “Hey, I don’t even know where you’re at in this process, so you may have already hired someone.” I literally don’t know, because I hadn’t been in communication with anyone about it. “But, I’m interested in applying if that’s still a possibility.” And anyway, long story short, here I am, and I’m so grateful. I love it.
Todd Ream: You mentioned that the first 12 years of your career, of your exercising your calling, was committed to the Church. And then the at least geographic center of where you would exercise that shifted to the university.
But in what ways did those years of service to the Church then enhance your thinking about the university, its mission, its purpose? And then perhaps in what ways the university could be of service back to the Church and the relationship they share.
Andrea Summers: Yeah. I think that’s such a profound question. I think a lot of times when we think about the relationship between the Church and, I’ll just, since I serve in the context of Christian higher ed.
In Christian higher ed, we think about, you know, it gets really pragmatic. It’s like, oh, it’s about funding and enrollment and institutional partnerships, that sort of thing. But uh, historically universities have actually emerged from the life of the Church, right?
And so I think there’s that, that reality that like faith and reason have to belong together. There’s a way in which institutions, academic institutions who are tethered to the local church in some way, like it’s a grounding thing because learning is spiritual work.
And so without that larger vision, without being tethered to the life of the Church, I think there’s a way that sometimes an institution or the academy or, you know, those learning centers can kind of drift a little bit into, I don’t know, just being more utilitarian or focused on career rather than, virtue for vocation.
So yeah, the Church is important in my mind because it reminds us that education is ultimately about formation. It’s not just about information. But I think the relationship goes back and forth, right. I think there are things that a place like Indiana Wesleyan, there are ways that we uniquely serve the Church if we stay connected to the Church too.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to talk with you now. We talked in broad strokes about your role as Dean of Spiritual Formation and Campus Pastor. I want to talk about some of the more granular details now.
In what ways, if any, could you define what might populate a typical day for you on campus when school is in session?
Andrea Summers: Oh, man. I think this is one of the things I love about my work is that there is never two days that are similar or alike. They’re always different. It’s that you have to be able to, you know, move almost seamlessly from, like, preaching on a platform in the middle of a chapel, you know, in, in chapel to you know, dealing with a, a student crisis situation, to moving into a committee meeting and representing the university well in those spaces.
So yeah, it’s teaching, it’s preaching, it’s mentoring, it’s leading staff it’s chapel planning, it’s crisis response. Someone else said to me a number of years ago, and it’s kind of stuck with me a little bit, that this role as campus pastor, it’s kind of like this mix between, and I don’t know if this is completely accurate, but I think it gets at something.
It’s this mix between megachurch pastor and village priest a little bit, right? Because, like, I’ve got over 2,000 students who are a part of this Christian community, and we’re trying to do life together. And there’s this also reality that, like, I, I can’t, I better not be yelling at my kids in Walmart because there’s a good chance there’s someone behind me who I may not know. I may not know exactly who they are, but they may know who I am.
Todd Ream: And a couple of your kids now are part of the village.
Andrea Summers: That is true. But the village priest part of, I mean, for me personally, to operate well in this role, I’ve just made it a personal commitment that if a student ever reaches out to me and says, “Hey, can we meet? Can I get coffee?” Depending on what’s going on, I may not be able to drop everything and do it that moment.
But if I don’t have time to, to fit that into my schedule, then, then I’m too busy. There’s, I have, I need to reprioritize what it is that I’m doing because, yeah it’s probably the most meaningful moments in my role are the quiet ones.
It’s the conversations after chapel when a student comes up to me. It’s the moments of prayer. It’s watching students encounter God. It’s getting to baptize students. It’s those moments that are super fun.
Todd Ream: If those moments then are the most vocationally satisfying moments for you in terms of your calling, what are some of the components of your role that may be less vocationally satisfying?
Andrea Summers: Yeah. I, I think there’s a real administrative component to this role that like I, I do, and I, I think that administrative piece is really important because we need structures for those spaces of spiritual formation to happen, right? But it’s not always, like answering emails, that isn’t always the funnest.
I think also there’s a, there’s a part of my role, particularly here at Indiana Wesleyan, that includes some gatekeeping, and I, I wouldn’t say that it’s, I really believe in that part of my role. I take it very seriously. It’s important to me because I feel like it matters, but it always doesn’t make for the most fun moments. There are times when having to say no to people um, is, yeah, like not the funnest, but it’s part of the leadership that we have here.
Todd Ream: For individuals then that are considering whether they’re called to serve in comparable roles to the ones that, you know, you have been called to over the course of your career, what advice would you offer them? What questions would you encourage them to consider as they’re discerning their own sense of vocation along these lines?
Andrea Summers: Let’s see. I think that this kind of role fits all shapes and sizes. You know, like it’s, someone doesn’t have to have my same gift set or skill set or, or anything like that, I think to to function really well in a role like this. But I do think that this kind of goes to some of those virtues that are important.
Like, I think of humility. I think, man, if, if you’re going to go the long haul in a role like this in Christian higher ed, you probably need to have humility. You probably need to listen deeply. You need to collaborate well. You need to be teachable. You need to empower the people around you.
I think discernment, we talked a lot about that today already. Because this role isn’t just about decision-making, right? It’s about spiritual discernment not just on behalf of one person at a time, but really on behalf of an entire community.
And I think hope actually is really important because, yeah, this is maybe I’m thinking specifically about Gen Z and then gen Alpha coming up behind them, but we’re required, campus pastors are required to stand in places of crisis, doubt, deconstruction. There’s institutional pressures that are unique to this particular role. There’s the kind of larger cultural fragmentation happening around us.
And so I think students need leaders who are not going to be cynical, who are deeply hopeful, but they’re not naive either, right? It’s not this like naive optimism, but they have this deep Christian hope that’s rooted in something bigger that just says, “Yeah, the Gospel is still good. It’s still good for this moment in history,” and who, you know, leaders who really genuinely believe that.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Earlier you talked about the importance of there being structures sort of in place that help with the patterns of resourcing the message that campus ministry shares. And one of the ways that I’ve noticed that you’ve done that is creating what I’m going to call a curriculum each semester, each year for campus ministry. Feel free to change that term or, or revise that term.
But would you walk us through the discernment and planning process that you and your colleagues go through when determining how to develop that theme, and then how to engage it in various components over the course of a semester or a year?
Andrea Summers: Yeah. Curriculum is a good word. I also sometimes use the word catechism. But, like, having been in a faculty role before I stepped into this role, I think has been really helpful because I mean, I, I love teaching, but I always like, I was one of those weirdos who liked to sit down and to kind of map out the, the syllabus for the semester and kind of map out what are we going to learn and how are we going to get there? What’s the journey to get there? Was fun for me.
And I still feel that way when it comes to we don’t make decisions about like, for example, I’ll just, something super practical. Who’s going to speak in chapel? Like, oh, you know, nobody from the business department has spoken recently. Let’s just throw somebody from the business department in there.
No, like, it really comes from a place of looking at the four years the student is going to be here. What are the conversations that we want to make sure we have over their four years? What are, what’s the balance of diet between Old and New Testament that we want to have? It’s just, it’s those kind of like catechism questions, I think, that we apply to these spaces.
But something that, yeah, I don’t know. I would love to kind of unpack. I’ve been thinking about this some lately, even just this idea that I wonder if there are ways, and tell me what you think about this, Todd, if Christian higher ed isn’t maybe one of the closest parallels we have, in the, you know, modern world to kind of those earlier monastic communities that played such a huge impact in the earlier eras of the Church, right?
Like, students aren’t taking vows. I mean, actually they are a little bit. Like, to come to Indiana Wesleyan you have to agree to a lifestyle statement. But maybe different sorts of vows. But but we’re both creating these intentional ecosystems of formation, and we’re living life together in a sort of way that I think I wonder if, I wonder if Christian higher ed is one of the few remaining spaces where modern culture has these intentional, communal, spiritually ordered life that’s still possible at a larger scale.
And so think a lot about our programming in terms of a rule of life. And we’re thinking about rule of life can’t be the same for every single student, and so what are ways that students who are you know, new to faith, what, what does their rule of life needs, need to look like? What can they step into?
And then we have also students who are just, like, really, like, I don’t know how else to describe it except that they are on fire for Jesus. They are, uh there’s a way in which a prayer life and encountering God has, like, opened up for them in a brand new way, you know, as a student here at Indiana Wesleyan. And so what does a rule of life look like for those students? Those rhythms, practices, intentional community.
So it’s not just about who are we going to get to come in and speak for chapel, right? It’s like, what are the rhythms and the practices, the mentoring across generations? What’s the vocational discernment that we want to make available for students that really has the most formative impact so we can set them on a trajectory that’s going to last the long haul in their life, a whole life lived out poured out for the sake of the kingdom?
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. As you’ve talked about that rule of life, you talked about students and how some of them come with an intense focus for their faith and a maturity that they’ve already come to in their lives. And then some are new to their faith, too, and are on that path with those other students but, you know, further behind maybe where they are.
When thinking about your role, too, as you develop, you know, these ideas that are embedded in the curriculum for chapel, how else do you think about communicating them to constituencies that are not only as diverse as students in different places of their faith but also constituencies as diverse as faculty members, students, fellow co-curricular educators, external constituents even who do show an intense interest in what goes on in campus ministry?
Andrea Summers: Well, I start with the students because I think if I, if I tried to, like, equally prioritize all those different entities, all those different opinions, all those different voices, like, I think we would, there would be something that would really just get lost altogether.
But it, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where we have these students who are showing up on our campus, who are in really different places spiritually, in terms of their discipleship and their maybe biblical literacy, that sort of thing, but who they’re less interested in kind of a polished spirituality. They’re more interested in authentic encounter with God.
And, so we start there with those students, and then there’s this kind of ripple effect out that it, the, the most compelling thing, even for the student who comes to our campus, because we’re not a covenant school, so a student can come to Indiana Wesleyan and, and not have a statement of faith. And we do have students who do that.
And the most effective, I think, thing that for a student who ends up on our campus who is far from God or who has not, you know, kind of crossed that threshold into faith yet, is not that they are required to come to chapel, which they are. The most compelling thing is that faithful Christian witness that Christian community can have when it’s, like, real and authentic.
So it’s being on this sports team and watching other students and watching their coach live out their faith in a way that is like what they say and what they do are aligned and, you know, these things that are just like, wow, how do I have that? What does that integrated life look like and, and how can I have some of that?
So it’s, it’s really just saying we’re just, we are going to lean into authentic Christian community the best that we can, and that includes practices and rhythms and corporate worship and all those things, and we’re going to allow that to be a witness out.
I think that that ends up being a witness out to our donors and our constituencies and our stakeholders and our alumni too, because at the end of the day, you know, our alumni don’t want chapel that’s catered to them. They want chapel that is ministering powerfully to their children and their grandchildren and to, you know, this, this next generation. That’s really what they want. That’s what they want to see happening.
Todd Ream: Hopefully, you get the same flexibility from your faculty colleagues too on campus in terms of that. And, and the opinions that we may share with you from time to time.
Andrea Summers: We have wonderful faculty at IWU, yes.
Todd Ream: As our time begins to become short, I want to ask you about your vocation as a campus minister, how you’ve come to define then over the course of these seven years. Started as a faculty member, transitioned into this role of seven years.
How have you come to define it? What practices, to what practices do you personally turn to nurture it? What opportunities maybe have enhanced it or advanced it? And then what forces do you have to be vigilant about that can threaten it too?
Andrea Summers: Well, yeah, I think that, practices of, it’s, we keep talking about those kind of spiritual rhythms. And much as I have talked about how important that is for our students, how important that is for our campus community, like they’re, the only reason why I believe in them so much is because I have experienced firsthand, you know, the formative impact of that sort of thing over time.
So Scripture, being a part of healthy community, having accountability, having a spiritual director like, believing that I can encounter and that I do encounter the actual presence of of, of Jesus and, not just learn about him and that sort of thing.
And Sabbath is a huge part of that too for me. And Sabbath looks like, you know, it’s, it, there’s like a weekly rhythm for Sabbath, but honestly, you know, you, if, if you’re watching this podcast and not listening to it, you see that I’m, you know, I’ve got a sweatshirt on, and this is, it’s June.
So there’s like an, there’s an annual kind of Sabbath that I think is really necessary when it comes to to campus life on a residential campus that we, we need this time in June and July to rest and reframe and refresh and be ready to go again in order to just be really healthy and to have that deep well out of which we’re pouring from.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Earlier, you talked about virtues that you believed were important to cultivate in order for campus ministers to flourish in their roles.
Against what vices, then do you also believe maybe campus ministers need to be vigilant and prepared to confront in their own lives, but maybe also in the lives of colleagues with whom they share you know, in this vocation, even if they’re serving at other institutions?
Andrea Summers: Well, I think really kind of that sit opposite from some of the virtues that I mentioned would be like pride or even a savior complex that’s just like it’s up to me somehow, you know, to make this happen. That lacks that humility that we need, and then it makes collaboration really difficult.
I cannot do this work by myself. I, of course, I need the team right here. I’ve got a team of, you know, five people that work with me here in the spiritual formation office, could not do the work without them. They’re incredible. But obviously, partners across campus.
I think cynicism is a big one, because the higher up I think you are in the life of a community or an institution, you see the beauty, but you also see sometimes the underbelly of some things. And no place is perfect, right? And so just refusing to sink into that, that cynicism, insisting to, like I, I just, I find myself every so often being like, “I am choosing. I’m making a choice with the Lord’s help to believe the best about this person.” Believe the best about this.
I think another one is another advice is probably, I don’t know if this is really advice, but insecurity is probably going to be a huge, I, I don’t know how. I’m not saying I’m the most secure person in the world. Like I’m saying insecurity is advice because it’s, you know, something that I wrestle with along with anyone else.
But, but truly, I do feel like I’ve developed a thicker skin in this role, and I have, and I’ve had to just go, “Okay, Lord I’m just going to sink my identity more deeply into you. I’m going to believe in the responsibility that you’ve given me and the role that you’ve called me to.” And it’s been so helpful to me in moments where you know, there were difficult decisions.
Todd Ream: As we close our conversation then, I want to return to this theme of the relationship that the Church shares with the university and the unique roles that campus ministers play.
And moving forward in the years to come, in what ways do you believe the Church can be of greater service to campus ministers? But do you believe, in what ways do you also believe campus ministers can be of greater service to the Church?
Andrea Summers: Well, it’s interesting because sometimes I will sense this just little bit of suspicion maybe between, from between churches and higher ed of like but at the end of the day, man, we, we believe, like, I see the work that I do, like, we are preparing students to be lifelong you know, lay leaders and pastors and practitioners in the local church. And not even just someday, but, like, right now.
So I think it’s really important that campus ministers are thinking intentionally about how are they encouraging students to integrate into the life of the Church. Yes, there is, on our campus, for example, we have a strong there’s a strong spiritual community here. Students are being actively discipled. If they want to grow spiritually, there are many ways for them to step into spiritual discipleship on this campus.
But that is never meant to replace the role of the local church, that intergenerational kind of long-lasting thing. So there’s this piece of that we’re preparing students for the future of work in the local church, but we really want them to start that process now.
But I think, too, there’s a way in which the Christian higher ed has an opportunity to help the local church, too. Universities are really transient communities, and the Church, the Church carries this long obedience that I think outlasts, you know, even the transient. We’re transient communities because the students are coming and going.
But not just students. I think, you know, even our employees kind of come and go. Presidents come and go, right? But the local church carries this memory. It carries tradition. It carries our theology. It carries our worship. It carries that, that long obedience. And so we need that, that the local church brings.
But, but also college campuses oftentimes are the epicenter of all of the fragmentation, all of the questions, all of the kind of maybe some of those points of tension between culture and Church, that we’re all experiencing everywhere. I actually think that college campuses are oftentimes the front lines for that.
So it’s kind of like the questions that we’re having to wrestle with and address right here, on our college campuses are probably going to be the same questions that you’re going to be addressing in your pews in about 10 years time.
Todd Ream: Yeah.
Andrea Summers: So being able to learn from each other, like, what’s coming, how do we handle these things well, how do we address these sorts of questions and these challenges and these tensions, I think we can learn from each other.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Andrea Summers, Dean of Spiritual Formation and Campus Pastor at Indiana Wesleyan University. Thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us.
Andrea Summers: It’s been so fun. Thanks for having me on. Great to connect with you in this way and all of your listeners. So thank you so much.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
