Campus Churches

College, for many an oldtime minister, was where his young people lost their faith. And this was just true enough for those experiment-minded conservatives, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, to see what they could do about it. What they did has grown into a chain of churches as live-wire and enthusiastic as any in the country, with congregations made up entirely of college students.

The movement began to pick up headway in 1940, when the Missouri Synod appointed Dr. Reuben William Hahn executive secretary of the Student Service Commission in Chicago. Today, the commission directs study groups on more than 1.000 campuses; on 32, Lutheran students have their own chapels. This week Dr. Hahn dedicated the newest chapel at the University of Alabama.

"Hi, Joe!" Each student church is established by the local church district and is directly responsible to it. Sometimes it takes Hahn a long time to convince a district that it should set one up. "There are still some who think that the best plan is to direct students to the local church," he explains. "They think we are spoiling the students. Experience shows that we are not spoiling the youth but . . . making functioning Christians out of them."

How this is done is well demonstrated at Calvary Lutheran Chapel, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin. Last week, as on any typical Sunday, the day began with a 9:30 a.m. service, followed by another service at 11. By 2:30 p.m.. the Calvary touch-football team was practicing for a game with the Catholic student chapel next door. At 5:45, the wood-paneled recreation room in the basement was filled with students who had come for the weekly "cost supper"--spaghetti, salad, ice cream, cake and coffee for 40-c-.

Most of them wore name tags, and each newcomer was called upon to stand and be welcomed with a cheer--"Hi, Joe! Hi, Mary!"--with crew-cut Pastor Ed Wessling acting as M.C.

Apples & Amens. Next came a movie, one of the Lutheran TV series. This Is the Life, which led to a discussion session on faith. Before 8. the group went upstairs into the chapel again for a candlelit vesper service. The evening ended in the lounge with Mclntosh apples, talk and "schafskopf," a relative of rummy.

Calvary is sponsored jointly by the Wisconsin Synod and the Missouri Synod Lutherans, but it is run by a student council and popular 29-year-old Pastor Wessling, who wants to specialize in student work. College chapels like Calvary, he feels, can be a healthy new way of reaching young people.

The young members of his congregation give a hearty amen to that. "Having our own chapel makes us feel much more at home than in a normal congregation," said one of them last week. "I'm doing a lot more here than I would at home."

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