Michael Miller and his Center for the Church and Higher Education seek to create vibrant campus ministries that are congregation-based. Largely lay driven, these programs offer the opportunity for adults to share their lives with students, serve as models for these young people seeking to discern their vocation as well as develop leadership for the next generation. Miller outlines five key elements essential for any successful campus ministry effort.

An initiative by United Methodist pastors in North Alabama has now spawned efforts throughout the church to build pastoral excellence by gathering small groups of congregational leaders for study, mutual support and critique as well as mentoring.

What are seminaries doing to prepare leaders for congregational ministry? Kathleen Cahalan discusses the findings of a grant program that has asked just that question of 45 institutions from Roman Catholic, Evangelical, mainline Protestant, independent or peace church traditions. Her reflections reveal distinctive differences as well as significant points of shared experience, programs and perspectives among these schools.

David Wood, coordinator for this program, describes various organized efforts by congregations, denominations and seminaries to support and mentor seminary students and newly ordained pastors for their entry into their first call to ministry.

Since the beginning of the Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation (PTEV) in 2000, Lilly Endowment has awarded 88 North American church-related colleges and universities with grants to implement programs. Kim Maphis Early discusses these “vocation grant” programs which are individually designed by the institutions to fit within their own mission and culture as they develop programming to assist young people to examine the relationship between faith and vocational choices, and to offer opportunities for gifted students to explore ministerial options.

Frank Rogers has reshaped leadership development among youth by inviting them to become active agents in their own story instead of passive recipients of the consumer culture. Using a “narrative pedagogy,” Rogers enables youth to use Christian symbols and stories to tell their own stories which in turn prepares them to lead in the future by helping those around them better to understand the larger context and meaning of their lives and the crises that they encounter.

In an era when most programs and products geared for young people are loud or fast or both, an approach to meeting the needs of youth that is quiet and deliberately contemplative may seem counterintuitive. But according to Mark Yaconelli, the director of the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project housed at San Francisco Theological Seminary, many of today’s young people want to encounter God in an authentic way.