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The Rev. Craig Loya stands at the altar in the newly renovated Canterbury House at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He and a second campus missioner will have their offices in the facility. Photo by Melodie Woerman

Loya begins work as campus missioner
Ministry offices will be in renovated Canterbury House at KU

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

The Rev. Craig Loya wasted no time getting to work as the first of two campus missioners for the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas. After less than a week on the job he’d already begun visits to campuses to see how the Episcopal Church can best serve the needs of college students.

Loya said the job of campus missioner is an exciting one, as the diocese seeks to reorganize its efforts to reach more students on more campuses than in the past. That effort primarily will involve strengthening peer ministers where they already are in place or recruiting them where they aren’t. Peer ministers, he said, are college students who will take the lead in providing contact with other students and running Episcopal programs on campus. “Students will be the ones trained to lead ministry, not a residential chaplain,” he said.

His job, and that of a second missioner the diocese expects to name soon, is to provide support, resources and program help to the peer ministers.

The missioners, who are priests, can provide sacramental services from time to time, and they also will work with parishes in college towns to help them identify ways they can reach out to college students to welcome and incorporate them into the life of the parish.

Peer ministers are key
Loya sees the emphasis on peer ministers as the right way to reach college students, saying the diocese “is asking the right questions” with its new approach. “The diocese is willing to think creatively about how we do church, how we proclaim the gospel, live the gospel, and to do that with people at a formative time in their lives,” he said.

In the past, the Diocese of Kansas followed the model used in many places, with a chaplain in residence on major campuses to serve students there. But with the growth of schools other than the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, many Episcopalians didn’t encounter the church on their campus. Now they will.

Loya said there are a handful of students already functioning as peer ministers at KU and K-State, doing such things as leading Bible studies, reading Compline together every night and gathering other students each week for a meal, prayer and fellowship.

He wants to strengthen and expand their efforts and then take that model to campuses that don’t have anything like it now.

Loya said he will work with the diocesan youth program, so involved youth will become involved college students. “We have such a strong youth program, and I want to build on that,” Loya said. “They can be a tremendous resource, and we want to stay connected with them and keep them connected with God as they enter a new phase of their lives.” The result, he says, will be a trained group of young Christian leaders who will have a significant impact on the wider church.

A presence on campuses
Loya said that other than the students in place, the program is being “started from scratch.” There aren’t many other dioceses approaching campus ministry in this fashion, and he said he and the other missioner want to create a model that serves the needs for Kansas students and parishes. “More than anything else, that’s exciting,” he said. The result, he hopes, will be “to have the Episcopal Church be a presence on campus and offer our unique understanding of what it means to follow Jesus to the people there.”

He said once the second missioner is on board, together they will coordinate how their individual gifts can be used across the campuses to reach this goal.

That means most of his time will be spent on the road, with laptop and cell phone in tow. Luckily, Loya said he enjoys driving across the Kansas prairie, offering him a time for prayer. And after three years in Massachusetts, traffic that isn’t bumper-to-bumper is a welcome relief.

Knowledge of how to approach this task comes to Loya from a rather unusual source — the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He served there right out of seminary, one of two priests for eight congregations. Their job was to develop lay leadership in each congregation, much as he will develop leadership on each campus.

The cultural context was very different, he said, but it was the same theory of ministry. “God calls every baptized person to make Christ known in their life,” he said. “Clergy exist to help people see what that means.”

Facility is gutted, remodeled
The offices for the two campus missioners will be at Canterbury House, just north of the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It was important for the two to share office space to help coordinate efforts, and the only diocesan property with room to do that was at KU.

An anonymous donor took charge of remodeling the facility, updating the aging mechanical system and gutting the kitchen and old bathrooms but also freshening the look to make it appealing to those wanting to be involved with the diocesan-wide ministry.

Snappy black and white tile greets visitors in the entry way that leads to a kitchen with gleaming appliances and a comfortable eating area. A living room offers overstuffed sofas, a flat-panel TV and a pool table. Upstairs, rooms where peer ministers or interns can live are outfitted with couches, desks, even an ironing board and iron.

The adjacent St. Anselm’s Chapel also has been remodeled, with fresh white paint on the walls and a vibrant blue panel and statue of Jesus behind the altar. Flexible chair seating took the place of 19th century wooden pews.

Loya said the donor’s commitment to campus ministry is evident in the facility’s new interior. “You can tell the donor really cares about what is happening here. The details show his level of concern.”

While the missioners’ office is comfortable and inviting, Loya said he won’t be there much. He’d rather be out in the diocese, hooking into what he calls the “exciting energy” for campus ministry in the diocese. “I really feel called to be part of that,” he said. “I have never had so much fun in the first five days on a job.”