Harvard Catholic Student Center

Faye Darnall: UW-Madison to Harvard

The experience of the EC method of ministry profoundly affected my own practice of ministry because I witnessed first hand how very effective the EC can be. While serving as a campus minister at St. Paul’s University Catholic Center in Madison, WI, we brought in the EC and saw our ministry flourish. Since then, I have imported their method to Harvard Catholic Student Center, where I now serve. Again a sense of renewal and rebirth of the faith and love for the Church has followed.

While at Madison, I and the priests on the pastoral staff first experienced the EC through two students who had been formed by the EC’s founder, Tim Kruse, at their home parish in a Bible study group he ran. They started a bible study at our campus ministry that brought a sense of community and strengthened spiritual commitment that the place hadn’t seen in years.

Based on that experience, the pastoral staff (two priests, me, and a liturgist) mistakenly believed we could count on students to form other students in the years to come. After the EC formed young men moved on, the memory of what a scripture study could be was quickly lost, and spiritual vitality in the student community waned. Because we weren’t trained in the EC’s methods ourselves, the pastoral staff had no skills for helping the students achieve what they had lost.

We needed help, so we brought in Tim Kruse one-quarter time to form a small group outreach in the dorms. At the same time, Grace Simon, now co-executive director of the EC with her husband, but then teaching in the area, started volunteering at our center. She and her husband, Jason Simon, started a large group praise and worship music and speaker night. Grace assisted Tim with small group organization and formation.

Almost immediately our spiritual vitality returned ten-fold. I remember a friend visiting, who would not consider himself a particularly spiritual person. He accompanied me to daily Mass and afterward said, “Something is happening here. You can feel it.” What he felt was the ineffable power of the Holy Spirit in a room full of people really praying. As many as eighty students were regularly attending daily Mass. They were hanging on every word of the proclaimed scripture because their formation with scripture in small groups convinced them that it was indeed relevant to their lives. They sang in full voice because they had learned through the praise and worship music to really pray in song (though we didn’t use praise and worship music at Mass, but rather standard hymnody). We had to increase confession times because of the increase in numbers wanting to partake of the sacrament.

Eventually students in a summer bible study they ran themselves decided to start a chapter of St. Vincent de Paul at our campus church. Their reflections on the gospel had led them to conclude that they wanted to be with the poor. It was exactly the kind of mature Christian action ministers long to see, and it was completely student generated. They organized and led the bible study because they had the skills to do it. They selected the material for reflection because they had the familiarity with scripture that made it possible. This is a concrete example of how the EC equips the laity for the life of committed faith the Church so desperately needs.

When I came to Harvard, I quickly found that the most painful part of moving was leaving behind the spiritually formed community of St. Paul’s, where the EC had been in operation for many years. I missed the spiritual mature leaders EC programs produce, and I was frustrated with the student leadership team’s focus on matters that didn’t help draw people closer to Christ. Prayer at meetings was quick, and sometimes perfunctory. To address these problems, I set out to bring the EC methods of ministry to Harvard Catholic Student Center.

By the coming spring, working with the priest also assigned to undergraduate ministries and a faculty person with small group experience, we had fourteen students in formation for small group leadership. The following Fall we launched seven small groups, most of which worked very well, and one which worked fabulously because of the quality of the two leaders running the group. Most important, the small group reflection started changing the character of the student group. The spiritual life because more important than the social functions. The quality of the students’ interactions changed. Interest in what the life of faith really means flourished. Once again, I was astounded at how quickly the Holy Spirit can work when given the opportunity. EC provides exactly that, the opportunity for God to work among His people.