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Mind & Soul
How Baylor fosters an intellectual community of faith for students
By Meg Cullar / Photographs by Rod Aydelotte
 It's
10 p.m. on a Tuesday in November, and about seven Baylor University
students are sitting quietly in the Robbins Chapel of Brooks
Residential College. After a few minutes, a faculty member who lives in
Brooks stands to lead the evening prayers. The worship service of
prayers and psalms lasts only about ten minutes, but it's a welcome
respite for those who gather. Held every weekday night at 10 and every
weekday morning at 9, the short services are designed to create a
spiritual rhythm to life and to offer an opportunity for quiet
reflection and spiritual growth.
Freshman Christian Latham from Magnolia attends the services several
times a week because he believes it offers an appropriate bookend to
his day. "This is an opportunity to close the day in such a way that
you're honoring and glorifying God and giving thanks for the day that
you've had," he said. "But in a sense, you're also recognizing that God
is not only the beginning and the end of your day, but that your life
in between should be lived to glorify him."
When he started looking for colleges, Latham wasn't necessarily
determined to choose a Christian university. But when he attended
Baylor Premiere, a student recruitment event, and the day on campus was
opened with prayer, he realized that Baylor would offer him both a
strong academic experience and an opportunity to build his faith.
Many Baylor students today feel the same way as Latham and as students
over the course of Baylor's history have felt—that being in a Christian
atmosphere among Christian friends has created a fertile ground for
their faith's development. As it has in the past, Baylor makes a
concerted effort to provide all the elements to enhance the Christian
experience for students—without creating an atmosphere of religious
coercion that would run counter to Baylor’s Baptist principles and long
tradition of academic excellence as an institution of higher learning.
Lewisville sophomore Meg Sullivan (pictured above), also a Brooks
resident, said she likes the freedom of college and the opportunity to
meet people who don't necessarily hold the same values that she does,
but she appreciates the "foundation of Christianity" that Baylor
offers.
"I grew up in a private Christian school, so I feel I get to put my
faith more into practice in college because I know people who are not
strong Christians or who completely deny God, so I can share my faith,"
she said. "But I also love having my strong Christian friends who are
completely there 100 percent when I need them to pray with me about
something."
Sullivan has been attending another event in the chapel at Brooks.
Every Tuesday evening at 10:30, a group of students gathers for a
service of praise music for about forty-five minutes. Completely
student led, the service is decidedly casual—think fuzzy slippers,
sweats, wet hair, and pajama pants. A second-year Brooks resident,
Sullivan said, "It was really exciting when they started that." Often,
Sullivan serves as part of the leadership team for the service, but
sometimes she just rejoices with the group.
Providing sacred spaces for such activities is just one of the ways
that Baylor has been consciously trying to enhance spiritual growth
opportunities for students. In addition to the chapel in Brooks, now
there's also a chapel on the top floor of Memorial Hall, which houses
the Honors Residential College. Memorial Chapel is actually a restored
space, returned to its original purpose after serving for many decades
as a sorority room. Now, evening prayers are held there every night.
Other spaces for reflection are scattered around campus. The Stacy
Riddle Forum, which includes meeting rooms for sororities, has its own
chapel—named in honor of Mary Wilson McCall—and a prayer room. And the
newly renovated Bobo Spiritual Life Center includes prayer rooms and a
chapel. In November, university chaplain Dr. Burt Burleson began
holding noon prayers in that chapel.
House Calls
Baylor’s mission is "to educate men and women for worldwide leadership
and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment
within a caring community." According to associate vice president for
student life Dr. Martha Lou Chadwick Scott, the university's
programming is designed to "weave" those things together to form that
caring community and to bring spiritual concerns seamlessly into the
realm of everyday living at an academic institution.
In recent years, Baylor has placed an emphasis upon providing "sacred
spaces," hiring additional ministerial staff, adding more student life
programming, and enhancing Chapel programming, to name but a few.
Many of the university's current programming efforts began in 2000,
when Baylor was awarded a $2-million, five-year grant from the Lilly
Endowment, Inc. The purpose of the grant was to help students develop a
sense of calling and vocation, teaching them that their lives could be
"missional" without their having to become a missionary or
minister—that they could integrate their vocation with their faith.
"The grant is over now, and the university has absorbed the expenses of
the various programs we started," Scott said. "The grant got us up and
running, and now everything is integrated into the system."
One of the most significant results of the grant has been the
development of the resident chaplain program, Scott said. Grant money
provided for the start-up costs, she said, and by the fall of 2007
every residential facility at Baylor had its own chaplain, a second- or
third-year Truett Seminary student.
Scott said that college students experience a lot of change, and a
resident chaplain can help them cope. "Quite often, a student going
through usual developmental stages has questions about religion and
faith," she said. "They may wonder, 'If God wanted me here, why am I so
miserable?' And it helps to have someone with theological training
there to help walk them through those questions."
The program is a partnership between the departments of Campus Living
and Learning and Spiritual Life. The university's twelve resident
chaplains report to Chaplain Burleson, who organizes and implements
their extensive and ongoing training.
"It started out of the Lilly initiative that emphasized vocation," Burleson told the Line.
"And the idea of seminarians on campus getting hands-on experience with
ministry was an important part of that. In addition, we began to offer
pastoral care in a way where we're very near to the student."
Burleson describes the job by listing the resident chaplains' three
priorities: presence, pastoral care, and programs—in that order. Just
being present and available is the most important element of the
chaplain's job, Burleson said. "We want this pastor in residence to be
around in ways that the students know who they are," he said. "In some
settings it is easier than others. In North Village, for instance, the
students are not funneling into one place like a cafeteria, so it's
more challenging than you might think. A lot of what they're trying to
do is connect and have coffee or lunch with students."
The chaplains also provide direct pastoral care to both students and
staff in the residence halls. "Not a day goes by that one of them
doesn’t call me and say, 'I'm on the way to the hospital,' or
'Somebody's mom just died,'" Burleson said. "Our resident chaplains are
in conversation about everything you can be in conversation about with
a college student—eating disorders, sexual abuse, addiction—so they are
on the front lines."
The chaplains also provide programming for the students. The chaplain
in Memorial leads the nightly prayer service in the chapel, drawing a
couple dozen students. The chaplain in Martin started a basketball
night, and the one in Collins last year led a worship service out on
the sun deck—students opened their windows to experience it.
Allen-Dawson Hall's chaplain organized a camping trip and also has a
regular night on the town, where he introduces students to a Waco
experience, such as the Dr Pepper Museum, Cameron Park, or Oakwood
Cemetery (the Halloween destination last fall).
A Personal Touch
Collin Bullard, a third-year Truett student, is the resident chaplain
in Brooks Residential College, and he makes a valiant attempt to know
every student there—all 375 of them. Of course, it's a bit easier this
year, Bullard's second year in Brooks, because about 40 percent of the
residents returned. At the beginning of the year, Bullard stood in the
lobby as each and every student shuffled through to get signed in. He
met each student and took a photo, which he put into a directory for
the staff. The residents of Brooks also eat together each Sunday night,
so Bullard has a unique opportunity for getting to know students at
that weekly event.
Brooks is also unique in that the hall has a "College Council,"
composed of various committees, that plans activities. "We have a
ministry and service committee, so I can work with that group to
facilitate spiritual formation in the hall and plan ministry
activities," Bullard said. "It's a huge resource for me."
When it comes to pastoral care, Bullard's modus operandi is cookies.
"Sometimes my wife and I take them together. A few weeks ago, a student
got back from her grandmother's funeral, and I just wanted to know how
it went and to welcome her back. I know it sounds pretty simple, but
when you do it for enough students, they get that they are cared for
here."
Students also seek out Bullard for help. "Usually the students who seek
me out are the ones who are in crisis, and sometimes I might not know
them very well," he said. "I had several returning students this fall
whose friends had just morphed over the summer, and they came back to
Baylor to find a different place; they no longer had their support
system."
Both men and women live in Brooks, and, Bullard said, "Typically the
girls are more proactive, and the guys don't tend to seek help as
often. It helps that I'm married, and I think the girls like that
Candice lives here; sometimes they want to talk to both of us. In
general, girls want to talk about life and relationships, but with guys
you might have to play Capture the Flag or Guitar Hero before you gain
their trust."
With six hundred residents to care for, Michelle Wildes, the resident
chaplain in Collins, has different challenges. "Every week I schedule
time to make sure I'm present on the halls," she said. "Often I’ll get
pulled into rooms when someone's having a conversation, or if one of
them is working on a religion paper, they'll come down to my room to
get help."
Wildes
also schedules coffee with students every week to get to know people
one-on-one. [Pictured with Wildes (right)
 is Alicia Autrey, a junior
biology major who is employed as a Community Leader in Collins.] "I'll
just hear their story and how they're doing at Baylor and what their
plans are," she said. "Sometimes it leads to finding out how they are
doing spiritually, but I don’t want it to be forced or anything."
Last year Wildes was the chaplain in Kokernot, which has 250 residents,
but she said that even then, you can’t truly know everybody. "Some of
them don't want to be known, and I try to respect that," she said. "I
offer myself, I am on the halls, I offer programs, I try to hang out
and knock on doors and introduce myself, but I don't force a student to
have interaction with me."
Wildes also tries to get creative. In both Kokernot and Collins, she
has posted a "Spiritual Flush" devotional on the inside of the doors of
every stall in the community restrooms. She focuses the devotional
thoughts—Bible readings followed by questions—about women of the Bible.
Even if the reader doesn't gain any biblical insight, Wildes noted, the
flyer is a subtle reminder that she is there and is available.
Wildes leaves note paper and a manila envelope on her own door at all
times for students who want to leave a prayer request, and she gets
many of them. She also organizes small-group meetings for the Collins
residents. A group studying spiritual formation learns different kinds
of spiritual disciplines, while one on interfaith dialogue discusses
ways to respect and have conversation with people of other faith groups.
Dr. Frank Shushok, Baylor's dean for student learning and engagement,
oversees the residence halls and was part of the original team that
designed the resident chaplain program. He said the chaplains play an
important role at Baylor. "Just the fact that we have them—before they
even do anything—says a lot about our institution," he said.
An Inviting Environment
Shushok said that the resident chaplain program, the creation of sacred
spaces, and the numerous other programs Baylor has implemented are part
of an effort to "reorganize worlds so that the student experience isn't
segmented."
Shushok explained, "One of the things that happened in the last half of
the twentieth century in higher education was the bifurcation of the
experiences of students into the intellectual life and then, on the
other side, the social/spiritual life. At some institutions, the
spiritual part of life was just eliminated altogether as an intentional
part of the programming of campus life."
Baylor's emphasis upon the pairing of the mind and the soul dates back
to the university's founding in 1845 and is reflected in the
institution's motto, "Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana" ("For Church, For
Texas"), which Baylor's trustees adopted in 1851. And over the decades,
Baylor's leaders have vigilantly maintained this position and put it
into practice, providing a firm foundation upon which the leaders of
today are continuing to build.
Judge Abner V. McCall, Baylor's president from 1961 to 1981, emphasized
this dual role. As he often said at commencement exercises, "It has not
been Baylor’s purpose to graduate merely teachers, scientists,
businessmen, lawyers, musicians, nurses, dentists, and physicians, but
better men and better women with a deeper love of God and a more
profound respect and more sensitive compassion for their fellow man."
Baylor has historically operated under the premise that the life of the
spirit and the life of the mind are not antithetical, but
complementary. "Baylor was chartered to confront her students with both
of these central aspects of life, and we believe that life will be made
more meaningful as a result," Dr. Herbert H. Reynolds, Baylor's
president from 1981 to 1995, told graduating Baylor students in August
1988.
Shushok said that, in light of Baylor's historic mission, it's
important for the residence halls to have spaces that represent the
whole life of a student. "Spaces like classrooms, offices, and
libraries represent the intellectual lives, and we like the chapels to
symbolically say there is room for spiritual formation," he said.
Having faculty members who office, teach, and live in the halls
represents the intellectual, while the resident chaplains represent the
spiritual, he added.
Because the new efforts and programs are non-mandatory, Shushok said,
they are non-intrusive. "There are no mandates or requirements. They're
just built into the environment. There is no requirement to go to
morning or evening prayers, and there's no pressure. They are
ecumenical, and they are part of the fabric of the community. There's
not a sense of pressure or trying to bear down on students, but letting
it be part of the fabric that has a presence and that invites. We try
to let the environment be inviting."
But there is something that is, has been, and always shall be
mandatory—Chapel. However, even Chapel has changed a lot recently. Or
maybe it, too, has gone back to the olden days. While there was a time
when Chapel—once called Chapel-Forum and then just plain Forum—was more
didactic and informative, it has returned to a decidedly spiritual
format through ongoing efforts that began with the Lilly grant money in
2000. The concept of vocation is central to the Chapel experience, and
since Burleson's arrival as chaplain, there has also been a concerted
effort to turn the time into a worshipful experience.
Ryan Richardson, associate chaplain and director of worship for
Baylor's Department of Spiritual Life, joined the chaplain's office in
2001 as a Truett Seminary student working four hours a week to help
lead Chapel. His job was to open each Chapel presentation with a
musical time of worship and prayer. "That evolved into trying to choose
speakers more intentionally who were speaking to the spiritual growth
of students," Richardson said. "There was a focus on vocation, like
bringing in a physicist and a Nobel Prize winner to talk about the fact
that all of life is a ministry in your chosen vocation."
 Since
Burleson (pictured at left with members of his Spiritual Life staff)
came to Baylor as chaplain in November 2007, Chapel has become even
more intentional in its focus. Mondays in Chapel begin with a short
time of worship and prayer, followed by a guest speaker or singer. "We
will welcome the students and pray, so they know this is a sacred time,
but it’s not a worship service per se," Richardson said. But Wednesdays
are always a worship service. "On Wednesdays, we roll out a pulpit,"
Burleson explained.
The worship experience also includes an educational component. "If
Chapel were voluntary, we could be strictly worship leaders and
pastors," Richardson said. "But Chapel is compulsory, so we need also
to be educators."
Burleson plans different types of worship services for the students to
experience. "At the beginning of the semester, Ryan did a great talk
about being willing to experience Chapel worship because you care about
one another,” Burleson said. "One particular style of worship may not
be your cup of tea, but you can give yourself to it and enjoy it simply
because you're around your brothers and sisters in Christ. We're not
only inviting students to experience worship together, but we’re also
teaching them about worship."
Halfway through the fall semester, Burleson saw signs that the
education was taking hold. "Yesterday in all three Chapels, we did lectio divina,
where you read a scripture and then you have silence. I don't know what
students thought about it, but they did it. It was quiet. We did lectio divina
with forty-two hundred students. If you had told me a year ago that we
could have pulled it off, I would have said you were nuts, so it's been
interesting to see how people learn to worship—they learn by worshipping."
Richardson agreed that the new system was having an effect. "I remember
two or three years ago trying to do a responsive reading in Chapel," he
said. "I thought I was really pushing the envelope, because we had
never done anything like that before. And I vividly remember thinking
partway through, 'I'm talking all by myself.' It didn't work. But now
something is happening with our students and with our program that is
causing them to come in expecting to at least experience things that
they might not be as used to."
Burleson said that inviting students to lead in Chapel is also part of
the educational process. "A few weeks ago, we had some freshmen who
prayed in Chapel, and our interns helped explain to them what a prayer
of invocation is," he said.
In addition to Chapel, Richardson supervises any other type of worship
on campus, such as special services for holidays or memorial services.
And when students act as worship leaders in other programs, such as
mission trips, Richardson helps train them to be leaders.
Field Work
In addition to Chapel and worship, the Department of Spiritual Life
includes all of the ministry-focused activities on campus. While the
staff of the university chaplain’s office used to be just the chaplain
and his assistant, it now numbers more than thirty and encompasses all
the functions of Baptist Student Ministries as well as Chapel, local
and global missions programs, and all spiritual formation programs.
Ryan Richardson is one of three associate chaplains, along with Kristen
Richardson (his wife), who is director of spiritual formation and
Baptist Student Ministries, and Becky Kennedy, director of missions.
Kristen Richardson's duties are so wide-ranging that it’s hard even for her
to describe them. Her job includes almost everything spiritual that
happens on campus, excluding worship and missions. Although she is paid
by the Baptist General Convention of Texas as the director of the
Baptist Student Ministries (BSM), her job is fully integrated with
student life in an intentional way, she said.
As a newcomer to the staff last fall, Richardson also supervises a
staff full of newcomers. But she chose to see that as a positive.
"We’re trying to figure out what to continue and what to add," she
said. "We're really looking at things with new eyes."
On the first day of school, the BSM hosted its traditional cook-out
that drew four thousand this year. "That was how we started the year
and how we recruited names to invite for retreats and Bible study
activities," Richardson said.
A Monday-night Bible study for freshmen is called Hybrid, and its motto
is, "Where faith and questions coexist."Richardson said that they
sometimes invite professors to speak. "The topics can get heavy, like
talking about faith and science," she said. "That's great, but maybe
they want to talk about dating, so we're trying to mix in more common
topics."
Other ongoing programs include a significant ministry to international
students—a Tuesday-night dinner that draws about eighty international
and twenty American students, a Bible study on Thursdays, a girls'
group on Mondays, and a system of student volunteers to help
internationals with papers and English language skills.
Richardson also supervises a hundred volunteers serving on Youth
Ministry Teams. Seven groups of about fifteen students go out every
Wednesday evening to churches to lead special programs for youth
groups, sometimes traveling as far as Dallas or Austin.
The list of Bible studies for different groups, retreats on various
topics, and plans for new events can sound endless. In addition to all
that, Kristen Richardson is the go-to person for other campus
departments.
Burleson explained, "Part of the shift in the model is that the BSM is
now a resource, while it used to be a community that you came to. For
instance, Kristen is going to sit down with New Student Programs,
because whatever is happening spiritually needs to come through
Kristen. That is a change for the BSM director to be at the table with
all of the directors of student life."
On Mission
In contrast, the focus of associate chaplain Becky Kennedy is pretty
easy to describe: global missions, local missions, and missions
awareness.
Awareness primarily means Missions Week, a large event in the fall with
numerous events for missionaries, involvement in Chapel, and
coordination of visiting missionaries into academic classrooms. Local
missions include Bible clubs through local charities, a weekly hospital
ministry, and a special-needs volunteer group that works with events
like Special Olympics.
Global missions has become a big focus for Baylor, and the types of
programs offered have been completely reworked in recent years.
Baylor's missions focus now—in keeping with its desire to provide
vocational direction for students—is on discipline-specific missions
trips, where students put their academic knowledge to practical use in
the mission field, under the direction of a Baylor faculty member. For
instance, several teams of engineers have traveled to Africa and
Central America to build and install electrical generators for
villages. Teams of accounting students have trained people in business
strategy, facilitated microfinance loans, and established Chambers of
Commerce. Pre-med students have served in clinics, a deaf education
team has worked with children, and social work teams have volunteered
with agencies in Africa dealing with HIV/AIDS and the aftermath of
genocide.
Last
summer, Tommy Takyi-Micah (pictured at right), a senior psychology
major from Edmond, Oklahoma, traveled
 with a Baylor group to Kigali,
Rwanda. As one of the students who performs as Bruiser, Baylor’s
costumed mascot, Takyi-Micah is part of Baylor's Spirit Squad. When
members of the squad decided they were interested in taking a mission
trip together, they coordinated with Kennedy and plugged into the
Rwanda trip. Takyi-Micah was part of the sports team, he said.
"We took old sports equipment with us like footballs and soccer balls
and volleyballs, and we'd go to an open field and just play with
whoever came," he said. "It was so amazing to see how happy they were.
Here we get a new soccer ball every season, but they were using banana
leaves they had rolled up into a soccer ball."
Takyi-Micah was also part of a team that led Sunday school in several
churches, and he enjoyed worshipping with the Rwandan Christians. "It
was so amazing to stand next to somebody and sing a worship song in
English while they were singing it in a different language," he said.
"At the end of the day, we worship the same God, sing the same songs,
pray the same prayers."
Takyi-Micah said the trip allowed him to learn a lot about life, faith,
and himself. He was especially touched by the capacity of the Rwandan
people to forgive in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide.
"Here in America, if somebody does something to us, we're not very
forgiving," he said. "But in Rwanda, it's such a small country that the
people are all interconnected, they all know each other, and they all
know what every person's role was during the genocide. But yet they've
been able to forgive each other. We toured a place where a group of
ladies weave baskets. Half of the women had husbands who passed away
during the genocide. The other half have husbands who are in prison
because they killed people during the genocide. So they are from
opposite tribes that were in war, and now they are working together."
The experience led Takyi-Micah to decide that he'd take a detour from
his career plans to spend some time giving back to his own country. He
plans to apply for a job with Teach for America, a national teacher
corps of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach in
under-resourced urban or rural public schools. When he finishes that,
he will apply to doctoral programs in psychology to continue toward his
goal of being a behaviorist. "I never thought I'd want to teach," he
said. "But the trip to Rwanda made me want to give back."
Both Kennedy and Burleson noted that a change in perspective is not
uncommon for a student who's been on a mission trip. And Burleson said
he hopes the impact will be far reaching. "Baylor is now sending out
several hundred graduates every year who, when they think of what to do
in the summer, they think of this kind of experience," Burleson said.
"Think about the impact on churches, the impact on vocations—if they
become an accountant but they go do entrepreneurship in Kenya every
summer because they developed that habit while at Baylor."
Hearing the Call
College has always been a time when young people are trying to decide
what to do with their lives. But Baylor's focus on offering vocational
help in a Christian context and seeing life as a stewardship affects
students even before they arrive on campus.
Rather than beginning with the question, "What should I do with my
life?" Baylor starts with "Who am I?" During orientation, all incoming
students take the StrengthsFinder test to help them determine their
strongest God-given traits and talents. Students who attend the summer
Baylor Line camps also see a focus on life as a stewardship.
Baylor is also now offering students opportunities to do community
service for class credit through a program in the College of Arts and
Sciences (see "At Your Service"). Student life programs like the Academy for Leader Development help students learn to see their own potential.
And even a variety of academic programs, like the Baylor
Interdisciplinary Poverty Initiative, housed in the School of Social
Work, focus on making a difference in the world before and after
graduation.
James Mattison, president of the senior class and a financial services
and planning major from Indiana, said he has appreciated Baylor's
Christian atmosphere and emphasis on vocation. "Sometimes college kids
get a little bit carried away with their independence, and it turns out
kind of like Lord of the Flies,"
he said. Eventually, most of them settle down, he said, and he thinks
it's important for Baylor to offer encouragement in the right
direction. "I think the Christian atmosphere at Baylor is important in
helping students eventually find their way. It's very unique in a
school this size, so preserving that is important."
Mattison said he certainly can tell the difference in himself from his
freshman year to now. He actually had to take a semester of Chapel in
the fall of his senior year to complete his requirements. "It means a
lot more to me this time," he said. "I think I've grown so much, and
I'm a lot more driven and focused. I actually like going to Chapel, and
I have several friends who go voluntarily."
A focused, committed graduate who has been educated "for worldwide
leadership and service" is the goal. According to associate vice
president Martha Lou Scott, "Ultimately, if we do what we are supposed
to do, they will leave with a better realization of how to contribute
to the world. It’s not going to stop here; it's just going to begin
here for them."
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