A Moving Target

Earlier this week, I led the monthly outing with my students to a south side food pantry. 8-10 students hop in a van with me and head on the road. We join a formidable squad of parishioners and help man very busy stations for the morning as work with local clients to get food for the week.

As we prep, I have to pick a date, clear it with the parish, clear it with our school admin, create permission slips, reserve the school van, spread the word to the class that gets to go for the month, and organize the slips as they come in first-come, first-served.

This week while we were serving, I was surprised to hear from school that someone was looking for the van, which I had used to take the group many miles away from school. I swore that I had reserved it, and when we reviewed the reservation in our school system, we realized that I had mistakenly reserved it for PM instead of AM. I was mortified.

I apologized by email and sought out the person who was inconvenienced by my mix-up, and he completely understood the honest mistake. I was grateful for his patience and compassion, but I was still frustrated because I don't make those mistakes. I am fastidious and organized and detail-oriented. I rarely to never made those mistakes in my previous jobs, and I didn't want that to change now.

As a product of 20 years of Catholic education, and now an employee in it for 3-going-on-4 years, I am all too aware of how under-resourced we are on so many fronts. We are constantly tight against our budget, stretched thin, under-staffed, over-committed, etc. So, I am patient and forgiving toward most of the shortcomings that result from those realities. However, I'm used to being patient and forgiving when others make mistakes or overlook things due to how thinly we're stretched; I'm not used to being the perpetrator of those things. And that's what ruffled my feathers a lot. I hated that my busyness and rushing caused my mistake.

I feel strongly called toward Campus Ministry, and I have felt very affirmed and fulfilled in living out this call for the last 3-4 years. I had the privilege for the last two years to work Campus Ministry full-time without teaching responsibilities, though constantly fighting to reduce and minimize by substitute teaching demands, supervisory responsibilities, and other auxiliary assignments. Now, this year, in a new job, I am teaching about a half-load of classes, and during this busy middle trimester, I teach 60% of the periods every week.

I struggle vocationally with the constant struggle to have dedicated time to just be the Campus Minister. It's difficult to talk about because the significant demands placed on a school, its administrators, and especially on its teachers create circumstances in which everyone is working from some deficit: principals, deans, instructional/academic staff, and other people running the school are slammed with parent calls, meetings for the course of the school, budgets, and trying to find time to proactively implement the dreams they have; teachers are tasked with a full course load to teach, often different classes to prep, massive stacks of grading and gradebook-keeping, parent calls and emails and conferences, homerooms and attendance, and the various clubs and sports they support with their "extra" time.

So, I don't want to be a woe-is-me Campus Minister, but here I go a little. I struggle with the larger system of Catholic education where Campus Ministry often straddles the academic and administrative worlds with serious tenuousness. Most schools will dedicate resources to create full-time, directorial/administrative positions for admissions, academics, counseling, technology, athletics, development/advancement and sometimes more, but Campus Ministry's inclusion in that equation is a crap shoot.

I cannot imagine what kind of math and juggling goes into how those big-picture tasks are broken up, departmentalized, budgeted, and doled out to different staff members. Often, most or all of the people in those positions are not only given directorial/administrative positions such that they gain an integral voice in the running of the school, answering to the principal and/or president. Additionally, most or all of these people teach zero classes, have no regular supervisory or substitutional responsibilities (though they are usually called in a pinch when necessity requires it), and are thus given the time to focus on their departmentalized responsibilities.

When it comes to campus ministry, it's a crap shoot as to how a school can and will handle it. Sometimes, that means no dedicated campus ministry; sometimes, that means asking a teacher to take on campus ministry the same way they'd handle a club, like student council, in their "extra time"; sometimes, that means having a campus minister who also teaches a few classes and has teaching responsibilities; sometimes, that means having a campus minister who is doesn't teach but gets stuck with ancillary time demands; sometimes, that means have a dedicated campus minister who gets to be on the administrative level; sometimes, that means have a director and department of campus ministry. The varying needs, budgets, and profiles of schools lead to all kinds of remedies to this challenge.

The frustrating thing is that demarcating campus ministry is often to usually seen as flexible. Rarely, if ever, do other administrative departments and positions get subject to such redefinition. For whatever reason, admissions directors typically focus solely on recruiting and publicity, counselors on counseling students, their lives, and their schedules, etc. But for campus ministers, you never know how it will shake out.

There's something about the pastoral, catechetical skill set that campus ministers need to have that often leads to our being double-used as teachers. Maybe the degree in theology, often even an MA or MAPS or M.Div, is too attractive to not put in a classroom. Maybe the fact that the curricular discipline of theology relates so closely to ministry is too practical to not utilize. Maybe the intended profile of the position isn't enough to create a full-time job and the added teaching duties enable the school to have the person on campus full-time.

Whatever the reasonings are, it leads me personally to frustration, preoccupation, and intermittent identity crisis. When I'm frustrated with teaching, I wonder: am I being petty or close-minded toward my hybridized job? am I not open to a new direction? am I refusing a good invitation to grow? am I fighting the chance to serve a need?

It's frustrating because in a perfect world I would be open, embrace the growth, and respond to the need of the school and students. However, at my core, I don't want to feel guilty or selfish for wanting to be able to do the job I feel called to full-time. I don't think it's crazy to want to focus 100% of my time on dedicated campus ministry.

People talk with me and wonder if I just need to get to a bigger, stronger, higher-profile school where they can commit greater resources to such a position, thought that likely means sacrificing a bit by being at a school with less need and less diversity. I obviously don't know what the answers to all of these issues are, and I try to be humble, grateful, grounded, and reflective in the circumstances.

It's a bit exhausting. It's a constant moving target that requires consistently refocused aim and repeated reloading. I'm sure there are parallel challenges in other fields and professions, and I'm betting these questions will re-manifest themselves to me in every job I have.

In the meantime, I pray that God will continue to work through my enigmatic students, my wonderfully supportive co-workers, my talented administrators, and everyone else I serve with each day to continue honing and sharpening the focus of my vocation as I grow.