--written by Dan Keating
It was during the school year, 1979-80, that we made the change from being the "Dorm District" on campus to officially being UCO. I was beginning my junior year, living in Markley, when we made this change, and I recall that we were both excited and apprehensive about the change at the same time. We didn't want to lose any of the riches that we had, but we wanted to be effective in new ways.
Why did we change from being the Dorm District of the Word of God to being UCO?
We made this change because it was increasingly felt that there was too big a jump between normal life on campus and life in the Dorm District. There was something of an "all or nothing" quality about the Dorm District which made it difficult for people to benefit from it if they were not ready to make a very serious commitment of their lives.
The aim was to maintain the quality of the internal life of the Dorm District on campus, while at the same time allowing more students to benefit from what the Lord had given us. Then, investigating the Community could be a further stage for those who were ready for this and desired to look into it. Simply put, we wanted to make available to many more students what the Lord had given us, even among those who would not become part of the community.
Has UCO been successful in this?
On the whole (and of course imperfectly) I think we have succeeded in what we set out to do. UCO has been able to make available many of the wonderful riches of life developed in the Dorm District to a winder set of students. I think we have kept the quality of discipleship high (we have somehting of a reputation on campus as being a very highly committed group), while at the same time allowing students more space than previously to see whether participation in the community, short or long term, is something that God is calling them to.
Do we still have prayer meetings, Life in the Spirit Seminars, and households?
We still have all these things as the "meat and potatoes" of our outreach. We have maintained a weekly prayer meeting through all these years (with a short hiatus in the mid-1990s when we put more into weekly bible study.) The first prayer meeting of this academic year (2006-07) had about 70 people in attendance, mostly undergraduates. We meet at present at University Reformed Church in the basement.
Every year we have sponsored a Life in the Spirit seminar (or its equivalent), as a key tool for young people to encounter Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit directly. Our present model is to have the course on Friday early evening (6:20-8:00 pm), with a pizza dinner to start. We invite families from the area to bring salads and desserts (we buy the pizza), and then the students and younger staff put on the LSS (which we call Life in the Spirit Fridays.) It continues to be well attended, and to produce real fruitfulness.
Households . . . this past summer (2006) we had a men's household on Catherine St. (712 and 716) with 15 men, and a parallel women's household on Ingalls St. with 7 women. Some of our students were also serving in programs in Detroit, working with inner city kids. We have shortened the household program to the first half of the summer, in order to give more space for other mission work, time with family, etc. so the summer households are shorter, but rather intense and full of fun. We also have both a men's and women's term-time household running and these serve as centers for hospitality, as well as providing the proverbial "sand-paper" ministry that comes from living at close quarter with others.
How about outreach in the Dorms?
This has been harder to sustain in a concerted way, but we have had students in the dorms over the years, and in this present year (2006-07) we have students (on Mission) in Markley, East Quad, Stockwell, and Martha Cook. The dorms haven't gotten any nice to live in, and many of the Christian kids who come to campus would rather avoid them and move out quickly. The staff of UCO has regularly sought to "win" the students to remain in the dorms for the sake of mission - but they are quite a bit more expensive, and many parents are not keen on this option for their sons and daughters. So we have partial success here. This year is a great source of hope.
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