View past reports from the Board and the Chaplain.
Students, among them present and future peer ministers, and the chaplain make fish faces--and scare the fish-- through the aquarium that adorned a lounge at the Province V Spring Conference 2003
GROWING ASSETS
The 2002-2003 Report of the Co-Chairs of the Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago
In the past year the Brent House community has continued to thrive. We were pleased to note that average Sunday evening service attendance is up nearly 30 percent this year. Along with our weekly Eucharist, the heart and soul of Brent House is the programs, especially the internship and peer ministry programs that Chaplain Sam Portaro and the students have pioneered right here at Chicago. Considering the high level of involvement, it is hard to believe that the Mentoring Program began such a short time ago, only in the 1999-2000 school year. Currently, seven student leaders take much of the responsibility for the program, taking turns in preaching, encouraging new student seekers in the community, and developing creative work of their own, involving music, social outreach, and interfaith understanding.
The mentoring program grew to a full complement of seven students this year. Our plans for the Fall will expand the list to nine students. Especially exciting for the students is the fact that our student leaders now draw from college campuses all around Chicago. One of the new Peer Ministers in the Fall is from School of the Art Institute and will serve a new outreach to south Loop campuses. It is true that involving more students will stretch our funding (and our projected 2004 budget), a real risk in the present economic climate. But the Board feels that such a risk of faith is called for to continue Brent House's national leadership in developing the vocational discernment of the future members and leaders of the Episcopal Church.
The fruits of the mentoring program have been great in the last year. Brent House was proud to send a delegation of six students to the National Student Gathering in Albuquerque over the Christmas holiday. The experience of two of our graduating students shows the importance of vocational discernment. Jeremy Posadas and Kevin Caruso (who invited Jeremy to his first service at Brent House four years ago!) have each completed three years in the mentoring program. Jeremy will enter Union Theological Seminary this fall to begin the Master of Divinity program under care of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Kevin has begun the discernment process in the Diocese of Chicago as a new member of Church of Our Saviour in Lincoln Park .
Chaplain Sam Portaro (right) and a student panel, including Peer Minister Jeremy Posadas (second from left) at the Leifer Memorial Symposium at Newberger Hillel Center at The University of Chicago
When the house was purchased in 1929, a central part of its mission was "to foster interfaith dialogue among international and domestic students." In the past year one of the peer ministers, working with Hillel, organized an Iftar for the Muslim Student Association. About 50 people came to Brent House for this breaking of the Ramadan fast, making it a very successful event in itself and planting seeds of peace much needed at the University. Earlier this year, Sam moderated and Jeremy Posadas was a panelist at the Leifer Memorial Symposium on "Who Do You Say That I Am?"--a conversation among six students, Jewish and Christian, on perceptions each community has of the other. In nurturing young leaders for the Church, and in extending its famous hospitality to the larger university community, Brent House remains faithful to its original charter.
Brent House has benefited from the extraordinary leadership and care of our chaplain, Sam Portaro, for the last twenty years. As with all living things, however, the community must from time to time face the challenges of moving through periods of change, and we have begun to plan for such a major transition when Sam retires at the end of December 2004.
Because of Sam's wise planning and the generosity of alumni and friends, the house has been well maintained and brought up to date in significant measure, with plans moving forward for a second and final phase of its physical renewal. This, coupled with the good general health of our finances, stands to make the transition much easier. This year the Diocese of Chicago is fully funding our request for support--and that in the face of difficult economic times for the Diocese, as in the nation. This represents recognition by Bishop Persell and his staff that the future of the Episcopal Church lies in what Brent House does best--the nurture of "Inquiring and Discerning Hearts."
In these times of uncertainty, risks are easy to come by. We as a Board feel grateful to serve such a flourishing ministry, whose long-term contributions are certain to be more than worth our sustained attention and care in the present. Thanks to all of you for your support and, especially, for your prayers.
Respectfully submitted,
John Bramsen, Ph.D. David Albertson
Co-Chairs, The Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago
PIONEERING
The 2001-2002 Report of the Co-Chairs of the Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago
As colleges and universities across the country vie for Lilly Endowment and similar foundation funding to begin exploring the topic of young adults and vocation on their campuses, we at Brent House recognize that this is the work that we have pioneered. It was a landmark Lilly-sponsored book researched and authored here at Brent House that identified vocational formation and nurture as primary concerns for ministry on campus and raised awareness of this important work as essential to the life of the young adult and the health of the church. Our programs are intentionally designed to support young adults as they discern the vocations to which God is calling them in all facets of their lives. Brent House programs center primarily around the four areas of hospitality, faith development, vocational discernment and mentorship. This year, each area has benefited greatly from the input and initiative of our growing team of graduate interns and undergraduate and graduate peer ministers. In addition, we continue to be blessed by the consistently excellent leadership of our chaplain, Sam Portaro.
One area in which the Brent House ministry excels is in offering opportunities for young adults to lead and shape their own worship lives. In a typical week, Brent House offers two Eucharistic services, Taize prayer, four services of Evening Prayer, a joint Lutheran-Episcopal Bible study and a weekly opportunity for those considering ordained ministry to gather and explore that calling together. Many of these services are student-led and all include student participants. Several young adults have remarked that the opportunity to preach or lead music at these gatherings has helped them to grow in their own understanding of their faith and has increased their confidence in their ability to lead others. These, we believe, are welcome words in a Church climate that is all too aware of an aging membership and a shortage of incoming lay and clerical leadership.
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CAPTION The Chicago delegation at the Rovince V Spring Student Conference represents 35% pf total attendees |
As Sharon Parks, the author of a landmark study on young adult development, reminds us,
How faith is formed and reformed in the young adult years is clearly a matter of importance for young adults. It is also of enormous importance to our society as a whole. The day inevitably arrives, for example, when we find ourselves in the care of a physician younger than we are, or we elect an official half our age. Thus, how we meet young adults as they begin to know they have a life to live and invest has consequences for all of us. Moreover...young adulthood is the birthplace of adult vision, and within a positive mentoring environment it can galvanize the power of ongoing cultural renewal. (Big Questions, Worthy Dreams, p. 8)
Thus, we are especially thankful to those of you who have honored this ministry and the young adults it serves with your gifts of time, talent and treasure this year. Of special note are the faculty and staff of the University of Chicago and the clergy and lay members of the Church who have shared their time and experiences as speakers for our weekly "Dinner and Conversation" gatherings and as sponsors and mentors to those members of our community who sought baptism and confirmation this year. In addition, we are touched to be remembered in the wills of longtime Brent House supporters, most recently Thomas Owens and former chaplain, John Pyle, and by the faithful generosity of those who remember their time at Brent House with fondness.
Thank you all for your investment in the lives of the members of this community. We welcome you to join us at anytime for services or speakers. Our schedule is posted on our website http://www.brenthouse.org, where you can now make a gift to our ministry using a credit card and the secure online services provided by Network for Good; their icon on our home page will direct you. If you would like to be added to our newsletter mailing list or to receive our weekly e-mail post, please contact Sam Portaro at sportaro@brenthouse.org or (773) 947-8744. We wish you well in the coming year.
Respectfully submitted,
Kerry McCruden John Bramsen
Co-Chairs, The Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago
BRENT House * The Episcopal Center at The University of Chicago
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Remember the "Paint-by-Number" set? This kitschy hobby encouraged many a budding young artist, myself included. A canvas textured board was imprinted with a light gray pattern of irregular shapes, each numbered. An assortment of small jars filled with paint bore corresponding numbers. Matching colors to numbered fields, a steady hand and patience were about all that was needed. If one stood back far enough and squinted, the end result sometimes even resembled art. But it lacked the shading, and the feeling, of the creative. It was art by the numbers.
We've begun to hear about a new initiative in the Episcopal Church called 20/20. Simply put, the project aims to double the numerical size of the communion by the year 2020. In some regards it seems another stab at a "Decade of Evangelism" with a more tangible goal and twice the time to achieve it. Unlike the previous Decade of Evangelism, the 20/20 program does seem more intentional in design. Conferences and workshops have begun, and more will no doubt follow.
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Meanwhile, I view this phenomenon from a sideline. I watch while looking back over more than twenty-five years on campus. At the moment, I do both while looking back on the year at Brent House.
I'm also thinking of numbers. I think of the significant percentages of Episcopal Church membership in previous generations who claimed a campus ministry experience as crucial to that decision. I'm also mindful that the Jewish B'nai B'rith, the Roman Catholic Opus Dei and evangelical Christians have all publicly stated their intent to grow their believing communities by targeting campus ministry as a priority mission field. Judging from what I see on my own campus and as I travel around the country, they all seem to be putting their money where their mouths are.
It makes sense. If you want to play by the numbers. With more than 700,000 students enrolled on campuses in Illinois, the Diocese of Chicago could double its baptized membership of 45,000 by successfully reaching six percent of this population. Over twenty years, that falls to less than one half of one percent per year. Since national campus enrollments stand at 14.5 million, the Episcopal Church could double its 2.4 million membership by reaching seventeen percent of this total, divided by 20 years. That means the church could reach the goal of double its present membership by 2020 by reaching less than one percent of the total campus population annually. But that's just running numbers, playing the numbers game.
God is an artist, a creator, not a hobbyist who paints by numbers. We are called to be co-creators, not simply to find the numbers and color within the lines. The sculptor sees the figure in the stone and liberates it. The painter sees light and shadow, not paint. The novelist follows the character into and through the story. Ministry and mission are creative activities. The church is called into being, not designed.
Our ministry at Brent House is a work of art. Take a look at our website: www.brenthouse.org. Want some numbers? Look carefully; they're in the picture, not under it. You'll see a Mentoring Program that has grown in less than two years from one participant to seven young adults being mentored in vocation and leadership;
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you'll find a calendar filled with six weekly worship services: two Eucharists and four daily offices; at least three weekly programs: a dinner conversation and two Bible studies; and other varied activities serving a diverse community and involving 80-100 persons each week, 50-65 of them members of an active core of 150-175. Our ministry is not the result of any design we've intentionally imposed, but has emerged from the vibrant community that has always been on this campus and that is present on every campus, is everywhere in God's world; our ministry has been and continues to be a response to that life, a willingness to serve that life.
I've written about this at greater length in Inquiring and Discerning Hearts: Ministry and Vocation With Young Adults on Campus. When asked, as I often am, to help others eager to do something?anything?on campus in the name of the Episcopal Church, I have no design to give them, no flip charts, power point presentations. I have only a listening ear, an encouraging word, and confidence that God gives us all we need if we're willing to serve. If we're willing to serve God's ends, that is.
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I still believe that God calls us into deeper relationship and into the fullness of life. I heard that call and found that life through and within the Episcopal Church. At Brent House we offer hospitality and provide resources in and through the Episcopal Church, and we see others being led into deeper relationship and the fullness of life through these ministries. We grow not just in number, but in rich complexity and depth, year after year.
Take a long look. Come close, marvel at the detail. No need to stand afar and squint. This is a work of art. And the signature it bears is God's.
Respectfully,
Sam Portaro Episcopal Chaplain The University of Chicago
MARKING MILESTONES
The 2000-2001 Report of the Co-Chairs of the Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago
This has been, among other things, a year for marking milestones--not the least of which was the joy it gave the board, members of the Brent House community, and friends to share with Sam Portaro his pair of anniversaries: twenty-five years in the diaconate and priesthood. The celebration in November appropriately recognized not only Sam's gifts to campus ministry but those he brings to the wider world. A remarkable priest, Sam is greatly valued for his pastoral and liturgical skills, his preaching, his intelligence and wisdom, his savvy use of resources, his warm humor and his passionate commitment to ministry. He is one of the Church's treasures.
On the topic of treasures, Brent House currently finds itself in a robust financial position. Our budget is in very good shape and significant progress has been made towards fully funding the Endowment Initiative. While there is still a big challenge to be met, it is gratifying to report that $73,000 in individual pledges have been made by the ECC membership. Additional gifts were received this year from Virginia McDavid; the Canterbury Alumni of William & Mary College; the estate of Evelyn Durkee; and the benefit concert by alumna Laura Amend. These gifts and pledges, added to the to the actual endowment balance of $181,800, brought the initiative total (before market fluctuations) to $270,500.
We have experienced another exciting program year with a number of terrific conversation partners, including Nobel Laureates Leon Lederman and Robert Fogel, Jean Elshtain, David Bevington, Jonathan Lear, Allen Sanderson, Martha Nussbaum, Amy & Leon Kass, Ronne Hartfield, Deirdre McCloskey and others. There has also been a stunning increase in attendance at worship, particularly on Sunday evenings--up as much as 50 -100% at various times during the year. This growth almost undoubtedly owes to the greater visibility given to our programs by the leadership of the intern and peer ministers. Which brings me to perhaps the most significant piece of this report in terms of growing our ministries and their effectiveness.
Kevin, Jeremy, Anne and Katherine en route to NatGat 2000 in Colorado
When we began the Mentoring Program during the 1999-2000 academic year, we had one graduate intern. This year (2000-2001) we have had one graduate intern and four undergraduate peer ministers. For the coming academic year we have stretched our resources to include all the applicants (as they were all qualified) and will have two graduate interns, one graduate and four undergraduate peer ministers. One of the graduate interns is a second-year ministry student in the Divinity School. The other is a recent graduate of Yale Divinity School and will be doing an internship year prior to diaconal ordination in the Diocese of Connecticut. Of the four undergraduate peer minister, two are returning from this year's class; two are new. The graduate peer minister is a second-year ministry student in the Divinity School and newly confirmed through our own Soul Friends Class.
Episcopal students from all over the nation relax at table at NatGat 2000
One of the returning undergraduate peer ministers is a rising third-year student in the College and a Lutheran, whose position is now shared, in time and funding, with the Lutheran Campus Ministry, part of our response to the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat, Call to Common Mission. We have identified growing lay support for ministry on the rapidly expanding campus of UIC and intend to use the interns and peer ministers, in part, to support that work, thus moving beyond the University of Chicago. The fact that our mentoring program has expanded so rapidly-from one to five to seven participants in just two years-tells us that it is addressing a significant need. It reflects additionally our commitment to expand the ministry both geographically and ecumenically.
In short, these are exciting times for the Brent House Ministry. Ours is a lively response to the Gospel, flexible and with a profound understanding of the institutions and people we serve. Lives are being enriched by what happens in the house on Woodlawn Avenue and around it. People come to the Church through our programs, our worship, our fellowship-and they stay.
Respectfully submitted.
(The Rev.) Michael A. Johnston, Ph.D. Kerry McCruden Rector, Grace Church, Oak Park PhD Candidate, Loyola University, Chicago Co-Chairs, The Episcopal Church Council at the University of Chicago
In this, our ANNIVERSARY YEAR from May 1, 2000 to May 1, 2001 through the generosity of
Members of the Episcopal Church Council Canterbury Alumni of William & Mary The Estate of Evelyn Durkee
Laura Amend-- Glen Bowersox Gretel Braidwood & Raymond Tindel--Virginia McDavid Jane Owen-- Charles Witke & Aileen Gatten The Rev'd Jervis Zimmerman
gifts totaling $36,720 were added to our ENDOWMENT
BRENT House * The Episcopal Center at The University of Chicago
As I write this report, we're at the end of a "Year of Anniversaries." The year 2000 marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of our ministry by Edna Biller at Racine College (now the DeKoven Foundation) in Racine, Wisconsin. Widow of George Biller, Bishop of South Dakota, Mrs. Biller was a dormitory house mother on the small campus. Over the Christmas holiday in 1925 she opened the dorm to host a group of foreign students who were unable to return to their native lands at this special time in the Christian calendar.
She was so moved by the response to her invitation that Mrs.
Biller
renewed it annually, the gathering growing with every year. She discerned
that God was, through these students, calling her to a new ministry. She
turned to other women-The Women's Auxiliary of the Episcopal Church, and
Marianna Procter Matthews-sharing her vision for a "national center for
conference and devotion" from which base she could expand this outreach to
a larger community of international students. Bishop Charles Henry Brent,
whose career included service as missionary Bishop of the Philippines and a
lifelong commitment to a broad ecumenism respectful of religious pluralism,
died in 1929; Mrs. Biller's ministry seemed a fit memorial, so from the
outset, it seems, the work was to bear his name. A spacious house in
Chicago was purchased and opened to greet its first guests in 1930, making
this year the 70th anniversary of the ministry's location to Brent House.
The house became a residence for several international students and, in addition to Mrs. Biller, was staffed by a cook and housekeeper. The periodic conferences, coinciding with winter and spring academic holidays, drew students from all over the nation. Early registration lists-handwritten, often in the characters of foreign alphabets-in large, leather bound registers (now in the archives of the Diocese of Chicago) show visitors from campuses as far west as Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard and Columbia in the East.
Many were students from China and India, hence when Mrs. Biller and those associated with Brent House compiled the first (and perhaps the only) report of the state of her work in 1934, it was entitled "An Experiment in Oriental-American Friendship." In the course of this year's preparations for our anniversary celebrations, I was drawn again and again into the pages of this little paper bound volume that holds the precious words of our beginnings.
The international component of our ministry has receded from its former prominence, testimony to the modern awareness of our own status as foreign transplants, or descendants from them, to a land only a few of us can claim as truly native; our growing awareness of the global community's permeable boundaries; and a right sense of humility in the face of these realities. But otherwise, our ministry continues as it was a begun-an experiment in friendship.
A friend, the dictionary says, is one to whom we are attached by affection or esteem. And an experiment is a test or trial. The two go together. The building of any relationship involves testing and trying, introducing into the sphere of one's own life an "other." With every new addition, our limits are tested and tried; we're stretched and often changed. As Christians we are challenged, additionally, to make this effort the center of our life's work. God, Jesus tells us, has mandated that we shall undertake this experiment daily.
Moreover, we are further commanded to bring every such experiment to its fulfillment in friendship. We are adjured not to fail. Of course, we are fortunate when our experience of another becomes an attachment marked by both affection and esteem. But the dictionary allows a bit of grace in the conjunction "or." We may call another friend when bound either by affection or esteem. Certainly among my friends I number some I find it hard to esteem but irresistibly lovable, and some I could never actually love (or even like) but whom I can still respect, if only for the strength of their convictions and my grudging appreciation of their critique.
One of the new experiments we undertook this year was the hiring of four peer ministers, four students in The College, who through their own experimentation are "trying on" the experience of ministry.
The Peer Ministry Team
Two Episcopalians, a Lutheran and a Methodist, they are experiencing nuanced differences in American Christianity, as well as the other distinctions their ages, interests, genders, ethnicities and sexualities add to the mix. When, at the beginning of the year, we met for the first time, each shared the frustrations of being a believing student on a contemporary campus. Here they cannot assume a shared, positive experience of the Christian faith; among peers they find that they must be somewhat circumspect at identifying themselves as believers, and somewhat cautious at sharing their faith.
They constitute a new kind of "foreign" student in a pluralistic culture within which the dominant constituency (if any can be called a majority) is essentially religionless, being at one extreme irreligious and at the other extreme, vaguely spiritual but with no visible means of support, no connection to any community of religious discipline or practice. Challenged to identify and articulate the specific areas of experience each desired to engage, the peer ministers agreed that a central interest and goal was the formation of a wider community of student believers.
So, with our encouragement, they began to reach out to the student leaders of the varied religious organizations on campus. They invited Jews, Muslims and Hindus. They contacted Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical Christians. They sought out Unitarians and Pagans. They extended the hospitality of a shared meal and an offer of collegial conversation, a tentative exploration into new relationships. Their first invitation gathered twelve; their second doubled the number to twenty-four. They are only at the very beginning of their experiment, but that they are experimenting is the key element. They are going about the business, the ministry, that has been our mission from the outset. In their own way, reinterpreting the mission to serve a new generation in a context very different from 1925, they remain true to the experiment begun by Mrs. Biller.
This, it seems to me, is the happiest anniversary present: to find some seventy-five years after an initial commitment that the commitment remains alive and vital and fresh and new. To her credit, and God's, Mrs. Biller's original impulse was wisely based on two essentials of our faith-Experiment and Friendship. And both continue. That's something to celebrate.
Respectfully,
Sam Portaro Episcopal Chaplain The University of Chicago