Getting to know God at SEMO

Spiritual faith and education should never be in competition. The two should work together to benefit students. That's what the Rev. Dr. Andy Pratt hopes has happened during his 14-year tenure at the Baptist Student Center.

Pratt, director of the Baptist Student Center at Southeast Missouri State University, will be leaving later this month to take a position as vice president and chaplain for William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. He is a graduate of the school.

Pratt came to Cape Girardeau in 1988 when he was hired as the chairman of Bible at the Baptist Student Center and director for the campus ministry program. In those roles, he has taught seminary extension courses and religion courses at Southeast Missouri State University.

He expects interactions with students to continue while at William Jewell. He will conduct a weekly chapel service and serve as a spokesman of sorts for the college, keeping in touch with other Baptist constituencies like the Missouri Baptist Convention and American Baptists USA.

Chapel and classroom

Pratt said he sees the chapel as an extension of the classroom. He likes that the classroom building on the quad at Jewell is just across from the campus chapel.

"There's always conversation between the two," he said. "You don't have education without considering the spiritual. What we do in the chapel will be another way to convey what goes on in the classroom building."

The Rev. Mike Parry, now pastor of Fruitland Community Church, worked with Pratt for years at Baptist Student Center.

"Early on, Andy told me that he felt called by God to love him with all his mind. He was always thinking and helped challenge us to think. That was his gift to us."

As students are confronted with challenges intellectually, their faith also is challenged.

"If they only have a seventh- or eighth-grade faith understanding when they try to deal with those challenges or seeking answers to their questions, they'll find that their Sunday school faith is inadequate," Pratt said.

But as students are challenged in their spiritual faith, they'll find that their understanding increases as well.

"They need to have an adult Christian faith," he said.

Pratt has never seen SEMO students without some interest in religion, and the events of Sept. 11 have only added context to those interests.

However, students are more interested in how their own individual spirituality helps their understanding of faith, he said.

"There is something to say about how we live together in this world."

People want to know "how does my faith in Jesus Christ affect how I relate to people of other religions?" Pratt said.

Pluralism has added a new dimension to the study of religion. But the perennial question of evil and suffering continues to surface, particularly after the terrorist attacks last fall.

His role in both campus ministry and education has helped bridge the two worlds for many university students who came to campus seeking more than just the standard answers they'd been taught. Campus life challenges students to think for themselves, Pratt said.

"Our approach has always been that we don't have pat answers in a package," he said. "Our approach is to raise the questions and provide students with the possibilities."

The emphasis at Baptist Student Center has been to teach the Bible to students so they will know the Scriptures of the New Testament and Old Testament with depth. Knowledge isn't the end in itself but a means to an end of knowing God, Pratt said.

Historic, holistic ministry

Pratt wants students to find a holistic ministry at the Baptist Student Center: a place where their spiritual, emotional and intellectual health can be nurtured. What began in the decades before Pratt got to the Baptist Student Center will continue after he leaves, he said.

The Baptist Student Center was founded in the region in 1939. In 1952 it became an arm of the student development department at the Missouri Baptist Convention. By 2001, the responsibility for guiding the programming and ministry had returned to area Southern Baptists.

"The way this ministry functioned in 1939 is the way it functions in 2002," Pratt said. A local board oversees the ministry of what some call the "Baptist college" in Southeast Missouri.

As times change, so have the ministry programs at the student center. Over the years, the student population at the university has changed. Since only 30 percent of the student body lives on campus, many of the programs have been revamped for the 70 percent of students who commute to campus. Each Monday there is a commuter lunch served at the center, and a chapel service that was once held five times a week at 5 p.m. was moved to a weekly time slot at 6 p.m. Lockers were installed for students to use if they planned to stay on campus all day.

The challenge continues to be maintaining programs that work for the way students live today, Pratt said.

The future of the Baptist Student Center will involve working in cooperation with the area's churches. Some of that has already happened in the way the Missouri Baptist Convention reorganized and relates to campus ministry now. The campus minister serving the campus, Bob Houchins, works with churches to help them reach the students living in their area, Pratt said.

"We're not a church but an extension of the church," Pratt said.

Pratt has always known that his community was the people who attend the university. The challenge is helping those students keep their commitment to church and not disengage when they reach age 18.

"I liken it to a call to ministry to a people group, and that happens to be the people who live in this culture at the university," he said.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126