Give it that old college try.

I have observed and participated in the campus religious life of several colleges and universities over many years. Campus ministers usually understand that they face a major challenge in developing and maintaining a sense of community. Few of those they minister to are born into a campus community and few die there; each semester, students go and new ones come. This turnover guarantees that community must be renewed constantly if it is to survive, let alone prosper. In order to meet this challenge, campus ministers must delegate to others a number of important tasks. The result is a dynamic and changing community that Catholics rarely encounter elsewhere in the church.

Because this temporary condition is understood, campus religious communities treat the phenomenon of "passing through" in a confident way. Just as Christians are supposed to think of death as passage to a greater life, these Christian communities treat passage to a different community following graduation in a positive way. The process of change, like death and taxes, is inevitable and the community knows it. There is no desire for permanence; the church truly is people moving through life.

Over the same years, I have also observed and lived in Catholic parishes. Here the process of coming and going is not seen in the same challenging way. There is, after all, the church building, the school, the convent, the rectory to maintain. In thinking of the church, it is often these buildings that come to mind. The "physical" quality of this image is reinforced by the concept of parish boundaries, which are often also used to establish and describe membership--"I live in Saint Z...." The changing composition of a parish community is often seen as a sign of decline and decay. Old-timers pass away or move to suburbia and newcomers replace them, many of whom are not Catholic. These new residents are often seen as a loss for the community. The community pays little--or perhaps no--attention to the task of inviting them to join the church and participate in parish life.

Having seen this contrast between parish ministry and campus ministry, I believe there are some lessons to be drawn that would be useful to the parish and perhaps the future of the church. I do this from my perspective as the former head of a business organization, as a corporate director, and, until recently, a professor of business in two universities.

What most strikes me as the difference between parish and campus is "market strategy." On campus students are being challenged to find more meaningful ways to live. As a result, God seems to take on an important and changing meaning. In parish life the emphasis is on resisting change. Here the strategy is one of serving a community that is thought of as already in place and its future dependent on retaining the past rather than figuring out how to grow and welcome newcomers.

There is an elementary business principle at work here: a business that only serves the same customers is doomed. Companies that refuse to develop new markets cannot survive. The price of the company's products will rise with the inevitable rise in the cost of producing its product. This price increase will drive customers to more aggressive competitors. If a company is not seeking new markets, the quality of its product will be compromised. With standards relaxed, longtime customers--who have retained product loyalty--will look for a substitute. Thus a healthy business is always developing new customers and trying to improve the quality of its product.

At the same time, the faithful customer will remain with the company if the product, as improved, continues to offer the basic quality the customer is looking for and to which he or she is accustomed. The company's fidelity to the basic product, particularly when the product fills a real need, is a necessary part of a successful marketing strategy. The successful company has to search aggressively and constantly for new customers. The focus then has to be on how the company sells what it has to offer those who now need the product. Successful manufacturers of consumer products, such as paper diapers or of baby food, have come to understand that their market has to be broader than the young families currently purchasing diapers or baby food. Their customer base is constantly growing. And new potential customers need to be told that there is a company out there with a quality product they will want. As with the chaplain in charge of campus religious programs, so also in the parish: the reach of the good news, if you will, has to be aggressive and constant.

The campus minister and the baby food manufacturer know that the customers they "lose" have actually been "passing through"; they take the loss not as a sign of decline and decay, but as an opportunity to find new customers. When the company takes that reality seriously, it markets aggressively and pays a great deal of attention to advertising and communicating, often in many languages and through different means. In a sense, its goal is not unlike Jesus' instruction to the disciples, "teach all nations."

I do not mean to imply here that applying sound business principles to evangelization can deal with the intangibles; the strength of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer are, for me, very real. From the standpoint of measuring the true efficacy of religious institutions, my analysis should be understood to be quite limited and at best incomplete. Notwithstanding that, it seems to me that parish life in its present form is in need of some significant overhaul and that marketing strategies might very well be helpful. In this regard two dynamic dimensions of campus ministry could be useful for reflecting on parish life: the process of change is constant; and lay members of the campus community often assume roles left in parishes to priests and parish staff.

Many parishes would not understand or accept this way of looking at their situation. For the most part this means that there are parishes using strategies that cannot work. Of course, there are parishes that are exceptions, but in the main, most parishes I know feel threatened by change.

Take, for example, the matter of evangelization. American Catholics are hesitant to evangelize. In fact, Catholics take a certain satisfaction in appearing not to proselytize. Think of how many parishes in the inner-city boast of the great numbers of non-Catholics attending their school, yet many have a policy of not inviting parents to consider joining the church. This is like a car dealer boasting that while consumers may buy the competition's car, he services them at his repair shop. The real pride in Catholic inner-city schools, it seems to me, would come when the parents of students at these schools are eagerly sought after--as sought after as the tuition--to join the church.

In campus ministry new markets are sought out and new needs satisfied. Youngsters turned off on religion are encouraged to rediscover the church. The roles of the members of the community reflect a broad set of tasks. And with membership constantly changing, tasks also change. The community's interests--catechesis, choir, shelters, home care, youth groups, food distribution, prayer groups, Scripture study--often reflect the interests and talents of particular members. The tasks often are not institutionalized, and "lay ministry" is broadly understood, for many of these tasks fall to the initiative and responsibility of the laity. When this happens in the traditional parish, it is usually seen as a kind of default: not enough priests on hand to do the job. In fact, some jobs cannot be done as well by the clergy. Several priests have mentioned to me their difficulty in convincingly delivering a spiritual message with credibility to people who know the limits of a priest's experience. When a lay person can say, as I have in pre-Cana discussions, that prayer has a substantial role in family life, it is more credible than when that message comes from someone in the "prayer business." Yet this is rarely understood.

In addition to restricting the role of the laity, parishes often see their services primarily as product delivery on the part of the priest. But with fewer and fewer clergy, there are in some minds, fewer and fewer services to be had. This is a sure sign of a major problem. Since Vatican II, the church has said--though been slow to implement--that the services of the church are also delivered by the laity. This is not an invitation from on high, it is an essential part of the process of keeping the "product" alive. John Paul II speaks the same message in Centesimus annus: "Whereas at one time the decisive factor of production was the land and later capital--understood as a total complex of the instruments of production--today the decisive factor is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them."

John Paul sees enhanced human development as critical and warns that those unable to participate in society may be driven to a life of despair. "Many people...do not have the means which would enable them to take their place in an effective and humanly dignified way within a productive system in which work is truly central....They have no way of entering the network of knowledge and intercommunication which would enable them to see their qualities appreciated and utilized The pope is speaking of the economy and workers, but apply his words to the church and the laity. Unless the laity are challenged to participate in the church and to be part of a productive system where they have roles to fill, spiritual development will also "take place over their heads."

The role of delivering and receiving the services of the church is in the hands of the whole faith community. On college campuses where the reality of God's presence in the world and in the lives of the students has to be worked at constantly, the process is vital and energizing--and it is church. In fact, we are not truly church--regardless of our roles--if we are not working at these same tasks. We are not church if the meaning of church is a building; we are not members if we are not engaged in the work of the church. The pope himself writes, "the social message of the gospel must not be considered a theory, but above all else a basis and a motivation for action."

Our task, then, is to go beyond mere form in the parish. The lessons of successful campus ministry are clear: change is a good thing; we are all "passing through" and the parish needs to adopt that spirit. Openness to strangers, to newcomers, to those who must be invited to join with us is the way we spread the message of God. It is how we ought to be church.