Episcopal Campus Ministry

Ben Garren, Student Director for Communications

Episcopal Campus Ministry (ECM) is a spiritual community that comes together once a week for prayer, discussion, and a shared meal. Most weeks involve a worship service with a themed topic, for instance the freshmen hosted a "Just War" themed evening wherein we prayed for peace and discussed the nature of war in Christian terms. We also bring in guest speakers, two examples from last semester's ranks include a nutritionist and a Zionist movement scholar. Each hour-long program is followed by fellowship over a shared meal cooked by members of the group.

Throughout the year we have specific retreats within the community. One of the all-time favorites is the Labor Day beach retreat to Emerald Isle. The weekend is about group formation, worship, and chill-time. We also hold a fall retreat where we go for an evening to Camp New Hope. We have a barbeque, sing songs, say evening prayer, and this year had Joel Weinberger come and lead us in a discussion on the Lord's Prayer.

Intermixed with the official meetings are various unofficial get-togethers. There is an ECM men's dinner most Wednesdays. We hold random movie nights in the campus center. Also family groups, sub-groups within ECM, have their own functions that can be anything from sharing a Vermonster from Ben and Jerry's to a formal retreat.

ECM also strives to do service within the community. Our members take an active part in the special service for people with developmental disabilities held at the Chapel of the Cross, the prison ministry, Mission 5000, and others. ECMers also are active lay Eucharistic ministers and acolytes at the Sunday services.

This year has been different in one major way. We sent our chaplain of many years out to the wilds of Roanoke, Virginia, at the beginning of the semester. Running without a chaplain has been a difficult yet, in many ways, rewarding experience that we are glad to see coming to an end as we joyously bring Tammy into our midst.

One of the rewards has been the full realization of a change that happened many years ago. This change was in the roll of the "CAs" or Chaplains Assistants. This role is not as much one of assistants but as leaders, with the chaplain as a learned guide in this process, something along the lines of Tolkein's Gandalf in The Hobbit. The realization of this came about at an ECM meeting where we were discussing the nature of ECM, the chaplaincy, and the CAs. We asked if any one had a better name for the CAs. Now, in the midst of our discussion we had defined ECM as flock, the chaplain as the shepherd, and so someone called out, "sheep dog!" for the CAs. Now at the time no one took us seriously but the name grew on us. Knowing, however, that introducing ourselves as sheep dogs might not be appropriate, we shortened it to the initials S.D. and realized that could equally stand for Student Director. Thus the leaders of ECM are now the SDs, which means either student director or sheep dog depending on our mood and the lunar cycle.

I hope the above gives you a better picture of what ECM is and how it all fits together. Feel free to e-mail me at bgarren@email.unc.edu if you want to learn more or become more involved.