Nashville RCC chapter hears from students in alternative ministries

Four Vanderbilt University Divinity School students shared their calls to alternative ministries with members of RCC's Nashville Chapter Feb. 17. Vicki Matson, the school's director of field education, coordinated the on-campus presentation.

Matson said half the students in field education were doing creative things in nontraditional settings. The four student guests did their field work in university teaching, chaplaincy, church agencies and a center for women leaving lives of addiction and prostitution.

One student interned with Weavings, a journal published in Nashville by The Upper Room. At another time, when she was working with people in addiction, she wrote her own curriculum.

"Have you ever thought about the ministry of writing?" she said someone once asked her. She is now exploring whether that will be her call.

Matson praised her entrepreneurial students. She noted that the divinity school student body was becoming younger. The mean age is now 26.

Today's students are less connected with a specific faith grouping than their predecessors, Matson said. "More and more I'm hearing students say, 'I don't know if I have a denomination,'" Matson explained.

The four students visiting the meeting said they were still discerning where they fit into the church even though they had been reared in a specific Christian denomination.

Vanderbilt University and its Divinity School are interdenominational institutions. They separated from their Methodist founders more than a century ago.