Training for the campus ministry

Conclusion We will finish as we started. The minister preparing himself for work on the campus is like an army chaplain entering the battlefield for the first time. Anticipatory anxiety is to be expected. This anxiety can paralyze efficient work and endanger the integration of the personality, but by careful training this same anxiety can become constructive instead of destructive and a source of great pastoral creativity instead of distress. A minister who is prepared for his task can enter a university community even when it is in great turmoil, without fear. He is free. With a realistic confidence in his abilities, with a sense of inner harmony and, most of all, with trust in the value of his service, he can be a free witness for God, strengthening hope, fulfilling love, and making joy complete.This article will be a chapter inIntimacy: Pastoral Psychological Essays by the Rev. Henry J. M. Nouwen, to be published in the spring, 1969, by Fides Publishers, Inc., Notre Dame, Indiana. (The author wishes to give special thanks to Jim Burtchaell, C.S.C., David B. Burrell, C.S.C., Ralph F. Dunn, C.S.C., and John Gerber, C.S.C., of the University of Notre Dame for their constructive criticism on the first draft of this article.)