To start the year, the student leadership team at Ashland set to work implementing the plan of action they forged this past summer at the Campus Ministry Leadership Institute in Philadelphia. The team’s concept for the 2008-2009 school year is titled C5 (Catholics Creating Catholic Community on Campus), a program that will incorporate an ecumenical outreach to the campus. In effect, the program would take the ministry out of the chapel and immerse the campus in a Catholic Community that will engage in everything from prayer, social events, worship and even reach as far as the classes offered at the university.

Sporting their new T-shirts adorned with the new C5 logo, the leadership team set up to cook out and provide drinks for the passing freshman students as they journeyed across campus for the first time as official students. The cook-out went so well the students hosted another on Labor Day with an intense game of whiffle ball following.

The rest of the fall semester activities are also in full swing. With mass attendance and freshman involvement skyrocketing, the rest of the campus has taken notice of the ministry’s success. The president of the University, Dr. Fred Finks, came with his wife to join the students for Newman Night on the 15th of September, and he was the kick-off speaker for the first discussion series of the semester, “Our Faith Stories.”

Small groups are being formed to participate in events such as a leadership based scripture study, the rosary, RCIA, Catholic prayer styles, and a devotional book club.

Nathaniel T. Addington, NCCM Intern