FOCUS missionaries to proclaim the Gospel at IUPUI

Fellowship of Catholic University Students missionary Anne Marie Brummer, right, explains a survey given to an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student during an activities fair held on Sept. 1 on the school’s campus. Standing behind Brummer are FOCUS missionaries Alexandra Kale, left, and Matthew Johnson. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

Alexandra Kale, Anne Marie Brummer, Matthew Johnson and Steve Rogers—all 20-somethings and recent college graduates—have come to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) with one goal in mind: to convert students to Jesus Christ.

They are missionaries from the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), an organization that seeks to help college students come to know Christ and the Catholic Church.

“If there are students walking around IUPUI’s campus whom we’ve been able to reach, and who have turned their lives over completely to Christ and they’re helping other students to do that, IUPUI will never be the same,” said Kale, the FOCUS team leader in Indianapolis. (Related story: Mission territory: Renewed Catholic campus ministry begins at IUPUI)

Based in Denver, FOCUS was founded in 1998 and currently ministers on 45 campuses in 25 states, including Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese, where missionaries were first sent in 2008.

The missionaries minister full time, leading small-group student Bible studies, organizing a couple of large events each academic year and doing a lot of one-on-one mentoring with students.

They commit two years to the FOCUS program and fund 100 percent of their financial needs through nurturing relationships with donors, often from their home parishes, that they describe as “mission partners.”

Since they help college students on their own personal journeys of faith, it can sometimes be hard for FOCUS missionaries to present hard statistics to measure their success.

But since they were founded in 1998, more than 200 young men and women who have participated in FOCUS programs have entered the seminary or religious life.

Three of the FOCUS missionaries at IUPUI are recent graduates of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Ill., which has a strong, long-standing Catholic campus ministry program.

Rogers is one of the Illinois graduates.

“It’s like going into another world coming here, where we’re almost starting from scratch,” he said. “It’s really different, but it’s really exciting because with the outreach we’ve done so far, we’ve already had so many students approach us knowing that we’re Catholic and saying, ‘Oh, we’ve been waiting for this for … years.’ ”

Father Rick Nagel, chaplain at IUPUI, foresees the FOCUS missionaries being able to effectively direct Catholic students to the new IUPUI Catholic Student Organization and to nearby St. John the Evangelist Parish in downtown Indianapolis for its 7 p.m. young adult Mass on Sundays and for other campus ministry events.

“When you have four full-time missionaries on campus, they can cover a lot of ground in a short period of time,” Father Nagel said. “[They’ll] also reach out to non-Catholics [and] evangelize Catholics that are indifferent or are on the fringes.”

In order to do their often intensely active missionary work, FOCUS missionaries are dedicated to attending daily Mass, praying the rosary each day and spending a daily holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament.

“Unless we are constantly coming to Christ and letting him fill us so that we can go out to the students and give him to them, we would be done in a couple of weeks,” Kale said. “You can’t give what you don’t have, and you can’t keep what you don’t give.”

Working on an urban campus of 30,000 students, where the Church has not had a visible presence for several years and where many commuter students are strapped for time, will be a challenge for the FOCUS missionaries. But it is one that they have vigorously embraced.

“Just to know that Christ has called me and Steve and Anne Marie and Matt to Indianapolis to change the culture here is incredibly humbling,” Kale said. “He’s given us an incredible task. But, at the same time, it’s one of the most amazing, joyful, rewarding and satisfying things we could do because we are doing what the Lord has called us to do.”

(To learn more about FOCUS, log on to www.focusonline.org, send an e-mail to iupui@focusonline.org or call 309-361-7875.) †