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Funding varies

Lutheran Campus Ministry of the Greater Milwaukee Synod is one of more than 180 agencies doing campus ministry within the ELCA, said Sue Rothmeyer of ELCA Vocation and Education. At presstime, in the midst of financial challenges other sites wer reconfiguring and exploring new models for ministry, she said. The agencies are funded by various combinations of churchwide and synodical support and congregational gifts, she said. Some 400 cooperating congregations provide for campus ministry in their annual budgets.

Four of the 180 are ELCA congregations in their own right - campus ministries at the University of Chicago; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire.

Leaders struggle to resolve campus ministry losses

Decision to close the UWM ministry raised questions in the Greater Milwaukee synod.

For years, the Greater Milwaukee Synod has maintained campus ministries at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and nearby Marquette University. In March the synod’s Lutheran Campus Ministry board decided one of the pastors had to be let go. The decision to close the UWM ministry raised questions in the synod.

At a fair for student organizations, Marquette University’s Lutheran Campus Ministry distributes free cups of root bear to students. The Greater Milwaukee Synod’s Lutheran Campus Ministry board decided in March to keep the Marquette program open.

Social and economic changes in both Greater Milwaukee and the academic community left the board re-envisioning the nature and scope of its ministry, as are other Lutheran campus sites. Member Kevan Penvose said five years ago the board had “around $200,000 to cover operating expenses and the salaries of two full-time pastors. Last year it was considerably less than $150,000.”

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