• Relationships made in heaven through the flawed contortions of human beings •
• CCO • ACF • Ministerial Leadership •
Read more: CCOmmentary – About ACF
CCO
Campus-ministry organizations have become familiar Christian service partners since the middle of the 20th century when well-known evangelical ones like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru), and Navigators came into existence.
Read more: Cawthon, Tony, and Camilla Jones. “A Description of Traditional and Contemporary Campus Ministries.” The College of Student Affairs Journal, Special Issue on Faith, Spirituality, and Religion on Campus, v. 23, no. 2, 2004, pp. 158-172. Description: This article examines campus ministries. It provides an overview of both traditional and contemporary campus ministry organizations as well as a discussion of the value of both types.
The essential concept is that staff members join their respective organizations which then strategically assign them to campuses of higher education to invite students into Christian faith and provide spiritual instruction and mentorship. These staff members raise their own salary support by inviting financial donors to contribute to their work through those employers. This means the organizations partner with supporting individuals, families, and even businesses.
Coalition for Christian Outreach’s model is a little different because it partners financially with churches to support CCO staff members as if they were their own staff. Those then assign their church surrogate staff member to a locally accessible campus.
Arcadia Christian Fellowship
ACF is an official club of Arcadia University (suburban Philadelphia, PA), a non-sectarian (though founded as Presbyterian), non-profit, accredited institution of higher education (IHE). It receives funding from AU and—by at least one telling (though unsubstantiated)—is the best funded of its clubs.
Read more: CCOmmentary – About ACF
For ACF to be an official club, it must have a board comprising registered undergraduates and it must have an advisor from among its employed staff. Technically, a partnering Christian-ministry organization like CCO only serves ACF on campus because the club’s board members authorize it.
ACF doesn’t require anyone from outside to provide spiritual support. Some private IHE retain salaried staff to provide spiritual leaders like chaplains. AU is not one of those.
Institutional clubs benefit from the spiritual guidance campus-ministry organizations can provide, particularly when those organizations have preferred biblical, doctrinal convictions. Newman House as a Roman Catholic ministry comes to mind. ACF embraces no official doctrinal orientation but leans protestant evangelical.
Practically, the fellowship has one weekly club meeting and several weekly bible studies.
Read more: Angles of Perspective and why I use adjectives like formal, institutional, official, organizational, spiritual, technical, and other adjectives that end in “-al.”
If this has all seemed confusing, it is. It gets better.
Ministerial Leadership
• Ben • Calvin • Nancy • Meesh •
Ben
The current CCO church partner to ACF is ‘New Life‘, Glenside (New Life Presbyterian Church). As of 2019, since that partnership began, Ben Thompson (@ CCO) has been the staff member serving the fellowship. He is a salaried staff member of both CCO and NLC. Practically, and particularly because NLC formally ordained him the Reverend Benjamin Thompson, he divides his time between church and ACF responsibilities.
Read more: Pastor Ben on CCO’s ministry at ACF (MailChimp)
Arcadia University recognizes Ben’s presence on campus, but is precise in pointing out that it does not employ him nor any other “volunteer adjunct religious advisor” (VARA).
Go to Ministerial Leadership list
Calvin
I am odd in my own right because I am a volunteer member of CCO and that at a ¼ part-time level. I draw no salary from CCO and draw no formal guidance from a partner church. CCO does recognize me as an official volunteer, so I benefit from its organizational resources and the privilege of using its name. (As far as AU is concerned, you might call me a volunteer volunteer.)
This is not to say that I am independent of any church leadership. That would be spiritual suicide for any Christian. I have been a member of Philadelphia Chinatown’s Chinese Christian Church and Center (C4) since 1989, when my wife and I first moved to the area as new professionals. While I have served the church in many different leadership and teaching capacities, C4 does not formally recognize my role with CCO and ACF.
My relationship with AU and ACF is as odd as I am because I was literally an AU employee for 17 years—as the Sciences librarian—beginning in 2005 and ending in 2022. During the majority of that time, I was the institutional staff advisor to ACF and saw its organizational support migrate from IVCF to CCO and, with the latter, from Glenside Bible Church (before Ben Thompson) to NLC. Since there was always a VARA supporting the fellowship, my role was not primarily spiritual, but official. I would occasionally attend fellowship meetings and provide institutional and some spiritual guidance.
Read more: CCOmmentary – About ACF
The gratification of being a CCO volunteer is that I now support Ben in an official, organizational capacity. And, technically, he is now my supervisor.
Go to Ministerial Leadership list
Nancy
As far as being a CCO volunteer (formerly known as an ‘associate’), I am preceded by another, Nancy Bower (@ CCO), who began her own tenure as a part-time organization member (at the same time Ben did) in 2019. So, the CCO presence at AU’s ACF is 3 strong. (Mathematically, that would actually be 1½ strong, because Nancy and I are both ¼ time.) As a volunteer, like me, she is not officially supported by a local church. She is a member of Bridge Community Church, Jenkintown, PA.
Go to Ministerial Leadership list
Meesh
There is also a non-CCO volunteer who is supported by another local church. Meesh Yardumian (Michelle @ NLD) is on the staff of New Life Dresher—a church plant of NLC—where she also worships. Her designated role is in administration and young-adult service.
If you could make sense of all that, congratulations. If you couldn’t, it’s okay. There might be a graphic representation in order.
Go up one level
2025’09’11’R: Published
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