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Susan Terry named second campus missioner

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

The Rev. Susan Terry is ready to get to work. Starting April 1, she was named by Bishop Dean Wolfe to complete the two-person team of campus missioners for the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas. She joins the Rev. Craig Loya, who started work in January, and together they have a lofty goal ahead of them — to establish an Episcopal presence on every college campus within the diocese. It’s a goal Terry wholeheartedly supports.

She has spent all 20 years of her ordained ministry as a chaplain in Episcopal schools, first in Arizona and more recently in Georgia. That experience convinced her that the church needs to approach campus ministry differently. “I’ve always thought we needed more creative ways to reach our Episcopal students, and those who are searching,” she said.

“There is an incredible need to continue reaching out to them after high school. Being in college is such an exciting level in their lives,” she said.

Bishop Wolfe said he is thrilled to have Terry as part of the campus team. “I am delighted to welcome Susan Terry to our staff,” he said. “Her extensive skills and experience are a fine compliment to an already excellent staff.”

Terry and Loya will continue to develop a plan that places undergraduate peer ministers on the front lines of ministry on campuses, supported by recently graduated campus interns and the two of them as campus missioners. That model, she says, has caught the eye of others involved in campus ministry across the country because of its new and creative way to serve students.

Terry said she especially is looking forward to working with the peer ministers on each campus, to teach them, help them develop their ministry and assist them in their spiritual journey. She also welcomes the chance to work with parishes in college towns as they discover the best ways they can serve students there.

Spiritual gift of teaching
Terry graduated in 1971 from Saint Mary College in Leavenworth after spending two years at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va. After college she enjoyed a career as a teacher of English, history and theater, using what she calls her primary spiritual gift of teaching to serve high school students.

A lifelong Episcopalian, she also had a growing sense of call to further ministry in the church. Because women couldn’t be ordained priests at that time, that possible vocation had to be set aside.

But church canons were changed in 1976 to allow women to become priests, and Terry went on to attend seminary at the Episcopal Theological School in Kentucky (now closed) and graduated in 1986. When she became a deacon in the Diocese of Lexington that year, she was only the second ordained woman to serve in that diocese. When she went to the Diocese of Georgia in 1988, she was the first.

Terry said she will miss serving the students and faculty at Augusta’s Episcopal Day School where she worked for the past 18 years. “The school was very healthy, and the children were wonderful,” she said.

But she knew the time was right to make a change, with the chance to be part of an innovative campus concept. “I have an incredible sense of peace that this was the right thing to do, and that this is the right time,” she said. “It’s the peace that passes understanding. And it was the right time for the school, too.”

A kind of homecoming
Coming to Kansas and especially to Lawrence, where the campus ministry office is located, is a homecoming of sorts for Terry, although she’s never actually lived there before. But her parents retired to Lawrence in the early 1970s, so she and her children made frequent visits to see them.

Her father, James Terry, was the first deacon to serve at Trinity, Lawrence, and he also was the deacon at her own ordination to the diaconate. He died in 1995. Terry’s mother, Wim, continues as a member of Trinity. Her sister and brother-in-law are members of St. Margaret’s, Lawrence, so Terry said she feels very connected to the area.

Her oldest daughter, Catherine, recently joined her mother in a move to Lawrence, where she works as a radiology technician and is a writer. Another daughter, Meredith, is an actress in New York; her son, Robert, works for Verizon in Augusta, Ga.

Interested in questions
Terry said she will draw on her experience of campus ministry to reach out to today’s students. The Episcopal chaplain at Mary Washington College influenced her, she said, especially the study group he led that encouraged students to discuss and debate. That kind of inquiry is an important thing to offer students who are searching.

“Being an Episcopal presence on campus is an invitation to people to come search with us,” she said. “They’re more interested in having questions than in the right answers. That’s a strength of the Episcopal Church.”