Dear Ministry Partners,
With my time as an intern drawing to a close, I'm excited to share that I have accepted a job as Campus Staff with RUF at Mississippi College! I have loved working for RUF as an intern and am excited to continue working for it in a different capacity. I’ll transition from Mississippi State to Mississippi College on June 1st. Campus staff is a newer position in the RUF world so I have tried to answer some common questions below. Please email, call, or text me with any other questions you may have. I would love to talk to you about what I will be doing at MC!
What is campus staff?
Campus staff is a position created by RUF for women to work in ministry in a full time capacity in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). Campus staff come alongside the campus minister to equip students to grow in their faith and be leaders in the church and community after college. If you want to read more about it visit https://ruf.org/people/staff/.
How is this different from the internship?
As an intern, the main focus is outreach, bringing freshmen and fringe into the community of RUF. Campus staff works with the Campus Minister to develop and equip the students in RUF to grow in their faith and walk with the Lord. The internship is typically only a two year commitment while campus staff asks for a longer commitment of 3+ years.
Why did I decide to pursue campus staff?
Throughout the internship, the Lord has grown my gifting's in ministry, specifically in one-on-one's and teaching. Through personal reflection and prayer, I have felt an internal call to continue in full time ministry. Also through conversations with my students and my campus minister, I have had the external call confirmed as well as they have encouraged me to seek out a long term job working in college ministry.
Last fall, I started looking for jobs that would allow me to stay in ministry. Since I had loved working for RUF, I looked into their other positions and came across campus staff. After talking to the coordinator for the position and other people I know who have done campus staff, I decided to apply. Over Christmas break, I found out I had moved on to the next round of interviews. For campus staff and campus ministers, there is a more intense interview process called assessment that you have to go through before being offered the job. In February, I went to Atlanta to go through the formal, three-day process. While I was really nervous about speaking and teaching in front of people I didn’t know, God used it as another affirmation that I was being called into ministry beyond the internship.
Why Mississippi College?
I will let Grant fully explain what he will be doing post-internship in a future newsletter, but we had already decided we would be moving to Jackson for Grant to go to Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. So I contacted RUF to see if there would be a campus nearby where I could work. I had already met the Campus Minister at MC, Jeff Jordan, a couple times and after talking to him on the phone it seemed like a good fit. There is currently no female staff or intern at MC RUF so there is a need for a female to be on campus working with the female students.
I know MC is not an SEC school so some of you may never have heard of it! It is a private, Christian D2 school located in Clinton, MS which is a suburb of Jackson.
What am I most excited about with this new job of campus staff?
I am really excited to see the Lord continue to be at work in the lives of college students. As campus staff, you get to see that through the lens of an equipping and discipling role. I am really passionate about women equipping other women to grow in their faith and walk with the Lord and the staff position sets me up to be able to do that. I want to see college girls specifically grow in their knowledge of Scripture and the ability to interpret it and apply it to their lives. This ability to be confident in what they believe will allow them to grow deeply in their relationship with the Lord and take His Word to wherever He calls them post-college. These seeds of a life built on Scripture through the Spirit have the potential to grow and spread exponentially as they talk to their future co-workers about the Gospel or teach bible studies in their future churches.
What will the transition look like from intern to campus staff?
This summer will be spent primarily support raising for this new position. The Campus Staff position was created to be a more long term job than the internship and therefore there is an increase in budget for the position: roughly about double of what I raise now. I prayerfully ask you to consider continuing supporting me in my new job as campus staff. I will send out another email later with more specifics on how to do that but at this time I ask that you prayerfully consider partnering with me in my new role.
I will also travel to Colorado for orientation in June for Campus staff and again in July for all RUF training. There I will learn how to grow my gifting's in ministry and brainstorm with other staff on how to reach the campus for Christ.
Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I will be fully funded and able to start meeting with students on campus as soon as the fall semester starts!
I know this only begins to touch on what I will be doing with MC in the fall, so like I said above, please reach out with any questions you may have! I would love to share with you about how I will be partnering with MC RUF to reach students with the Gospel and how you can join in that mission as well.
In Christ,
Anne Michal Carter
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