Bridget Deegan Krause, University Minister for the University of Detroit Mercy
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My name is Bridget Deegan Krause. My title is University Minister for the University of Detroit Mercy and I specifically work with the college of health professions and School of Dentistry. My title technically is University Minister, but those are the specific areas where I do my ministry and provide support.

What does your position entail?

My job entails providing pastoral care for students, facility and staff at the University of Detroit Mercy; I also have some responsibilities for a little bit of teaching. I am in the classroom every now and then providing some educational opportunities, usually a guest lecture here and there on spirituality or pastoral care, spiritual care of the dying, nursing and spirituality, but typically it's a lecture that would be related to the health professions. I provide some educational support, also some support with curriculum planning, administration of the programs and a good part of my work too, aside from the one-on-one pastoral care is program planning as well. I have some responsibility for supporting the university with its articulation of its mission and supporting the facility, the staff, the students in their own understanding of that mission as well.

It sounds like you're a campus minister, but maybe a little different then the traditional campus minister role.

Although I do serve as a campus minister, my role is a little bit different because my ministry is specific to all the health profession programs at the university and so I work specifically with nursing, physician assistants, the anesthesia program as well as all the dental programs, the dental students and dental hygiene students. My work with students, facility and staff it is a little different from traditional campus ministry. My students are mostly commuters, they are adults, and typically they are folks who are working as well as trying to attend to their studies. Actually a lot of my work ends up to be with facility and staff too, supporting them in their role and providing a certain amount of spiritual support to their students. Overall, my job is to provide spiritual, pastoral care to the students and facility and staff at the university and specifically in those areas.

So are you a chaplain?

My educational training for ministry started with my M-DIV for University of Notre Dame and I then went into doing clinical pastoral education in various health care settings. I was then led into work in hospital and hospice settings. Chaplaincy—that word tends to be understood as a specific ministry for a specific area and as I have been developing and forming as a minister, my work has been pretty specific in the health care arena. After my graduate studies and also further clinical education, I did work in a hospital and then eventually took on leadership in spiritual care for a hospice program in Columbus, Ohio where I worked for a couple of years as my husband worked on his dissertation and rapped up his PHD. This was a really wonderful opportunity. We had about a hundred families that we served in the metro Columbus area and my job was to make sure that they were getting the spiritual support that they needed, be it from me directly or also connecting them with resources within the community. But then I eventually moved to the Detroit area and found out about this position at the U of D Mercy wherein they were seeking to have someone serve as a minister specifically to the health profession programs at the university and whereas I had done probably more traditional campus ministry at the University of Notre Dame, when I was there for graduate school, I wasn't necessarily interested in that kind of ministry. But when I heard that this was going to be with these specific programs, where I could actually support health professionals as they are in their formation process, attending to their own spiritual needs also coming to understand the importance of spiritual care in the care of your patients, in the care of their clients, I was interested. So in a way it's an interesting move from direct spiritual care, as I was doing in the health care settings, to supporting persons in their educational process and preparing to provide care.

Did you always wanted to do this? When you were a little kid what did you want to do when you grew up?

If you'd asked my as a child I probably would have told you a politician or a lawyer because that's what my dad did. As I threw around this law school idea, it just didn't quite fit for me, so yeah, I can't say this is something I'd always wanted to do, but I did always have the sense of wanting to help people, wanting to support people and as a teen I became much more interested in the life of Jesus, in the life of the church. So I had these interests in terms of theology. I had these interests in terms of helping people, but my models of ministry weren't exactly there. My models for ministry tended to be clergy, tended to be nuns in more traditional ministries, and it was really in college where I started to experience seeing specifically women in leadership positions in ministry, certainly in campus ministry, but also in spiritual direction and I learned about this chaplaincy work. I saw that modeled as well and eventually after I graduated from college I decided that law school wasn't quite the right move for me and I gave some serious thought to going into academia and becoming an ethicist because at that time I really thought, I have this interest in the church. I want to be somehow part of serving the church, but as a woman how can I do that and really make an impact? I thought perhaps as an ethicist, maybe even health care ethicist or medical ethicist that would be a way to go and as I started moving in the direction. I eventually started a masters of ethics at Norte Dame with the intention of eventually going into a PHD program, realized that the academic route wasn't quite as interesting or compelling to me, although I loved it. I found myself connecting with people who were more focused on pastoral care or ministry per say and that's when I learned about this opportunity in the M-Div program.

You were also part of the Jesuit Volunteers. How did that experience influence your career today?

Upon my graduation, I did a great books program, Liberal Arts as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, had a very rich, wonderful undergraduate experience but came out of there not really knowing exactly what I wanted to do. And I had become connected during my undergraduate time with persons who had been Jesuit volunteers or were thinking about the Jesuit volunteer Corp. I learned more about this idea of giving a year of volunteer service and so after I graduated college I went out to the Pacific Northwest along with 150 other volunteers with the Jesuit volunteer Corp., Northwest and I provided a year of volunteer service wherein I worked in a hospice program. I was given at that ripe age of 21, right out of college—I was given the responsibility of overseeing the bereavement program. I had pretty good supervision at that time, but I gave a year of service, lived in a small community of other volunteers. The program for those who know about it, know that it's focused on simple lifestyle, community, spirituality and social justice. It was really in that hospice setting where I started. I had some connection with other ministers in health care, specifically in the hospital and hospice setting and I learned about this possible career path and that in a way was an eye-opener for me through the JVC. I continue to be involved with them by the way. The man who I eventually met and married, my husband--turned out he had this year of volunteer service as well and we both serve as support people for the community that lives presently in Detroit. Seven volunteers are here. It's been a very rich thing for me. And through that too, I have been able to mentor and support other young people who are interested in ministry. We have had graduates of JVC Detroit as of this time, there are 4 that have gone on to do graduate work in Theology. There are two of them that I am supporting and mentoring now that are considering going on to M-Div degrees. That's a very satisfying thing, but I do think that there is something about that program that opened up my eyes to the possibility of new ways of ministering, of doing service, of committing my life in a different way and I would say too that it was during that JVC year that that sense of call, that sense of vocation was really stirred up for me. That sense that God is calling me in a direction to serve and to use the life of faith as a way of providing service, to help people access the points of their life that are most meaningful to them and certainly health care ministry is an exciting place to provide care because you're with people who are really at their limits in terms of pain, in terms of joy, in terms of life, in terms of death, from having a baby to saying goodbye to a loved one. You know that whole range there of really full life moments and to be able to support people and be with them at those times it's a really sacred thing.

So you did have a call to ministry?

When I talk about my call to ministry, I would say that it's something that niggled at me for a while, but it was also punctuated with moments of clarity with persons who mentored me especially. And I can list on my hands particular persons in leadership and ministry, mostly women who gave me affirmation in terms of my gifts, in terms of my capacities, in terms of what they thought they were seeing the spirit doing in my life and that confirmed for me that hey, there's something to listen to, that there's something to pay attention to, it didn't have shape or form yet then. I should say that maybe it doesn't necessarily have shape or form now, it evolves and changes, but it's that sense that I've had in journeying with God that God has something for me. There's something more, and it's also, these desires to serve are also connected up with the needs that I have discovered in the church too. But yeah, in terms of that sense of vocation or that sense of being called, it's something that I continually struggle with and try to understand, especially in a church that doesn't ordain women. And the best I can do with it is to continue to put myself in places where that can be tested out and supported and encouraged and where I can get honest feedback. I think in terms of my own formation as a minister, that's probably one of the most important things I can point to in terms of my success, my satisfaction, my effectiveness is having persons, having good peers as well as mentors who can, like I said, give me honest feedback and confirm or affirm what it is that I am experiencing myself. I once had a priest tell me that, "You know it's not simply enough to say that you sense that you're called internally, you have to have that call affirmed by a faith community." At that time too he was also noting that the church didn't call women, but all I can say is that that sense of God being active in my life, drawing me out to serve, to lead, to make the church a more lively interesting place that really serves Jesus' mission and vision, but that is something that has been confirmed for me by the church, by the people who are apart of my faith community, by persons who have been of spiritual support to me in so many different ways.

What are your gifts, what makes you good at what you do?

My gifts for ministry would certainly include my capacity to be present to people in the muck and chaos of their lives. I think of my hospice ministry which I think brought out the best of my gifts; my capacity to sit and hang in there when the going got really tough, when people were struggling in terms of where is God present in this situation. So I would say certainly my ability to hang in there, to be present, to be a good listener, to be able to listen to not only to what that person is saying to me but how the spirit is at work in that situation and perhaps how God might be prompting that person along and often times ask them good questions to help elicit a response from them that hopefully helps them understand how is God at work in their own life. I think another gift that I have for ministry is something that I would call my sacramental vision and I think that's a vision that has been cultivated by this beloved church of mine to really understand that God is so alive; God's grace is so alive in everything that we do. God's grace is abundant and in creation and our relationships, in all our activities there are signs of God are everywhere, and that's a vision that I try to cultivate in terms of figuring out, where is God right now and where can God be found and where's God's finger print in this situation. Along with that too I think that one of my gifts for ministry that has be cultivated and supported through my education is my capacity with liturgical celebration, my ability to help lead people in prayer, to create prayer opportunities. Even with that, my capacity to help blow open the word for people in lots of different ways, certainly through more traditional ways like preaching on a specific scripture passage, but also in helping to challenge them to take the word and apply it to their own lives and to see where it goes. Those are I would say some of the important gifts that I have for ministry.

What are some of the various hats you wear in life?

My name is Bridget Deegan Krause and I wear a lot of hats and those hats would include certainly my hat as minister, my hat as wife and partner and lover and friend, my hat as community member, activist, support-person volunteer, my hat as daughter, as aunt, and my hat as a child of God and one who is growing and learning what that means for me.

Is there any advice you have for people considering lay ministry?

I think it's really important for persons who are preparing for lay ministry to create support structures for themselves. The fact is that lay ministry is kind of this new thing in the church. I know for myself, it's been very important for me to find the mentors, to find the structures, to work with even my professional association, the National Association of Catholic Chaplains that certified me. That's helped me be mindful of where my gifts are and attend to my competency, too, but I think creating those structures is extremely important and attending to those structures as well. Something that has been very important for me that I think is important for anybody that in preparing for professional ministry in the church is to be really choosy about where they're going to put their resources, their time, their talent, their energy. I think to be very careful about who it is their going to work for and make sure they've got good supervision, to make sure that good structures are in place, to make sure that they're compensated well through all the hard work that they do. I think that being choosy is a really important thing and making sure that you're in what I call hospitable structures for your ministry. I know for me I believe I have lots of gifts, but I also need to be a space that supports me and allows me to be creative and it's been very important for me to find those hospitable places and I have found health care ministry to be one area that certainly has paid me well, has supported me well and has set high standards for me too in terms of ministry and the expectations that they would have of me and I feel good about that.

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