By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
An increasing number of students returning to campus this fall stand a good chance of encountering a missionary of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), which recently announced that it will now be present on 50 colleges during the 2010-11 school year.
FOCUS is a rapidly growing college campus outreach that sends missionaries in teams of four (or more) men and women to college campuses at the invitation of the local bishop and with the support of the local Newman Center or an existing campus ministry. The missionaries are typically recent college graduates who devote two or more years of their post-collegiate lives to reach out to their peers full-time on campus. Through genuine friendship, they invite students into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the fullness of life found in the Catholic Church. The program is designed to respond to the Church’s call for a “new evangelization” by communicating the gospel to young adults in a dynamic and culturally relevant way.
Since it was founded in 1998, FOCUS has grown from four missionaries serving a single campus to the more than 250 who will work on the 50 campuses this year.
“We’re excited to see the increasing demand and desire for FOCUS missionaries throughout the country,” said FOCUS founder, Curtis Martin. “College students have a deep hunger for love and for the truth. Our missionaries continue to answer the call of Jesus Christ and the Church by generously offering college students the gospel and their very lives. God continues to open new doors of opportunity for us and provide the kind of staff we need to walk through them.”
The new campuses to be served by FOCUS beginning this Fall, are:
o Colorado School of Mines
o George Washington University
o Georgia Southern University
o Northern Arizona University
o Texas State University
o University of Kansas
o College of Saint Mary
o Florida Gulf Coast University
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