Tag: Fall 2006

What better way to spend your summer when you’re into politics than in an internship with one of Washington’s power brokers? Four Xavier students managed to do just that thanks to their involvement in the University’s Philosophy, Politics and the Public honors program.

Erin McDermott was in House Majority Leader John Boehner’s office for six weeks this summer. Boehner, himself a Xavier graduate, put her to work on several projects such as appropriations, education, defense, the budget and immigration, and she wrote summaries of the hearings and floor votes she observed. She spent the second half of her summer studying in London.

Other students had equally impressive experiences. Brian Cantwell spent half the summer with Sen. Mike DeWine and the other half with Congressman Steve Chabot. Kate Holley also worked in DeWine’s office. Greg Koehlerg was with Congressman Brian Higgins of New York. And three students—Jessica Wabler, Mark Manning and Kevin Hoggart—interned in the local offices of Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory and the Clinton County administrator in Wilmington, Ohio.

Last spring, Xavier’s physics faculty and students picked up a little light summer reading after former physics department chairman John Hart donated more than 600 books from his personal collection to the University. About half went to the library. It didn’t take long for the rest of the books to disappear.

“There were some quite valuable old books you can’t find anymore,” says Steve Herbert, department chair. Herbert picked himself up a real find: “Methods of Theoretical Physics” by Philip Morse and Herman Feshbach, which was last printed in 1953.

But Hart isn’t finished yet. He’s still got three 6-foot tall shelves, and they’re full. “I kept the crème de la crème and gave away the rest,” he says.

Corey Hawthorne spent his summer living life in the fast lane after securing one of the most coveted jobs available—an internship at the corporate headquarters of NASCAR in Daytona Beach, Fla.

The senior spent his days working in the series operations department, which oversees the operations of the sport’s three main series—the Nextel Cup series, the Busch series and the Craftsman Truck series.

His duties included helping coordinate pre-race and victory lane ceremonies, making sure the NASCAR logos are painted on the grass around the tracks before each race, and recording and paying drivers their earnings from contingency sponsorships—the multitude of smaller decals that decorate the cars.

More than 400 students from around the country applied for the 29 internships NASCAR offers college students each summer.

Just before landing the internship, Hawthorne, a sport marketing major from Philadelphia, was also awarded the Antonio Johnson scholarship, which includes full tuition for the upcoming year. Formed in 1948, NASCAR is a multibillion dollar organization and the No. 2-rated regular season sport on network TV with broadcasts in 150 countries and 75 million fans.

Ted Bergh has a strong business background. He’s also big on religion. So perhaps it’s only natural that Bergh, a 2001 graduate with a master’s degree in theology, would take more than a passing interest in the marketing-based success of mega-churches—the large, mostly non-denominational churches whose popularity has spread across the country.

But Bergh took his interests one step further. He proposed a class at the University—one he would teach as an adjunct professor—focused on the marketing behind these churches, which are described as non-Catholic churches with more than 2,000 members. Last spring, the class became a reality, cross-listed as Theology 308 and Marketing 308: Marketing/Evangelizing Churches.

“The mega-churches are phenomenally successful,” Bergh says. “And we are trying to see if that could transfer to Catholic parishes. There was a bishop’s letter called ‘Go and Make Disciples’ that says every Catholic should be comfortable in inviting others to join the church, that Catholics should spend a lot more time getting comfortable in their own faith and that Catholics should then try to change the world through different programs and ministries throughout the world. All of those three things are done by the mega-churches very well.”

In Cincinnati, doing these things well means the area’s three mega-churches—Solid Rock Church near Lebanon, Crossroads Community Church in Madisonville and the Vineyard in Mason—all rank among the 10 largest churches for membership. That’s a major shift: A decade ago, the top 10 were all Catholic.

But it’s the way these churches have grown that really tells the tale. “Crossroads started with 50 members in 1996 and now they have 5,000 or 6,000,” Bergh says. “Whereas Good Shepherd parish, one of Cincinnati’s largest Catholic churches, had 10,000 members 15 years ago and now has 12,000.”

Much of the secret lies in superior, intentional marketing. For example, Crossroads boasts between four and eight staff members who gained branding experiences with Procter & Gamble.

The mega-church movement began in Chicago in the 1970s with Willow Creek Church. As its congregation grew, the church packaged its approach and began offering seminars to teach others how to start their own churches.

“The idea is, people come to church, they enjoy it, it’s non-threatening, nice music, preaches sort of self-help, relevant topics, how you apply the Gospels to help you in your everyday life,” Bergh says. “At Willow Creek, they have recruitment classes on how to witness and recruit people. All members are expected to know how to do that.”

On the public relations front, limited doctrine allows mega-churches to dodge the kinds of controversies that often plague other churches, he says. Such issues, from gay pastors to pedophilia, often drive a wedge between institutional churches and their congregations.

Bergh’s group of 22 students compared the three mega-churches with Cincinnati’s two largest Catholic parishes—Good Shepherd in Montgomery and St. John the Evangelist in West Chester. The class broke into five teams, with each team visiting one of the churches, exploring how each addresses its mission as far as marketing, evangelizing and outreach. The findings weren’t a surprise.

“The two Catholic Church groups said, ‘These are very good churches. They deal well with the spirituality of their members, but they don’t have a clue how to evangelize,’ ” Bergh says. “There is no real growth.”

Bergh isn’t letting this information go to waste, starting Parish Vision LLC, and is working with St. Anthony Messenger Press to package “Go and Make Disciples” with mega-church information and his students’ research. “I want to get a team together to write books to take the mega-church model to Catholic churches.”

There’s a new book out involving a Xavier University professor, and it’s a best-seller—at least among bishops, priests and ministers. Edward Hahnenberg, an assistant professor of theology, helped write the guide to developing lay ecclesial ministers. Published last year, the book has drawn attention worldwide as the Catholic Church increasingly relies on lay ministers to do the work once done by priests and women religious.

It has also drawn attention to Hahnenberg, who was asked two years ago by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to lend his expertise to a subcommittee of lay theologians and bishops who were developing the guidelines. Hahnenberg, whose doctoral thesis focused on the topic, wound up doing much of the writing for the creation of several drafts, although the final version of Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord was the work of the committee.

“It was a great experience of collaboration between theologians and church leaders,” he says.

Hahnenberg now is being invited to speak on the topic, as more than 30,000 lay ecclesial ministers in the U.S. are being paid to lead ministries such as youth groups and religious education.