An invitation and a prayer help campus minister share God’s grace and joy with college students
As the campus minister of the Catholic community at Butler University in Indianapolis, Cheyenne Johnson, right, has helped deepen the faith of the college’s Catholic students, including Ellie Cornn, a senior from St. Ambrose Parish in Seymour. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
The October morning began with a blend of nervousness and hope for Cheyenne Johnson.
As she helped to set up a table near a busy walking path through Butler University in Indianapolis, Johnson wondered and worried about whether her plan would connect with the students who were hustling to class with 100 or more thoughts, concerns and deadlines racing through their minds.
As the campus minister of the college’s Catholic community, 25-year-old Johnson had formed her plan around a simple approach that has often worked with college students—offer them free food and drink.
It’s worked with the Sunday Suppers that she hosts after the Sunday afternoon Mass on campus, where students come to enjoy meals from Yats, Chipotle, Cracker Barrel and Panda Express. Now, she hoped the offer to enjoy a cup of apple cider and some candy would lure them to consider a deeper invitation—an invitation that was detailed in bold letters on a sign on the table, “TAKE A PRAYER, LEAVE A PRAYER.”
“The idea is to unite the campus in prayer,” Johnson says. “It’s just a very easy way to meet people, too, and invite them to come and leave a prayer request and take one to pray for their fellow students. I always get nervous when we do things like this. I don’t know how people are going to react.”
Moments later, a line formed at the table, leading Johnson to smile and say, “It makes me happy. It’s good to see people coming up, people we don’t know, too.”
Standing nearby and helping with the effort, 21-year-old Karla Flores understands the lure of the prayer approach for students.
“You could be having a bad day and having someone keep you in their thoughts and prayers is great,” says Flores, a senior from Chicago. “Just the fact that they see us out here doing this is just something that brings a smile to their face and maybe makes them think a little bit about other people—and what they’re struggling with. And for those who end up leaving a prayer intention, I think it just brightens their day to know someone will be thinking about them and keeping them in their prayers.”
‘I’ve always thought of my faith as family’
Johnson knows the power of both prayer and invitation in her own life, including during her time as a student at Butler where she graduated in 2021 with majors in music and elementary education and a minor in Chinese.
Raised as a Southern Baptist, she found herself searching for a different faith direction as a teenager. She became drawn to the Catholic Church because of its teaching that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus.
During her early years as a student at Butler, she reached out to the campus minister of the college’s Catholic community. And older Catholic students reached out to her during a time she felt alone, inviting her to different events. It all led to her participating in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) program and entering into the full communion of the Church on
April 8, 2018.
Her faith on fire, Johnson has put her plans on becoming a teacher on hold. She’s now in her second year as the campus minister for the Butler Catholic Community
“Throughout the course of college, I just continued to fall more in love with Jesus—and the desire to live in mission after I graduated. I was looking at working with college students,” she says. “My biggest desire is just for them to come to know and love Jesus more, to help them build habits to deepen their relationship with him.”
The Butler students who helped with the “TAKE A PRAYER. LEAVE A PRAYER” outreach say that their Catholic faith and Johnson are tremendous blessings as they navigate their college years.
At 21, Ellie Cornn leans on that combination in her senior year at Butler.
“My Catholic faith means really everything to me,” says Cornn, a member of St. Ambrose Parish in Seymour. “It’s such a great start to my day. And whenever we get to do programming like this, it’s just amazing.
“My Catholic faith has been such a needed thing in my time at school, especially with all the uncertainty now of applying to physical therapy schools. There’s a lot of unknown, and with that unknown I need some consistency and some community lifting me up. And this is that for me. It’s a little bit of home. And I’ve always thought of my faith as family. It’s something my family has always done. And being able to develop that here, it’s something that I need.”
Shelby Ponce shares that feeling.
“If it weren’t for the community that I’ve found in my Catholic faith and just my faith in general, I genuinely wouldn’t be here,” says Ponce, a 21-year-old senior from Palos Verdes, Calif. “It’s gotten me through so much, good and bad. I’ve made lifelong connections with some of these amazing people that I’ve met because of my faith and because of their faith.”
She has a special appreciation for Johnson.
“Oh my gosh, Cheyenne is amazing. She has turned our entire program around. Now we have a Catholic community here. Now we have Mass every Sunday for certain. We have adoration weekly. We have confessions weekly,” Ponce says. “Those are things we didn’t have access to before. For me, having access to the sacraments means so much because I don’t have a car on campus. She has made a lot of things possible, and it’s amazing.”
‘Just seeing their joy’
In many ways, at this point in her life, Johnson seems to be living one of the framed messages in her office: “Perhaps this is the moment for which you were created.”
She strives to bring young people closer to God on a campus where about 1,100 students—about 20% of Butler’s student body—are Catholic and about 100 regularly come to the Sunday afternoon Mass.
In that effort, she praises the help of Butler’s part-time chaplain Father James Brockmeier, whom she describes as “awesome.” Still, Father Brockmeier is limited in his time on campus as he also serves as the director of the archdiocese’s Office of Worship and as rector of
SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Indianapolis.
The days can be long for Johnson.
“I feel there’s a need for me to be at everything, which means I end up being on campus really late and then really early the next morning some days. That’s hard,” she says. “But when you see the determination and perseverance of the students for their faith, it reminds me—especially on nights when I just want to go home—to say, ‘No, this is a good thing.’
“It reminds me to just slow down and be in the moment and dive into Scripture together. And we have quite a few of our first-year students coming to adoration. They’ll stay the entire hour. Seeing how committed they are inspires me to keep coming.”
Johnson constantly searches for different ways for students to make connections—with each other, with her, with God.
Beyond opportunities for Mass, confession and eucharistic adoration, she has planned a bonfire, a barn dance, a trip to an apple orchard and a spiritual retreat this fall.
“It’s meeting people where they are and inviting them,” she says. “Any event that involves food is typically successful. Sometimes, there are deep conversations that happen at these events. And then other times, it’s just the friendships that are formed that can lead to something deeper—maybe an invite to a Bible study—and they continue to grow from there.
“For me, the joy comes in just getting to walk with the students. I lead a Bible study on Thursday nights for a few girls. It’s just so fun. It ends up being two hours long when it’s supposed to be an hour. We spend the first 30 minutes with everyone just talking about what’s been happening in the past week. Just seeing their joy. And then sitting down to study Scripture. It’s been really great to have that time, just to grow with them and help them to grow in community and in their love of Jesus.”
She had that same feeling on that October morning when she and a group of Catholic students at Butler invited others to take a prayer request, and to leave one. As students stopped by the table, one of Johnson’s prayers was answered.
“Just seeing people grow in their faith and being excited about it always makes me so happy. It’s very difficult, but it’s also a great joy to have a front-row seat into people’s lives, to be able to see the ways God is working in their lives.” †
