For Churches & Pastors
A Church Home Away From Home
For the first time in most of their lives, college students find themselves away from home—family homes, church homes, social and geographical homes. Home is where we know that we belong; where we learn, laugh, love and receive love.
Here, at the Presbyterian [& UCC] Student Center, we know that our dining room is not your youth ministry room—that our chapel is not your congregation’s sanctuary. But the God who teaches us to love and care for these students is the same God in whom they have found their home for the last 17+ years—the same God who has taught you and your congregation to love and to care.
Sending our children away to college is at once terrifying and joyful—we are proud and we are anxious. Knowing that they are connected to a community which exists for the sake of welcoming, loving, and encouraging students along their faithful journey to adulthood brings an incredible peace. You can help them to find this community and at the same time, help yourself to find this peace.
Sustaining Mission Partners
Our sustaining partners are those church bodies who set up a recurring contribution to support the ministry of the PSC. We invite congregations to consider the PSC a mission partner, carrying on the ministry of faith formation with your former youth, and future congregational leaders.
We are grateful to the following church bodies, all of which make a sustaining annual contribution to support the ministry of the PSC.
Madison Presbyterian Church (Madison, GA)
Covenant Presbyterian Church (Augusta, GA)
Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church (Augusta, GA)
Roswell Presbyterian Church
First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta
Alpharetta Presbyterian Church
Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church
Kirkwood United Church of Christ
St. Simon’s Presbyterian Church
Support
We are fortunate to receive nearly half of our budgeted income each year from property usage (parking, a rental house, and other Christian ministries who conduct portions of their ministry from our building). Congregational and denomination support accounts for an additional 25% of the annual budget
Ways to Support the PSC
Sustaining Partners - Join over a dozen other congregations (see above) who include the PSC among their mission partners. Email Will to learn more about this partnership.
Tuesday Dinners - purchase or provide dinner for our weekly Word+Table (approx. $250 per week so far in the Fall of 2023).
Contribute to the Scholarship Fund - anywhere from $15 for a small group book
to $350 to send a student to Montreat College Conference.
Retreats
As a campus ministry with 80 years of experience caring for students, we recognize both the demands of university life, and the invitation of faith. So Fall, Winter, and Spring, the PSC takes students on various spiritual retreats. Typically, Fall Retreat is a community building trip to a student’s family lake house (if someone in your congregation has access to a lake house that can accommodate 20-25 people, and would be willing for it to be a retreat location, 1/ bless you! and 2/ you can email our campus minister, Will to let him know).
All of our retreats (but especially Montreat College Conference) are open to college students from schools outside of Athens who don’t have a ministry group with whom to attend. If your congregation knows college students looking for a Montreat group to link up with, email our campus minister by October 1 to reserve a spot: will@pscuga.org.
2023/24 Retreats:
Fall Retreat - Oct. 20-22 - Ft. Payne AL
Montreat College Conference - Jan. 2-5
Spring Pilgrimage - Mar. 31 - Apr. 2, El Refugio at the Stewart Detention Center