Nienke's blog

In class, we got the opportunity to interview Morningside University’s very own Pastor Andy Nelson, the Director of Campus Ministry and Community Service, who has been campus Chaplin at Morningside since 2017.

After a short introduction of himself, Pastor Andy got asked what exactly it is that he does as campus Chaplin. “My job is to tend to the spiritual life of the Morningside community.” he answered. His priority is helping students, but also staff, faculty, and other community members. He is here to help and support them with the spiritual part of themselves, no matter what faith they have. It means making sure that people have the ability to express and practice their faith as they choose. Pastor Andy explained it as helping with something bigger than yourself.

Pastor Andy has an open-door policy in his office, meaning that students can come in whenever they need to and with whatever they need to. He has a confidentiality policy, so everything that people will discuss with him will be confidential unless given permission to share with other parties.

Then we asked Pastor Andy how he ended up at Morningside or why he chose to come here. He said that he had always been involved in campus ministry. He realized in high school that he wanted to get involved in campus ministry later in his life to help college students. He ended up working at Morningside because of his wife. She was hired as a psychology teacher here at Morningside. Then at one point, the position of campus Chaplin opened up at Morningside and he decided to apply for the job. And now he has been working at this school for 5 years.

When asked about his hobbies, Pastor Andy responded that when he is not working, he likes to read. In particular science fiction and fantasy topics. He will multitask doing dishes driving kids to soccer practice while listening to an audio book. The majority of his free time, however, he spends being involved in family activities. He has four kids from ages 2-14 who he really loves and loves spending time with.

“When I get the chance, I like to garden and fish and go deer hunting with my wife.” Pastor Andy added to the list of his hobbies.

When Pastor Andy was younger, people would ask him if he had ever thought about being a Pastor. He would tell them no, but these questions did make him start thinking about it. In his junior year of high school, he never thought he would be a pastor. But by the time his senior year came around, he had changed his mind completely.

We asked Pastor Andy what he would tell his younger self knowing what he knows now. He then explained that when he was in high school, he thought about taking a gap year to give himself time to disengage from student life a little bit. He was kind of burned out at the time he said. However, he did not end up taking the gap year but regrets this decision.

“I think what I would tell myself is to take advantage of that time to step away and get a different sort of experience and let it be a part of your process of ‘What should I be?’.”

As a final question, Pastor Andy was asked if faith is the most important thing in his life. He answered that it is the most important thing in his life, but then mostly the expression of his faith. He said that his faith shapes his view of the world, his view of other people, and his view of death and the life beyond death. It impacts how he lives his life. Pastor Andy’s understanding of who he is and his relationships with the world and other people flows from his faith.

Comments RSS