It was 1967 and Moscow still hadn”t discovered rock and roll.
Back in those days, the campus was strictly straight-laced, John Pool said – combed hair and slacks with sweaters for the men, and skirts and a 10 p.m. curfew for the women.
Yet there was one place on campus Pool said self-respecting, God-fearing men and women crossed the street to avoid walking past.
“It was called The Burning Stake,” Pool said. “That”s what the coffeehouse was called.”
Operated by the Campus Christian Center, it was located on the lower floor of the original building – and it attracted a very particular crowd.
They were the progressives and the Vietnam protesters. They smoked dope and listened to rock and roll, and had a tolerant relationship at best with the Bible studies classes upstairs. They gathered at The Burning Stake to listen to bluegrass and a lounge piano player, to drink hot coffee and play bridge.
Irish Martos | Argonaut
University of Idaho”s Campus Christian Center as it stands today.
That”s what drew Pool to the coffeehouse in the first place, he said.
“I wasn”t serious about going to class,” Pool said. “But I was serious about playing cards.”
The radicals are long gone, and the Christian center, still standing in the same place it was decades ago, has developed a meeker presence on campus. It”s a space where students go to study, enjoy free cookies or soup or to sit quietly in a prayer room.
Yet, on the basement floor of the center, tucked into a cluttered office at the end of a narrow, unlit hallway, John Pool remains.
Pool managed The Burning Stake Coffeehouse for a year before leaving the university. He returned to continue his studies five years later in 1973. He said when he came back, he expected everything to be just as it had been when he left it.
But sometime in the space of five years, everything had changed.
Sex, drugs and rock and roll had finally reached Moscow. The Bible groups, which had been so large and active on campus, had dispersed, as had Pool”s group of radicals.
“The coffeehouse went from a center of radical thought to having really no purpose,” Pool said. “What was a special place went to not special at all… Nobody cared about it anymore.”
For weeks, Pool was at a loss. Without his community, he wasn”t sure what to do – ultimately, he decided to put The Burning Stake in his past and focus on his studies.
He went on to complete school, and upon graduation was invited to stay at the university as the student media adviser and adjunct communications professor. He later took a job with ITS managing a computer lab in the College of Engineering. He stayed there until 1999, when in a single day he lost his ITS job and got a job at the public library.
Pool wouldn”t return to the Campus Christian Center until 2007.
He had retired the year before. In his retirement, Pool decided to study French to keep his mind active, but wanted a place on campus to call his own – somewhere close to the recreation center where he like to exercise, and somewhere close to class.
So he returned to a place that was familiar to him. In 2007, Pool approached the Campus Christian center about renting office space from them.
“It was warm, accepting, comfortable,” Pool said. “And it still is.”
For eight years Pool has been a fixture in the background of the Campus Christian center, quietly listening to French podcasts beyond a door kept slightly ajar. Every year, from his place in the Christian Center, he has watched fewer and fewer students come and go.
Thinking through the quiet
The University of Idaho Campus Christian center blog hasn”t been updated since May 16, 2012. The post, titled “Thinking Through the Quiet,” is a somber one.
“On a campus of 12,000 – we fed 77 this year,” the post reads. “I wonder what we”re doing wrong.”
Julie Coyle, the current center director, didn”t arrive in Moscow until 2013. The blog and its author, Methodist pastor Doug Wood, who has since left the center, were before her time – yet Coyle often finds herself wondering the same thing.
“Churches in general in this country are asking why it is that students aren”t coming to congregations any more,” Coyle said. “They”re kind of blaming it on the fact that campus ministry is not working.”
For those who do frequent the Campus Christian Center, the community is tight-knit. Fresh coffee is brewed every morning. Free soup is offered Monday nights, and a pizza and lounge night is offered on Fridays. Local churches host dinners and roundtable discussions in the evenings, and during the day students and peer ministers might study, watch movies or play games.
“Students have been fearful of churches – they”ve grown up in a church and felt ostracized, or they feel like they don”t fit into the church scene,” Coyle said. “This building and the programs we create are meant for students who don”t feel comfortable in churches or with mainstream Christianity, who still want to ask the big questions.”
Though many students, both Christian and not, consider the center a safe and inviting space, having the word “Christian” emblazoned on the front of the building still makes it hard to get students through the door at all.
And for the Christian center, Coyle said fewer students means less funding.
“Unfortunately churches still look at numbers as part of their funding basis,” Coyle said. “If we”re not pulling people in, they begin to wonder, “Why are we sending money to you?””
In the past, there have been two main sources of funding for the Campus Christian Center– local churches, whose national organizations allocate a certain amount of funds for campus ministry every year, and Cooperating Ministries in Higher Education (CMHE), which supplied the Christian center with a majority of its funds each year.
CMHE folded early last year.
University of Idaho”s Campus Christian Center in 1959, in the Gem of the Mountains yearbook, two years after its construction.
That news was felt throughout the Christian center.
Around the same time, the American Baptist Ministry was closing its doors permanently. Desperate, the Christian center approached them and asked for help. The ABM gifted the Christian centerwith their remaining funds, about $25,000. Of that, they put away $12,000 for the future.
“But that”s a very short-term solution,” Coyle said.
Since then, Coyle, the Christian center”s only full-time employee, has poured time into looking for grants and asking churches for increased funding – but the churches are struggling, too.
According to the Campus Christian Center blog, two churches withdrew funding from the center in 2012.
Coyle said currently the Christian center has a circle of eight local churches, and in her time there, none of them have withdrawn.
Lutheran Minister Carla Neumann Smiley, who has worked out of the Christian center almost full-time for 15 years, said her church understands the value in campus ministry.
“The Lutheran Ministry understands the need for presence,” Neumann Smiley said. “I know that I can talk to students in crisis, or a student who has a joy to share or a question about faith, and those spontaneous conversations are as important to faith and spirituality as our formal programs.”
Yet Coyle said the center can”t afford to simply get by.
“We”re still here, but you never know what else could happen with unforeseen situations,” Coyle said. “You could have something like building damage crumble your organization with no funds left to support it.”
That news came in October, when the Campus Christian Center Board learned their roofing was no longer safe. It would have to be replaced – a nearly $10,000 expense – or they would have to sell the building, Coyle said.
At the regular board meeting Nov. 19, members strained to find possible solutions. Budgets were tight, grant deadlines were looming and bids from contractors were still outstanding.
Gently, one board member urged the other attendants to be open to all options – including selling the 60-year-old building.
Two weeks ago, however, the board found out that wouldn”t be necessary. The National Lutheran Campus Ministry agreed to give the Campus Christian Center a grant to match their current funds, which will cover the cost of re-roofing the whole building. Coyle said they have already found a contractor, and they hope to take on the project this summer.
“We”re very fortunate,” Coyle said. “It will be a lot easier to continue our ministry than if we were to change locations. We”re finally getting our name out there. Students finally know we”re here.”
Coyle said thanks to things like their Peer Ministry program, which encourages word of mouth between students, she is optimistic the center will see more and more students in upcoming years.
So Pool, and other students who have found a home in the center, can breathe a little easier.
Pool said watching the Campus Christian Center struggle to stay afloat in recent years, both because of dwindling numbers and dwindling funds, has been deeply saddening to him. Pool believes the Christian center should be a place for all students to come find a warm, safe place – he said he knows this especially well as a non-Christian.
“It”s a sanctuary for everybody,” Pool said. “You walk in the door and nobody asks if you”re a Christian. They offer you coffee and cookies. They don”t care if you”re a Christian, they care that you”re a person.”
In the meantime, Pool said he enjoys the peace.
“This place has been a home away from home for a long time,” Pool said. “I just hope it keeps going as long as I keep going. I don”t know what I would do without it.”
Hannah Shirley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @itshannah7