Creating space for students to explore meaning, to be heard, to find community
In the highlands of northern Thailand this May, a campus minister from the Philippines joined twenty-four peers from across Asia to wrestle with one of higher education's quieter urgencies: how institutions might care for the inner lives of their students as seriously as they do their academic progress. Pastor Neva Grace Fabila of Central Philippine University returned from Chiang Mai not with answers handed down from above, but with something more durable — a clearer sense of what collaborative, whole-person ministry could look like when it is treated as a genuine vocation rather than an administrative obligation. Her week at Payap University was, in the oldest sense, a pilgrimage: she left with questions and came home with direction.
- Twenty-five campus ministers from across Asia converged in Chiang Mai to confront a shared crisis — students are spiritually hungry and mentally strained, and most institutions are not equipped to respond to both at once.
- The conference surfaced a tension many campus ministers quietly carry: how to offer meaningful spiritual care in universities where students hold many different faiths and worldviews, without reducing that care to doctrine or conversion.
- Facilitators introduced tools as unexpected as drama therapy, pushing participants to think beyond traditional ministry formats and toward approaches that meet students in their emotional and psychological reality.
- Fabila returned to Iloilo with a concrete vision — a partnership between campus ministry and the university's Guidance Services Center that could extend spiritual and emotional support to far more students, faculty, and staff.
- A newly issued government directive on campus ministry programs gave her plan institutional momentum, aligning personal conviction with policy at precisely the right moment.
Pastor Neva Grace Fabila spent the first full week of May at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand, as one of twenty-five campus ministers gathered for the Asian Academy for Campus Ministry — a program organized by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. The conference ran from May 3 to 10 and centered on a question that felt both practical and profound: how do universities genuinely care for students' spiritual lives, especially when those students are also struggling with their mental health?
What Fabila found in that room was not a set of ready-made answers but a community of people navigating the same tensions she knew from her work at Central Philippine University in Iloilo City. Several of the institutions represented served students from multiple faith traditions, which had pushed their campus ministers to reimagine spiritual care as something broader than doctrine — as the creation of space for meaning-making, for being heard, for finding community. Five facilitators who had previously completed the academy led sessions alongside five guest speakers, covering everything from interfaith engagement to the theology of ministry as calling. One session explored drama therapy as a way to help students process their inner lives.
The insight that stayed with Fabila most was about collaboration. Campus ministry at CPU, she realized, did not have to function as a separate silo. The university's Guidance Services Center was already doing meaningful work with students around mental health and wellbeing. A deliberate partnership between the two offices — joined by faculty advisors and student leaders — could reach far more people and attend to their whole selves, not just their academic performance or conduct.
She came home to find the timing favorable. A new government directive, CMO No. 05 series 2026, had been issued to strengthen campus ministry programs across Philippine universities. Fabila intends to use both the policy opening and what she learned in Thailand to build something more integrated at CPU — a model of care that reflects what the conference made plain: that universities across Asia, in vastly different contexts, share a common conviction that nurturing the whole person is not optional work.
Pastor Neva Grace Fabila spent a week in northern Thailand this May learning how other universities across Asia care for their students' spiritual lives. She was one of twenty-five campus ministers gathered at Payap University in Chiang Mai for the Asian Academy for Campus Ministry, a program run by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. The conference ran from May 3 to 10, and its focus was direct: how do you help students grow spiritually while also attending to their mental health, and how do you frame that work as a genuine calling rather than just another institutional checkbox.
Fabila, who leads campus ministry at Central Philippine University in Iloilo City, arrived with questions. What she found was a room full of people wrestling with the same tensions she was. Some of the universities represented had student bodies that spanned multiple faiths and worldviews—a reality that forced their campus ministers to think differently about what spiritual care could mean. It wasn't about converting anyone or pushing a single doctrine. It was about creating space for students to explore meaning, to be heard, to find community.
The week brought in five facilitators who had themselves been through the academy in previous years, plus five additional speakers who specialized in different aspects of the work. They talked about ministry as a calling—what it means to do this work not because you have to, but because you believe in it. They discussed how to engage across faith traditions. They addressed something the conference organizers clearly saw as urgent: the connection between spiritual hunger and mental health struggles in young people. One session even explored drama therapy as a tool for helping students process what they were feeling.
What struck Fabila most was the collaborative potential. At CPU, she realized, campus ministry didn't have to operate in isolation. The university's Guidance Services Center was already working with students on mental health and wellbeing. What if those two offices worked together intentionally? What if campus ministers partnered with counselors, with faculty advisors, with student leaders across different departments? The reach could expand dramatically. More students would encounter someone who cared about their whole selves—not just their grades or their behavior, but their inner lives.
She returned to Iloilo with a concrete plan. The Philippine government had just issued a directive—CMO No. 05, series 2026—that was designed to strengthen and expand campus ministry programs in universities. The timing was right. Fabila wanted to use what she'd learned to build something more integrated, more collaborative, more responsive to what students actually needed. The conference had shown her that this kind of work was happening across Asia, in different contexts, with different populations, but always with the same underlying conviction: that universities have a responsibility to nurture the whole person.
Central Philippine University, which holds autonomous status from the Commission on Higher Education and is recognized as a tourism site in Iloilo, positioned itself as an institution committed to that kind of holistic formation. Fabila's participation in the academy was one expression of that commitment. But the real test would come in the months ahead, as she worked to translate what she'd learned into changes on her own campus.
Citas Notables
The experience was meaningful in encountering different ways of doing campus ministry. In some institutions, they have multifaith engagement due to a diversity of cultural, religious, and political backgrounds within their campus.— Pastor Neva Grace Fabila
It is my desire to do campus ministry more as a collaborative work among relevant university units, in order for campus ministers to have a wider reach among students, faculty, and staff.— Pastor Neva Grace Fabila
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
What made this particular conference different from other professional development opportunities for campus ministers?
It wasn't just about techniques or best practices. The whole frame was about spirituality and mental health together, and about understanding ministry as a calling—something you do because you believe in it, not just because it's your job.
You mentioned multifaith engagement. Why does that matter so much?
Because the students walking onto campuses across Asia don't all share the same religious background anymore. If you're only offering one kind of spiritual care, you're missing most of the room. Multifaith engagement means you're creating space for different traditions to coexist and for students to explore what meaning-making looks like for them.
What's the connection between spiritual hunger and mental health that kept coming up?
Young people are struggling with isolation, anxiety, questions about purpose. Sometimes those show up as mental health symptoms. But they're also spiritual questions—about belonging, about meaning, about whether anyone really sees them. Campus ministry that ignores that dimension is only treating half the problem.
How does collaboration with guidance services change what campus ministry can do?
Instead of one person or one office trying to hold all of that, you have counselors, spiritual care workers, faculty advisors all talking to each other about the same students. You catch more people. You offer more kinds of support. You stop working in silos.
What's the risk in trying to implement all of this back home?
The real work is in the relationships—getting different departments to actually trust each other and coordinate. That takes time and intentionality. You can't just announce a new policy and expect it to work.