COLUMBUS, Ohio (RNS) — It’s a blustery Sunday evening in January and about a dozen students are splayed on couches in a church sanctuary a block away from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
It looks like a movie night, but they’re here to worship with a student ministry called Jacob’s Porch. The service begins with a collective breath, a prayer, and a song written by the group called “Be Here Now.”
“We are together,” the students sing from their comfortable perches. “We are enough, we are now present, we are your own.”
The informal setup reflects the ethos of the ecumenical Christian group, which, though founded in the Lutheran tradition, welcomes students who wrestle with faith — including those who are not religious.
“Some of our students who are actually atheist and agnostic have said, ‘I never thought I’d find a place that would let me explore without pushing me to be a certain way,’” said the Rev. Taylor Barner, a campus minister at Jacob’s Porch. He said the group’s approachability could be part of why roughly 60% of the group, which serves about two dozen students from Ohio State University, is LGBTQ.
“It’s very nonjudgmental,” said second-year OSU student and Jacob’s Porch attendee Oli Wood, who told RNS that his friends jokingly refer to Jacob’s Porch …