NOTE: Writing on this article began before the recent and TRUE college announcement of updates to CRUX’s business model and its new “missionary coffeehouse” business model.
Lander, WY – As a small Catholic liberal arts college that aims to keep costs as low as possible, Wyoming Catholic College (WCC) is always looking for ways to cut them. One way is to learn from the best practices of its subsidiaries and expand these to the broader organization. WCC’s offshoot outdoor program, Catholic Outdoor Retreat, which offers professionally guided and instructed backpacking, rafting, canoeing, climbing, and more trips has already found an innovative new way to save on one of the biggest expenses of all, the salaries of employees, by simply not paying them.
Why, you might ask?
It’s simple. They’re “missionaries”. They’re “preaching the Gospel” by doing their bit for the college. Just like the COR missionary instructors, Admissions Missionaries for example share the Gospel by drawing people to Wyoming Catholic, which is a Catholic college by the way (just look, just look right there at the word “Catholic” in the name).
And of course, they must fundraise their own salary. That’s the model.
CRUX missionaries mission the good news to the community by giving a Christian smile that heathen patrons of the coffeehouse might see and realize that “they’ll know that we are Christians by our love.”
FLEX missionaries… Hmm, well, I guess they’re missionaries who are supposed to preach the gospel to the clerks at ACE Hardware.
Kitchen missionaries will obviously have the job of preaching while they work to the head of the WCC kitchen, who is a Protestant. Maybe if all the kitchen employees (including their student work-study staff) transition to this new fundraising model it will even help the work study (and the overall school) budget. (“Hey dad. You know I’m working for part of my education. Do you want to support me in my missionary work washing dishes for the school that I and you are also paying to attend. Can you pay me to wash dishes for the school?”)
Apply today to become one of these exciting new types of missionaries. The college aims to have transitioned these four departments over to a fully missionary model by January 2024.
Or, you know, you could just discern with a real religious order…