DETROIT – Oakland University senior Jack Brabant only found the Agape Community about eight months ago, and he now considers that to have been “three years and eight months too late.”
“I should have joined with I entered as a freshman. Commuting from Troy, it was difficult to find people with the same values and a Christian background,” says Brabant, 21, a health sciences major.
The Agape Community is a regional ministry of the Pontiac Area Vicariate, run out of St. John Fisher University Parish in Auburn Hills, across Walton Boulevard from the OU campus. It welcomes both OU students and other young adults (ages 17-35) from throughout the vicariate.
Brabant says it is easy for college students to get caught up in classes and studying, and not give proper attention to one’s spiritual life. “I felt my faith in God was a little strained,” he recalls.
The same sort of thing also happens with college grads embarking on a new career, often in a new community, and they are equally welcome to join the Agape Community.
John Poston, 22, is another Agape member who only joined the group during his final year as an OU student.
“I didn’t ask myself what I wanted out of college until my last year as an undergrad, but the answer came to me when I met the Agape community this past winter,” Poston says.
Although he had never lost his faith while a college student, he says had been walking alone, without the support of like-minded friends. And, having finally found those friends, Poston says he finally realized he was not merely seeking an education, but “wanted to learn more about life, with people who will make what I learn worthwhile.”
“This discovery marked the beginning of a new era in my life, and was sparked at the February retreat with Agape,” he adds,
Although Poston graduated from OU with a degree in psychology this spring, he says he intends to keep up his involvement with the Agape Community. Too often graduation means losing contact with friends one made at university, and he says he doesn’t want to have that happen with the friends he has made through Agape
Susan Katchka, 21, a junior psychology major, says she found the Agape Community and St. John Fisher University Parish about a year-and-a-half ago right as she was converting to Catholicism and searching for a church with a good young adult program.
Agape is “a wonderful place to not only make friends, but to learn and grow in my faith,” she says.
Katchka says she appreciates Agape’s policy of welcoming area young adults whether or not they are Oakland University students, for although she is at OU now, she was still at Oakland
Community College when she joined.
Nick Fabian, 24, a senior art history major at OU, was also an OCC student when he first discovered the Agape Community. Actually, his contact came because he got roped into helping his mother, who had volunteered to help cook for an Agape retreat.
“They invited me to join them for the retreat sessions, and the people were so nice and welcoming that I just kept coming back,” he says.
“It’s nice to have a place you can go, and talk about God and Jesus and your religion,” Fabian says.
He attends the monthly Agape Community Mass at 7 p.m., the second Sunday of each month in St. John Fisher, and adds that one of his favorite Agape activities is Coffee and Conversation, at 7:30 p.m., every second and fourth Tuesday at the Caribou coffee house on Walton Boulevard and Adams, near the OU campus.
“Everyone there is super welcoming, and we love having new people show up,” Fabian says.