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It's a Monday night in late October, and Halloween festivities across the college town of Madison, Wisconsin, are overflowing with partying young people. There is a dance at the high school - not to mention the Green Bay Packers on Monday night football.

Yet, instead of taking in any of those activities, dozens of high-school students and their adult tutors have congregated in the basement of Christ Presbyterian Church for their weekly study session, to be followed by a home-cooked meal.

Buttering bread for grilled-cheese sandwiches, Doug Madsen, a former tutor, says he signed up for kitchen duty because he couldn't stomach a second helping of high-school algebra.

In another section of the basement, Paul Nelson sits at a folding table, assisting 15-year-old Ger with his chemistry homework, while sipping a Coke. Nelson began three years ago as Ger's tutor and two years ago also took over as his "mentor" under another Christ Presbyterian program, an effort supported by Young Life. A state-government policy analyst with two children of his own, Nelson enjoys attending Asian festivals with Ger's family.

"Sometimes we get bored," Ger says, looking up from a textbook about atomic particles and tossing his long hair back off his forehead. "Then we just hang out together."

PROJECT OPPORTUNITY

The warm relationship between Nelson and Ger is just one of dozens that have been created in the last five years by the long reach of ministry at Christ Presbyterian, not far from the University of Wisconsin campus and the state capitol on Madison's east side.

In 1989, Christ Presbyterian created Project Opportunity, a program in which the church made long-term commitments to 16 sixth-grade students at a local public school. The Madison Community Foundation has supported the effort. The project commits the church to tutoring and mentoring the kids, helping them to finish high school, and then offering to pay their college tuition.

Madsen's wife, Norma, has joined the program and says, "The community never has a chance of knowing what would happen if you just stayed with a group of kids no matter what."

From that effort, Monday-night tutoring was initiated, pairing another 30 members of Christ Presbyterian with at-risk youth for one year. "Believers [want] to give feet to their faith," says Shirley Hammond, an elder at Christ Presbyterian, founder of Project Opportunity, and now coordinator of a citywide, multi-church mentoring and tutoring program known as Madison Urban Ministry. "Jesus told us to love, and that's not just our families and church members. That's a general command."

Christ Presbyterian's mentors and tutors have robustly embraced the Christian imperative to love everyone in spite of cultural and religious barriers. Jeanne Kinney, with Project Opportunity for five years, has been a mentor to 17-year-old Mao, a high-school junior who blends her native Hmong culture in with the life of a modern American teenager.

Mao holds a job at McDonald's on weekends, while maintaining a 3.0 grade-point average and carving out time for her boyfriend, shopping, and other interests. Following cultural tradition, her Hmong parents selected her boyfriend and have arranged for her to marry him after graduation. As Buddhists, Mao's parents believe that their daughter's flirting with another youth riled dead ancestors. As a result, they whisked her to Chicago for four days of prayer to deal with her "errant spirit."

"At the wedding, I'll be, like, sold to the guy," says Mao. As Mao deals with her two very different, very demanding worlds, she has relied on Kinney as a pal, mother confessor, cultural guide, tutor, and coach. In turn, Mao has become a source of great joy to Kinney, who hopes to find mentors for Mao's two younger sisters.

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December 12 1994, Vol. 38, No. 14