Good Beginnings

As I write these words I am sitting in the newly established office for the Multifaith Centre at the Surrey campus for Kwantlen Polytechnic University; it’s my first time sitting in here as the Christian Reformed Chaplain. I’m up on the third floor of the “Fir” building (many of the buildings here are named after trees). The window looks out into a forest of spring-green leaves; the nearest tree is only yards away and reflects green light right into the office. Inside, is less lively: grey and black furniture on a grey and black carpet that is in need of a good vacuum. Some work will need to be done over the next few weeks to make this a warm and hospitable space.

This office will be my home base on the Surrey Campus of Kwantlen as I begin my position of Christian Reformed Campus Chaplain. The campus is fairly quiet now as many students have abandoned classes for a summer of work experience or vacation and the professors take advantage of fewer on campus responsibilities to work at home or travel to conferences. A few offices open onto the work of mathematicians or biologists, but for the most part the halls are lined with closed and locked doors on a Wednesday afternoon at the outset of the summer semester.

I’m standing on the edge of a new job/adventure that I can predict little about. I’ve been heavily involved as a student in two campus ministries, one at a small Christian university (The King’s University) and the other at a large public institution (University of Toronto), and they each offered both unique gifts and challenges. Kwantlen is sufficiently different from both of those contexts, and just as campus ministry was an exciting and varied experience with them, so too will it be equally if not more so here. The inclusion of a Multifaith centre is something entirely new for Kwantlen’s Surrey campus and so the task of a CRC campus chaplain here is mine to both create and discover.

What is my task here? Why establish an office and pay a salary to a Christian Reformed chaplain? One of the phrases which has come up often in conversations around this question is “a Christian presence on campus”. That is my task: to be a positive Christian presence on this campus. But what is a “Christian presence”?

2000 years ago Jesus of Nazareth walked around Galilee and Jerusalem preaching wisdom, performing miracles, challenging human self-sufficiency, and manifesting the love and grace of God. The events surrounding his death and resurrection were so energizing and generative that within a very short time the name of Jesus was increasingly tied to such strong titles as “messiah” (“Christ”), “savior”, “son of God”; eventually the language extended so far as to say that “in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” and ultimately relating him to the very act of creation: “In the beginning was the Word…”. This language surrounding Jesus, though, most certainly did not emerge in a vacuum or intellectual ivory tower, but was always correlative to the development of a community which dedicated itself to the fostering of this language, not only in conceptual formulations, but also in word, deed, and presence in the world.

Fast forward 2000 years, through councils, creeds, crusades, martyrdoms, persecutions, and empires and we arrive at one place among many where the Christian tradition has branched: a third floor office at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The language and practices of the tradition are still with us: the reading of scripture, the pursuit of justice, the sharing of bread and wine, the opening of ourselves to God in prayer. This tradition now finds a new home and a new context at Kwantlen. The open questions before us are now: how is Christ known here? What does the gospel mean now? Where is God at work in the World, in Surrey, at Kwantlen?

This is the task of a Christian chaplain: to ask these questions and to never stop attempting to answer them with both word and deed. Our very lives both are the gift of God and a response to the gift of God. It is the gift, if you will, that keeps on giving. A new centre, a new focal point for this giving has now been opened here at Kwantlen. Kwantlen itself is now the gift to be received and the task to be accomplished. God in Christ is always already working here, God has already elected, called, chosen Kwantlen for something. For what? This is a task of discernment for me as a chaplain and for each Christian and, indeed, for each person who crosses the threshold of this centre for learning and growing. However, though this task of discerning God’s call may be fluid, dynamic, and as of yet unspecified, it is specified insofar as it is never separated from the establishment of God’s kingdom of love and justice made perfectly known 2000 years ago. The perfection of the knowledge of God in Jesus is not a finished task; it is one which is always-already only beginning in every moment of our lives. Regarding beginnings, though, it is surely and explicitly a beginning here at Kwantlen where the joys and challenges of chaplaincy still lie in a book closed before me, but waiting to be explored, enjoyed, savoured, and encountered. I’m only now turning the first page.