Campus Chaplain was ‘Just Following God’s Lead’

Erica couldn't understand why the Christian Reformed Church was willing to help pay for her to travel across Canada to attend a recent campus ministry conference in Guelph, Ontario.

“I don’t get it.  Why does the CRC do this?  What’s in this for you?”  she asked Paul Verhoef, campus minister at the University of Calgary, at one point during the annual conference of the Christian Reformed Campus Ministry Association (CRCMA).

In a written CRCMA reflection describing the encounter, Verhoef says he had helped to arrange for Erica to be there as one of the 40 students from Canada and the US who were given scholarships to attend.

The CRC’s campus ministry association had raised $8,000 through grants thanks to the Reid Foundation and Christian Reformed Home Missions in order to bring Erica and the others to the conference, says Verhoef, “to worship and pray, to learn and listen to one another, plan and collaborate, reflect and engage communally, and of course, eat, laugh, walk, and play together.”

More than 30 campus chaplains attended the conference.

Verhoef says he invited Erica along because of all the work she had done over the last two years helping to lead a contemplative prayer gathering called "Alive."

“As a capstone to all that co-working together, we had just spent three days together at the conference” when Erica asked her question, he says. 

At first, he wondered what Erica meant, what she found so surprising.  But then, he reminded himself, that Erica isn’t Christian Reformed.

In fact, she had just finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of Calgary one week previous, and was planning to go to a United Church of Canada seminary.

“And here she was, invited to come (at minimal cost) to a conference of Christian Reformed pastors who work at public universities.  Indeed, she was asking a simple question: what do we (the CRC) hope to get out of her (non-CRC person) participation? 

“She’s not ‘one of ours’; she’s not planning to shift over to the CRC after seminary; she had just graduated and won’t be a student leader in one of our ministries anymore,” says Verhoef.

Also there at the campus ministry conference, says Verhoef, was Johnson, a member of the Plymouth Brethren community, who is heading to Regent Seminary in Vancouver. Abigail, having just finished her graduate degree at the University of Toronto, was also there. She will be was heading to be an Anglican chaplain at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. 

Important to point out, says Verhoef: Several of the students at the conference are members of the Christian Reformed Church, and not all the students who attended are aiming to be pastors. 

“Among them were undergrads in international development studies, philosophy and geophysics, and there were graduate students in political science, engineering, sports psychology, epidemiology, music and zoology – just to name a few.  All gathered as Christians, deeply committed to Jesus and his kingdom coming,” he says.

While they were together, they had reflected with Andy Crouch, author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, on culture, calling and power.

“Who are we in this created world?” Verhoef says in the recollection on the gathering.

“What tasks has our creator invited us to do with Him?  In what ways have our abilities, our power to shape and change this world, been used well and in what ways have we abused power?”

And so, he answered Erica’s question.

“Erica,” he said, “we asked you to come because God delights in you, loves how he gifted you, and invited you to share those gifts by joining in his kingdom--creating work on the University of Calgary’s campus.  God didn’t care whether you’re from the CRC or not – because his kingdom isn’t just CRC.  And so we’re just following God’s lead.”