Helping University Students on Their Journey

In June 2016 the Christian Reformed Church in North America released its new ministry plan, Our Journey 2020, which lays out goals for denominational agencies and congregations in their callings and ministries. As part of the ministry plan, the CRC is sharing glimpses of ministry occurring in and through congregations across North America. Recently CRC news reporter Chris Meehan took a short journey to see how the CRC is joining with God to do ministry in southern Ontario. His first story was about Destination Church in St. Thomas, and the second looked at three missional church plants. In this third report, he stops to learn more about a campus ministry at the University of Guelph.

Dozens of people gathered in the University Centre at the University of Guelph in early February to reflect on the highly unusual deaths of 10 students, at least four from suicide, during the current academic year.

At the memorial ceremony organized by Christian Reformed Church campus chaplain Jamie VanderBerg, those who gathered for the afternoon event also had a chance to honor the memory of persons killed a few days earlier when a white supremacist opened fire at a mosque in Quebec.

“We met as a community to remember those students who had passed away, to support students struggling with mental health issues, and to stand in solidarity with the Muslim community in the aftermath of the tragic shooting,” said VanderBerg.

One of more than 35 Christian Reformed Home Missions campus chaplains based at secular colleges and universities across North America, VanderBerg has the task of sharing God in a large community of students who hold to various faith traditions or to none at all. His job is to bridge gaps and bring people together in a setting filled with competing interests and visions for how to live life.

VanderBerg is a pastor who meets students at a crucial point in their life journey, at a time when they are evolving into adults who are building relationships and searching out careers.

In his job, he often reaches across boundaries to bring the grace of God into situations of conflict and suffering.

And nothing brought the difficult nature of his role home like the student deaths, including the suicides, that have caused pain and sadness and have brought hard questions to the minds of people across the campus this school year.

“The whole campus has been reeling, and our counseling center was flooded with people seeking help,” said VanderBerg, who has been a chaplain at the university since 2005. He currently also serves as team leader of the school’s interfaith ministry.

Hurting and overwhelmed, the counselors asked VanderBerg to help bring some healing into their lives. Many of the counselors are Christian, and all felt the heavy burden of helping students cope with the inexplicable string of deaths.

As they listened to young people grieve, they also battled for answers. In this instance, VanderBerg tried to bring the soothing Spirit of God, and to do it in a way that didn’t overemphasize his faith.

In his own journey as a campus pastor, VanderBerg has seen that what matters most is the way in which God works, in all places at all times — and, depending on the situation, not necessarily to preach or teach explicitly about his faith.

“I was asked to lead a session for counseling services,” said VanderBerg. “The counselors were exhausted and feeling the weight of supporting students with mental health issues. The session that I led was rather simple in layout.”

He created an interfaith liturgy of lament — a topic covered and richly expressed in the Bible — that started by making time for the counselors to reflect on the recent deaths.

“They were invited to write down their reflections and share them with their colleagues, putting into words the weight that they were carrying.”

After that, they lit candles for the students who had passed away.

“Following a moment of silence, we walked through a liturgy that opened up a conversation on hope and the kind of hope that we cling to in times of difficulty.”

On a recent Saturday in his office on the second floor of a historic stone building in the middle of the campus, VanderBerg talked about the various aspects of his ministry.

Aside from those important ceremonies he helped to coordinate this year, he said he has been busy meeting one-on-one with students, helping to host a weekly dinner and worship time, supporting students who are working in various capacities with needy neighborhoods in the city, working with Bible studies and small groups, and helping to foster ongoing conversations between the different faith groups on campus.

Through it all, he said, moves a message that he frequently shares with students, be it in words or actions, about the all-inclusive movement of God in all areas of life.

“Our ministry has the vision that the whole campus belongs to God. God is doing a lot of good, and we can participate in it,” he said.

“I encourage students to bring forward their gifts and engage in God’s ministry. I encourage them to flourish wherever they are.”

Within the past year VanderBerg also spoke at a vigil for the people killed in June 2016 at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

In addition, he has met with local church leaders, some of whom had plastered the campus with literature criticizing people of other religions.

Nearly every weekend, he said, he is out preaching at churches in his classis to raise support for the campus ministry.

As he considers the overall focus of this ministry, said VanderBerg, the various interactions with students are crucial.

But something else also comes to mind — the relationship he has been able to cultivate with a Muslim man.

They met on campus, and now they get together to talk — to get to know one another over the religious boundaries that define and can divide them.

“We have grown to respect one another’s faith,” said VanderBerg. “We share with one another what we believe. I always tell him about Jesus Christ, and he talks about his deep belief in Allah.

“The fear of the other has diminished as we’ve done this. We have learned to be open to learn from and respect and love one another.”

This sharing, this breaking down of barriers, VanderBerg added, is part of what being a campus pastor, in a complicated and diverse setting, is all about.

As a campus pastor, he seeks to pass along the message that taking time to learn, to grow, and to open oneself to strangers — to other experiences and ideas — is important, since by doing so “we see each other as humans and not enemies.”

“I think campus ministry is on the leading edge of understanding the need to reach out to others, on the campus, in our city, and in the world,” said VanderBerg. “I think the CRC has been a big part of this with its vision to seek out and to be a blessing to others wherever they are.”

Sara Wyngaarden, who works with VanderBerg in the ministry, says inclusivity is a hallmark of his work.

“ Recognizing Christ's example of reaching out to the marginalized, Jamie looks for ways to make spaces feel safe and welcoming to anyone who may walk through the door,” she said.