Sabbatical Reflections: From Strangers I could judge to Colleagues I could delight in

"What is the question for your Sabbatical?" I was asked in one of my first conversations with someone connected to campus ministry in the Netherlands. I mostly knew the answer: I wanted to pay attention to how God works, and grow in the spiritual practice of actively waiting on God. But that wasn't what I wanted to focus on in this conversation: I had come wanting to know more about how this pastor’s particular church denomination approached campus ministry, so I could judge them against my own. Instead, I felt judged: I stumbled to express myself well in Dutch; I was pushed on why we haven't focused more on student well-being; and wasn't my understanding of God too small?

The primary project of my Sabbatical was to visit different campus ministries to be inspired and gain new ideas. But I think I also went with the assumption that I would come back with wisdom (that I would be asked to share) and the reassurance that how we were doing things here is good (and even better than there). The preliminary research I did seemed to confirm my feelings of superiority. I discovered that almost all of the church denominations had decreased or limited the funds for campus ministry, and few of the current campus ministers had been there long enough to live through the changes that the pandemic brought to ministry. When I looked through the websites from ministries, few of them mentioned God or even Christianity, and many pastors were life-coaches or another generic term.

And then I started sending out emails to different campus ministers, asking if I could stop by to meet them and hear more about their ministries. My emails were met with affirmation and curiosity. They welcomed my questions and were curious about my own ministry and what I was learning with this project. The gracious hospitality humbled me, and the conversations shifted from my completing an agenda that was based on knowledge and affirmation of what I had been doing, to being open to what the Spirit might teach me. How could I not shift perspective once I shared with others the joyous delight of recognizing a partner in ministry, something I treasured from my connections with other Christian (and) Reformed campus ministries and at my local campus?

Campus ministry is complex and exciting, and it was a joy to feel welcomed by and able to affirm others who share in this calling to serve God in this way. Who else but a campus minister could fully understand what it is like to need to constantly try new things, some of which will inevitably fail? Or who would recognize how hard it can be to trust in God working when many of our interactions with students are brief, mere stepping stones on a faith journey which we might never get to see?

Some quotes from Andrew Roots' When Church stops working

With a group of other campus ministers, we're doing a book group on Andrew Root's, When Church Stops Working. We started the conversation with each of us asking why we're interested in the book. Many of us had heard of Andrew Root and appreciated him. Others of us related to the sense of overwhelm by the push for more in all areas of our lives. And for me, it's about needing help in being able to imagine things differently (as the last quote highlights).
As part of my preparation for the conversation, I highlighted a few quotes that I found helpful. They are as follows:

Chapter 1:

• p 2, 5 "There is a feeling of not enough: too little influence, too few people, too fragile belief...The solution is [more]: the right balance of resource management and effective innovation, which makes our church grow sustainably."
• But p. 6 "The problem is wicked, meaning there is no actual solution, in which case we need to despair. Or those books misdiagnose the problem." 
• Pages 9-12 give overview of the 3 types of secular. While I think they're important to know to frame the conversation, I found the way they were written to set up a mildly annoying (and false) tension around how the secular age is the problem, so that the authors could come in and say well, actually not, and surprise look how God works in and through it. He uses more helpful language on page 13. "In this book, we want to reimagine the church within the secular age. We believe God continues to act in the world, and because God acts in the world, we believe it is possible for the church [+ ministry] to flourish."
• p 14 "Because the secular age separates the secular and the sacred, making belief private and the immanent the agreed-upon public reality, the church has a hard time imagining what a public faith that witnesses to the transcendent looks like." I'd argue that our institutions suffer similar difficulties in not knowing what to do with religion/spirituality. 
•  p15 speaking on a personal level "We obsess over work-life balance... Efficiency is often the solution... We think we can do more than we actually can...The busyness we experience comes from the feeling that we need to accelerate every part of our lives." 
• p 16 "Our diagnosis is that the opposite of acceleration isn't dead or slow. The opposite is more resonance.... Resonance is all about connecting with the world, with the people in our lives, and finding a meaning that is greater than what we can see and explain. Resonance is about the sacred, the public, and the transcendent."

Chapter 2:

• p21 In our origin/hero stories, "it is inevitable that they will triumph. This triumphalism fits well with the secular story we live in: more is better." This might explain why it feels like we can't be honest about the complicated reality but can only tell success stories.
•  p 23-4. "The real origin story starts in Acts 1 [not the triumphal version of Acts 2] with waiting for God to act. God is the hero, and the church waits.... Waiting, as practiced by the disciples and advocated by us, is not inactive.It is responsive. God acts and we respond. What we are saying, though, is that the secular age blinds us to God's action, and so all we are left with is our action.... We have no way of imagining what it would look like for God to act in our lives.... If we are to take our own origin story seriously, we need to see that God's people only act in response to God's act."  
• Diagnosis (again) of the problem: p 29, 31: "We run and run and run, exhausting ourselves and those around us in the process.... Busyness dominates us. Acceleration causes fatigue, filling our lives till there is no room left, even if the thing we want to add could be valuable. We don't blame church leaders for this. They are moving fast, not so that they can get ahead but simply so that they don't fall behind... Acceleration, the busyness we feel, is a symptom of our frustrated search for meaning."
  
• p 32 "You can't wait when you are busy, caught up in your own project... when we are not waiting in a ready stance, we can miss the important things."
• p 35 In Genesis, "[Sarah's] imagination can't see what God is doing because what God is doing is so far out there."
• p 36 "Whether we cannot see God because the secular age has malformed our imaginations or because it has made us so busy that we cannot see God, when we try to talk about the experience of seeing God, language fails.... We are so used to doing that having an encounter with God surprises us."

Ready for the year?

This past week I have

Dikkie Dik helping with the updates

- preached (and will preach the same sermon again on Sunday);

- attended my first council meeting as an elder;

- purchased new glasses (the last pair were bought in Michigan);

- got my hair coloured (the last time was more than 2 years ago)

- got a flat tire, which my brother-in-law quickly fixed (and sent me on my way with a donut that was properly inflated);

- visited 2 prisons for women in Canada and learned a lot more about the prison system, including how full it is;

- ran 2 months worth of updates on 20+ laptops at my daughter's school; and thus inadverntly became part of the tech committee; 

- attended and volunteered at the back-to-school bbq for her school;

- have been slowly editing an overdue article on vocation - maybe tomorrow it'll fine get submitted with an apology; 

- met with folks to get ready for the school year.

- made soup for tomorrow's GCF (Graduate Christain Fellowship);

- wrote a lot of emails and had some good conversations. 

Potato leek soup for tomorrow

This is my last week before we enter the chaotic season of September (tomorrow is my first 12-hour day again, where I have a team meeting, a graduate resource fair, and Graduate Christian Fellowship). I'm trying to finish up a bunch of extra things before everything starts up, but it also feels like things are starting off with a bang. If this is a sign of the year to come, it makes me deeply thankful for Matthijs' and others' support but also makes me curious (albeit a bit nervous) about all the surprises and new adventures that are coming. 

The grace of the unexpected

 A poem by Sara Kay Mooney on the Mockingbird website made me smile by how it describes God rearranging our expectations:  

"On the weekends, I play Wordle

with Jesus. He makes
the puzzles; I guess the words.

I’m not very good (though
I’m learning). That Christ—

he’s a tricky one. Always
thwarting expectations. Upending

things. Full of surprises, that guy.
...

Last week, shame
turned out to be share, 

Sorry was story,
greed was greet,

...

See  On the weekends, I play Wordle for the rest of the poem. 

I was in prison and did you visit me?

Matthijs has been visiting Dutch citizens in prisons for awhile now. This has always felt like a good thing for him to do, but not something for me. He's asked me about it a few times, but my answer has been no. I'll make it possible for you to travel to do this, but I have enough on my plate already.

On Good Friday, I went to a service where they offered a variation of "the complaints of God." It includes quotes the text from Matthew 25, which asks where were you when I was hungry, sick, in prison. And I have mostly ignored the 'in prison' part of it, because who did I know in prison?

And well, it felt like a nudge from the Spirit this time to say, um, well, actually there's that woman in Matthijs' region that he hasn't been able to visit. So I do know know at least one person who needs a visit and I am one of the few people I know who is uniquely qualified to visit (qualified in the sense of being a Dutch speaker living in this region who has pastoral training). And there was a sense that if I can help, shouldn't I? So I reached out to the organization that Matthijs works with to let them know that I was willing to visit women in prison in Canada or nearby.

 
This request to visit only women is a bit odd, but not atypical of me. One of the things that I was doing on Sabbatical was to continue to understand how being autistic affects my life. Interestingly enough, a study/podcast on Christianity on the spectrum highlighted that pastors who are autistic tend to do well when we focus on certain niches (like I do with campus ministry). So just because I'm a pastor and have gifts for pastoral care for young adults and folks connected to the university does not mean that I'm good at pastoral care for all people, and it's okay for me to recognize my current limitations. 

Most prisoners are men, so I figured my willingness to visit women in prison meant that I was helping but also not signing up to do too much. However, as what feels a bit like the Spirit laughing at me (or at least a verification of that initial nudge), in Canada there are a number of Dutch women in prison who are interested in a prison visit. So this is the beginning of a new experience in ministry for me. I pray that I might listen well and share God's hope with people's lives who are differently complicanted than mine. 

Welcome to the Awkward Club - coming to terms with being autistic

Several years ago, I came to the realization that I was likely on the (autistic) spectrum. People can have odd ideas about what it means to be on the spectrum, and I think it's important to challenge those assumptions when possible. So I've tried to be open about my experience, which is why I wrote about it in the Christian Courier awhile ago. 

The following is the article:

"Neurodiversity has been a part of my story for a while, even as it has taken me a long time to recognize that and see the goodness in it. It wasn’t until someone started talking about the connection between autism spectrum disorder and the inability to escape fight or flight mode that I recognized a parallel with my own tendency to “check out” when I’m overwhelmed. A couple of online diagnostic tests and a lot of reading later, I came to understand that my “checking out” was likely connected to how neurodiversity can affect executive functions, which are basically the overarching skills that allow for time management, completing projects, social interactions, processing emotions and stimuli, and more.

I describe myself as being neurodiverse, or being on the spectrum, as I think it helps people to understand me and to be introduced to one more picture of neurodiversity. At the same time, I don’t ever want my neurodiversity to be an excuse for behaviour that hurts others. But seeing myself as being on the spectrum has helped me to understand how and why I’ve struggled with some things, like making friends in high school, taking so long to finish my dissertation and even my dislike of indirectness and/or Christian niceness.

What makes me see this diagnosis as being a gift from God is that it’s helped take away some of my shame of not fitting in or being as successful at things as I think I should be. It’s helped me understand and have compassion for my struggles, like anxiety, sloth or gluttony, recognizing that these struggles are not simply a lack of faith or willpower: these struggles might also be related to some sensory things and overwhelm connected to neurodiversity. Furthermore, the growing understanding of neurodiversity, both in myself and among society today, is helping me understand what tools, expectations and accommodations might be helpful as I try to live my life in a way that loves God and others. 

Last of all, I have learned to see how God can use my growing understanding of neurodiversity as a gift to others. My dissertation is based on noticing patterns in the syntax of the text of Ezekiel: how the multiple unfounded conclusions, pronouns without clear references, and the visions might contribute to the complex message of repentance and hope proclaimed to a people burdened by decades of sin and entering exile. I hadn’t realized that my ability to notice certain patterns is an autistic trait.

In my pastoral work, I’ve often been able to connect with those who are seen as odd or awkward. My directness and honesty can be refreshing to others, like the grad students who appreciate my asking five minutes into the conversation whether we’ve done enough small talk.

My hope is that I’m able to create space for others to be honest and even vulnerable. I recognize that I’m not as concerned about making others uncomfortable as a neurotypical person might be. I bring up things others might have avoided as potential sources of conflict. This has led to awkward moments, but as anyone who is neurodiverse might tell you, awkward is simply a normal part of our lives, and we’re more than willing to share that experience with you."

Campus Life in the Netherlands compared to Canada

Student life is a very significant department at most Canadian (and American) universities. A positive housing experience, including a strong push by most universities that first-year students to live on campus, is also part of the Canadian university experience. Most campus ministers/ministries in Canada, with the exception of those closely associated with a local church, tend to be connected to Student Life, either through the ministry being recognized as student group or with the chaplain working directly with a division of Student Life, such as wellness, a mult-faith centre, or even international student support. 

In the Netherlands, however, student life is more likely to refer to "how you spend your leisure time at university" than look like a Canadian Student Life department. The exception to this is a growing focus on wellness, particularly with pressure being placed on universities in response to studies showing students are not doing well.

Furthermore, most universities in the Netherlands do not provide housing for students. The few places that do have 'student housing' available generally work with housing corporations and tend to limit the availability to international students. (Dutch) students are given free travel on public transit on either weekdays or in the weekend. This means that many students are at home frequently during their studies, either through living at home or by travelling home most weekends.

Given the significant differences in campus life, it should be no surprise that campus ministry in the two different countries looks quite different. At the same time, there were interesting parallels and opportunities to learn from each other, which I'll say more about as I continue to reflect on my Sabbatical experience.

The above has been cross-posted on the UofT Christian Reformed Campus Ministry website, which sponsored my sabbatical.