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Striving to be a safer space

As a ministry we desire to create spaces where young adults and others connected to the university feel welcome. We especially want to be a safer space to those who might feel less welcome in more traditional church or Christian spaces, such as those who ask uncomfortable questions or who have experienced trauma or other negative experiences related to church.

As part of that desire to be a safer space, we’re working on providing descriptions on our website for what people can expect if they attend gatherings, the opportunity to meet with a chaplain ahead of time, and through having and ensuring we follow our safe campus policy. In our conversations, we encourage and welcome a diverse range of opinions and we also are intentional about (graciously) challenging people to pay attention to how their language might comes across as racist or ableist, as being dismissive of the complexity of the Bible and Christianity, and/or as being exclusive of or causing distress to others.

We do this recognizing

  1. That creating safer spaces where people are held accountable is part of proclaiming the gospel, where all people and their experiences are valued. Melissa Kuipers, a Christian Reformed campus minister at Mohawk College in Hamilton, explains this well: Your Inconvenient Safe Church Policy Helps Spread the Gospel.
  2. That healing from trauma is a hard and often long journey. As Amanda Benckhuysen addresses why we can’t just get over trauma: “I think a large part of the answer is that we weren’t made for this. We weren’t made for a world in which we are violated and harmed. We weren’t made for a world of brokenness and sin. As such, we should never hope to get good at getting over oppression and violence and abuse and injustice. To simply “get over” the wrongs done to us is to acclimate to the brokenness and evil of the world and lull ourselves into believing this is OK. The hurt we feel when we are violated or mistreated, then, is not an indication of what’s wrong with us, but an indication of what’s wrong with the world. And this realization should inspire in all of us a deeper longing for Christ and Christ’s kingdom.” (The Journey to Healing After Abuse)

It is our hope that we might learn from the wisdom of people like Benckhuysen and Kuipers and so be safer spaces where people are able to lament injustice as well as imagine and long for God’s kingdom.

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Glimpsing Hope

It’s that time of year again when we tell the stories of how God is working in and through the ministry. We share stories of hope, as a way of encouraging ourselves and others about how God uses our efforts and our presence on campus and in people’s lives. We also try to acknowledge what has been hard and where we are still waiting. At a recent gathering of regional Christian Reformed campus ministers, people’s sharing about the challenges of this season were especially encouraging. It is helpful to hear that we are not the only group that is discerning how best to reach out to a student population that is exhausted and overwhelmed, looking for community and struggling to connect and commit. It is good, in the middle of those struggles, to both hear and tell of glimpses of hope found in good conversations where there has been a sense of God’s presence: conversations that sometimes happen only once but sometimes continue over time, conversations where learn more of God’s grace and open themselves more fully to the Spirit.

The following story from Richard Mouw is one of those stories that resonated with me as a campus minister: it is a story of being God’s presence to those around us and a story of hope, even as the story feels unfinished, or at least without the clear ‘happy’ ending many of us long for.

Mouw describes a letter he once received from a recent graduate of Fuller:

[She had lost her faith] in her senior year at the evangelical college she attended. It wasn’t the fault of anyone at that school. She had received a good education there and had made many friends. And now also at Fuller—she had learned much, but with the same result—still no recovering of faith.

She had not shared her loss of faith with any family or friends, and she was now thinking about how best to do that. Writing to me was for her a first step. During her senior year of college, having realized that she no longer believed, she decided “to give Fuller a chance” at helping to restore her faith. Nor did she regret that decision. While her faith had not returned, she wrote, “Fuller gave it a good shot!” And then she said something that brought a gasp from me, followed by many tears. She wanted to thank me especially, she said, because, in a philosophy class that I taught, she came close to believing again. “It was in a lecture on Nietzsche. You laid out the issue of a living God versus a dead God, and for a moment—a moment!—I felt like I could believe again. But the feeling went away. But thank you for giving it a try!”

I still shed tears over her words to me. I often pray for her. I think much about what I, or the school that I served as president, should have done differently.”

Mouw continues by reflecting on what it might look like to make space for people asking questions and for people to be honest about how and what they believe. I pray that campus ministries and the wider church might provide that kind of space.

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Spring Update: God working in and through the ministry

As we wrap up our 54th year of encouraging students to engage with their faith on campus, we are thankful to once again share how God has been working in people’s lives and at the university. Through the pastoral work we do and the programs we offer, we challenge, mentor, and enable students to think, work, and live as Christian disciples in the academy and in their professions. Through wrestling with Scripture and difficult topics, we invite people into radical Christian discipleship, inviting them to rest in the hope of Christ and to participate in God’s work of bringing justice. 

The following is an example of one way that we’ve been blessed to see God work: 

During the pandemic, one of the grad students now participating in our ministry experienced a time when she was deeply overwhelmed. One evening she called out to Jesus and felt God’s presence in response. After this encounter with God, a friend encouraged her to connect with the ministry as a means of growing in faith. She started attending Wine Before Breakfast and soon became part of Graduate Christian Fellowship. Through her participation in the ministry and pastoral conversations with the campus ministers, she grew in her understanding of how God was inviting her into radical Christian discipleship in all of her life.   

This spring she was baptized at a local church during their Easter Vigil. What makes her baptism even more special is that her baptism class was led by Andrew, who has himself been significantly shaped by Wine Before Breakfast. 


To read an update about the ministry and more stories of how God is working in and through the ministry, read our spring newsletter.

The retirement celebration for Brian was another reminder of how God works in and through the ministry to touch the lives of many people. In case you missed the service, you can watch it here. The service starts at 11:50, speeches in honour of Brian start at 2:09:28.

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Less victim, less pressure, more grace, more hope.

Jonathan Haidt, made infamous for his article on trigger warnings and coddling of the American Mind, was recently in the news again concerning the well-being of teens and young adults (see article, and Haidt’s own words in article1 and article2). The argument once again points to social media as playing a significant role in the well-being of youth (see also Twenge’s now famous article on whether smartphones have destroyed a generation).

Another part of Haidt’s argument about the decreased well-being of young adults is his articulation that certain ways of thinking, “say identifying with, or privileging victims and a victim status, tends to disempower people because it puts someone else in charge of your life.” (Robinson) While we should acknowledge that many of us, and some more than others for various reasons, have been and continue to be victims of unjust behaviour and/or institutions, the problem comes not from recognizing that we are victims, but by allowing being a victim to become one’s sense of identity. Victims have limited agency and there is limited focus on resiliency. Without conversations about resilience and agency, people are more likely to become depressed.

While this is an interesting conversation to be had in terms of how such thinking is affecting young adults, especially at university, it’s also an interesting conversation in wondering, like Robinson, “if there is some cross-over to all this in churches.” Have we lost our sense of agency in the church? Or, more accurately, have we forgotten God’s agency?

Robinson notes that in the “more liberal and progressive church context, there’s a lot of emphasis on the problems of the world, and on what you should be doing about it. Which begins to sound a lot like law, not gospel. It’s all about what you should do or feel or think. If God is in the picture, it’s about what God needs us to do, demands that we do. There’s little emphasis on what God has done or is doing on our behalf or on God’s capacity to bring good out of or in the face of evil. So it’s kind of all on us.”

That sounds exhausting and debilitating.

In a world where so many are exhausted and overwhelmed, when we feel like we have too little agency and too much responsibility, church can’t be a place that tries to give us more of that. Church – and all Christian organizations – need to be places of grace and hope.

Please pray with us that we in the ministry might indeed be one of those places where we extend grace and help people hope.

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Fear and hope in Easter – sermon on Mark 16

The following sermon was preached by Brenda Kronemeijer-Heyink at Wine Before Breakfast on April 19, 2022.

WBB Easter Sermon – Mark 16

Of all the resurrection narratives, I find the one in the gospel of Mark the easiest to relate to. Instead of joy and wonder, the reaction to Jesus’ resurrection is terror and astonishment. And then they run away. This feels more like real life. God does things that surprise us – and we’re not quite sure what to make of it or how to respond. We ignore it or practice avoidance, which is a tamer version of running away.

And yet the end of Mark, often known as the shorter ending, lacks resolution and doesn’t fit with what we know to have happened. After all, clearly the women couldn’t have told no one about the resurrection or how else would we know about it? Fairly early on people had a sense that the original ending of Mark was incomplete, and so they fixed it up by adding on a longer ending.

Because the longer ending of Mark is not seen as original, we often ignore it. But I wonder what we might miss by doing so – Verses 17 and 18 give an inspiring picture of how God will work through those that follow Jesus. These verses say, “Powerful signs will follow the ones who follow me. Here are some of the things they will do in my name, representing who I am: They will force out evil spirits, pick up and throw out snakes, and even if they drink deadly poison it will not harm them. They will speak in new languages and heal the sick by laying hands on them.” Church history has shown us that these things have indeed happened. When I read those words, I wonder what it would look like to have that kind of faith. What might it look like to believe that God can and would do these things through me and other followers of God?

And yet, as much as I long to have the charismatic, move mountains kind of power that we saw the prophet Elisha to have, the text makes me uncomfortable. It feels like an impossible standard to follow, and that if this is the only way to follow Jesus then I will fail at it.

And yet, in my failure I would be in good company. In the gospel of Mark, the retelling of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is a retelling of the multiple failures of those who follow Jesus. In the events leading up to Jesus’ death and crucifixion, one by one the disciples fall away. Judas betrays him, Mark – whom many assume is the young man mentioned in Mark 14:51 – runs away naked, discarding his garment in order to escape. And at the end of Mark 14, Peter denies him. All of the disciples have failed him. None of them are left to witness Jesus’ death and burial. The only ones that are left are Joseph of Arimathea, who is notably not named as a disciple, and Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. Joseph of Arimathea takes Jesus’ body and buries him, and the women witness Joseph putting Jesus’ body in the tomb and rolling the stone back.

At the beginning of Mark 16, we read about how these women go to the tomb in order to anoint Jesus’ body. As they go, they wonder how they will move the heavy stone in front of the tomb. I have sometimes wondered why they didn’t plan it better, but perhaps in their grief it was too hard to plan, especially when those they might have asked for help – the disciples – were wrapped up in their own grief and shock about losing Jesus after following him for years – and the disciples likely feared that those who had harmed Jesus would come after them.

The women as they approach the tomb find out the problem with moving the stone had been resolved – and now they were faced with an even greater challenge. An angel! An angel with strange, impossible news! The angel meets them and says: “6 “Do not fear!” the young man said to them, “The one you are looking for is not here! Creator Sets Free from Nazareth, who was killed on the cross, has returned to life. See for yourselves. Here is where they laid him. 7 Now go and tell his followers, and Peter, that he is going ahead of them to Galilee. It is there that they will see him again— just as he told them.” 

8 Terror and amazement came upon the women, and they ran as fast as they could from the burial cave.

Can you blame them for fleeing? Who of us, when we encounter God and when we are being forced to change all of our paradigms about what we believe and what that might mean – who of us would not be amazed, terrified, and want to run away?

Yet, it still feels like failure. Jesus is risen is the greatest news possible and they ran away. Jesus is risen are words we proclaim with hope and conviction – and practice speaking throughout Easter. Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed.

These women do not greet that news with joy or share it exuberantly with others. We, too, might not be able to greet that with joy – after all, it’s the end of a semester, the end of the busy Easter season, two years of a pandemic. We’re weary and feeling disconnected from others and life. And it feels like failure. And yet, when we look at the failure in this story and in our own lives, that is where we see Jesus. That is where we see the good news of the Gospel.

We get a first glimpse of the good news with the mention of the man running away naked back in Mark 14. What person is willing to admit that they ran away, shamefully naked? But in doing this, the young man places himself with the others who have abandoned Jesus – Judas who betrayed him, Peter who denied him. As one of the writers from Mockingbird ministries notes about this text: “And by telling the truth about his inability to stick with the Lord, he winds up exactly where Jesus wants him, exactly where Jesus has a chance to do something with him, exactly where he can become the recipient of what the Lord has to offer.”[1] It is in and through our failure that we recognize our need for God.

We see the good news again when Jesus specifically names Peter in his words. Because Peter had denied Christ, he might have considered himself to be no longer welcome. The women are told to tell Jesus’ followers about the resurrection – and make sure Peter know that includes him, too.

Jesus tells the disciples that he would go ahead of them to Galilee. This is where Jesus began his ministry, and Jesus is inviting the disciples to join him – he is inviting them to go back to the beginning, to remember what he has told them, and to remind them that their failure in no way excludes them. He still wants them to join him.

Jesus’ invitation to the disciples to join him in Galilee alludes to something Jesus told them at the last supper. In Mark 14:27-28, Jesus says, “You will all fall away,” “For it is written: “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Jesus knew that their failure would be inevitable, but their failure – our failure – was an opportunity for Jesus to show his faithfulness, to show his grace. An opportunity for the disciples to turn back, for all of us to turn back, to recognize our frailty, and allow God to work.

The failure shown in this chapter is not the end of the story, but instead can prompt us to read the story again to ask what the good news really is. And the good news is that Jesus has risen, Jesus has conquered death. And if God has conquered death, then God can do all things, including healing us. Heal our anxiety and fear; heal our brokenness, forgive our failures; take away our shame and help us to follow Christ. And while these are words of comfort, they also ought to be words that bring a little fear to us. After all, we are following a God who is capable of challenging all of our paradigms.

Esau McCaulley, a black theologian and New Testament scholar, wrote about Mark 16 for the New York Times last year. He noted that “The terrifying prospect of Easter is that God called these women to return to the same world that crucified Jesus with a very dangerous gift: hope in the power of God, the unending reservoir of forgiveness and an abundance of love. It would make them seem like fools. Who could believe such a thing? Christians, at their best, are the fools who dare believe in God’s power to call dead things to life. That is the testimony of the Black church.”[2]

May we learn from the wisdom of the Black church and other Christians from racialized groups. And may this also be our testimony here at WBB. That we may return to the world with hope in the power of God, the unending reservoir of forgiveness and an abundance of love.

[1] Ken Sundet Jones, About That Random Naked Guy in Mark’s Gospel… – Mockingbird (mbird.com)

[2] Esau McCaulley, Opinion | The Unsettling Power of Easter – The New York Times (nytimes.com)