When I was a baby Chaplain, a lot of other Chaplains gave me well-meaning advice. Much of it was unhelpful.
They didn’t give me bad ideas or even heretical suggestions, but the advice tended to focus on things that “I needed to be doing” or “I should be making sure happens” or “were essential to be done”. I had to make sure that Religious Education was renamed Christian Studies. I must ensure that ex-students were regularly involved in my lunchtime group. And whilst, these things that they thought I “must do” were working well in their contexts, they were deeply inappropriate for application to mine. With the wisdom of experience, and having worked in three Anglican schools in the last two years, I can say, with confidence, that the outworking of our faith in our school context has to be grounded in the specifics of our school community.
For me, this raises a question: what is a helpful way to talk about what we do that will help Chaplains (baby or experienced) to serve their schools and promote the gospel? What is it that we can thoughtfully offer to help people navigate new school contexts and find their way in a extraordinarily complex job? How do we help others do their job well, without being totalising about what the job of Chaplain is and must be.
My answer is that we should think of Anglican Schools as places of both invitation and gift and the job of the Chaplain to make clearer that invitation and to strengthen that gift.
Anglican schools are places of invitation. They hold out an offering to students: the gospel or Jesus’ radical message of grace, hope, and eternal life. By framing this message as invitation, Anglican schools hold to the conviction that students cannot be co-opted into the kingdom against their will. A decision for the faith must be one that students arrive at on their own. It is a fundamentally Christian understanding of the nature of faith formation that it encourages individual choice, criticism, and agency in the evaluation of the faith and its application in the world. Astley writes (in a journal article entitled ‘The Nature of Parts’) that this is vital in the formation of faith, “for Christian educators, such formation intends not only to create a person who thinks, values, feels and so on in a more Christian manner, as (more of) a disciple of Jesus and member of the body of Christ, but also someone who ‘thinks for herself’ about her faith.” Therefore, the school’s positioning of the Christian faith should be generous, hospitable, and encouraging of critical awareness of the Christian faith as well as other religions and worldviews. This understanding of the Christian faith as invitation is for students, but also to staff, parents, and the wider school community.
Anglican schools are also places of gift. They are gifting to their students the legacy of their educational framework and culture. Whilst Anglican schools recognise that not all people will come to recognise the truth of Scripture, the schools themselves hold to its truth, and thus affirm that the flourishing life is one that is aligned with the truth of the Bible. This means that as a gift, our schools leave our students with an orientation towards characteristics of the kingdom, including compassion, justice, loving kindness, a recognition of all people as valuable (made in the image of God), and a desire to balance rest and a knowledge of the goodness of work. Moreover, our schools will gift a disposition to be curious and oriented toward questions of spirituality and religion, with the skills to engage in these conversations with openness, honesty, clarity, and respect.
I think that deep consideration of how our school offer this gift is vital because students are constantly engaged in the process of faith formation through the inherent narratives, messaging and orientation to the world that is embedded in the teaching, learning, assessment and leadership of the school. In schools that hold loosely to their religious identities (as typical of at least some Anglican schools in Australia), the limiting of the role of the Christian faith to the Chapel or a specific subject (Religious Education), may mean that there are competing ideologies of faith formation at work. This distinction can be made clearer by drawing a dichotomy between faith as the content of what we believe and “faithing” that is, the process by which it is believed. Our schools can (and do) teach and embody a faithing that is at odds to the faith that we ascribe to. Notably, in the context of what Taylor refers to as “Secular Three,” the faithing of schools is often toward an immanent, contained, impersonal reality, where the supernatural is considered implausible, and individual identity is forged through “the authentic expression of self.” It would be a poor gift to leave this legacy upon our student’s lives.
In the diagram below you can see how I have drawn together Ruth Edward’s thinking on Anglican schools as defined as intellectual, inclusive and incarnational (see her book ‘Challenge and Choice: Australian Anglican Schools Today’ for more on this) with my own understanding of our schools as places of invitation and gift. I have then suggested what this might look like as a Chaplain, with areas that I understand as being crucial to the work of extending that invitation and promoting that gift, but it might look very different depending on your school context, your job description and your particular skills, gifts and calling. Regardless, I think we can continue to ask ourselves the questions, Am I doing all I can to make the invitation of the gospel as clear and as attractive as possible? And am I ensuring that a student’s time spent in this Anglican School is a gift, both now and my student’s future?
| Anglican Schools are1 | |||||
| Intellectual | Inclusive | Incarnational | |||
| Where education and learning, in all of its diversity, are encouraged and sort as a good. | Where all people are welcomed into the full life of the school, regardless of faith background or stated beliefs. | Where God’s love is made known in interactions between people and in the way the school operates as a whole. | |||
| In these schools the Christian faith is held as both an invitation and a gift. | |||||
| Invitation | Gift | ||||
| Where people are warmly and generously welcomed to understand, experience and accept for themselves the faith of the school. Anglican schools offer to students the radical message of Jesus’ grace, hope and eternal life. This offer is made in the liturgical life and explicit teaching of the school. By framing this offering as invitation, schools hold to the conviction that people can not be co-opted into the kingdom against their will, and a decision for the faith must be one that they arrive at on their own. The school’s positioning of the Christian faith therefore should be generous, hospitable, as well as encourage critical awareness and evaluation of the faith as well as other religions and world views. | Places that are gifting to their students the legacy of their tradition. Schools recognise that not all students (now or in the future) will accept their invitation, the assumption the school holds is that the flourishing life is one that is aligned with the truth of the Bible. This means that as a gift, these schools leave their students with the legacies of a Christian orientation to the world. This includes (and is not limited to) valuing compassion, justice, loving kindness, a recognition of all people as valuable (made in the Image of God), a desire to balance rest and a knowledge of the goodness of work. Moreover, a disposition to be curious toward questions of spirituality and religion, with the skills to engage in these conversations with openness, honesty, clarity and respect. | ||||
| The Role of the Chaplain is to make clearer & more attractive that invitation and to promote and strengthen that gift. This is done through: | |||||
| Listening & Being | Practical Theology | Prayer & Worship | Social Justice | Partnering | Existential Awareness and Prophetic Role |
| Chaplains seek to listen and deeply understand their school community by being present in all aspects of the school community. In doing so they can offer practical love and be Christ to people in their moments of need. Moreover, by being and listening they can have a deep sense of the longings and losses of their school community. The Chaplain seeks to prayerfully discern where the Holy Spirit is at work in their school community. | The Chaplain seeks to build a shared story of hope, that is rooted in the Christian scripture, and responding to the distinctive needs of their school community. They look to share that hope through both the formal and informal life of the school. | The Chaplain organizes the formal liturgical life of the school and informal Christian ministry, such that the invitation of the Christian faith is clear and appropriate based on the school community. | The Chaplain encourages the cause of social justice in the school, championing the vision that all people have inherent dignity and Christians have a responsibility to bring about God’s justice. This involves social justice within the school and directing the concerns of the school to local and global neighbors. | The Chaplain recognizes the limitations of the school and seeks to connect students, families, and staff with local churches that they might flourish in a life of discipleship. | The Chaplain is the person in the school who is directly charged with not blinking in the face of life’s pressing and hardest questions. They provide support and care to people in hard as well as joyful times. Chaplains are deeply aware that their job is to promote the gift of the Christian tradition, this will sometimes involve challenging where the school is failing to offer or limiting the scope of that gift. |
Colossians 1 in the Message
Jesus was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
The job of the Chaplain is to assist to bring the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe back into vibrant harmonies.
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1The three terms intellectual, incarnational and inclusive and the basis for their descriptions are from Ruth Edwards’ book “Challenge and choice: Australian Anglican schools today” (Kainos Books, 2014)
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