A Chaplain without a Chapel: mission in a different modality
WHEN I started out as a university chaplain ten years ago, I was an unmarried man with no kids, and a lay person with a full head of hair. A decade later, as I prepare to leave university chaplaincy and move into parish ministry full-time, all of those things have changed.
One of the things that I’m looking forward to is the naturalness of a style of ministry that hasn’t been afforded to me up to now. Moving into this new parish, we’ll have a Montessori in the parish hall that my daughter will attend, and a primary school where my son will start in September. Both will give me the chance for the kind of ministry that chaplaincy is — loitering with intent and building relationships with new people based on what we have in common, a natural and obvious reason to be there.
There’s nothing more natural than getting to know other parents at the gate of your child’s school, and nothing more uncomfortable than hanging around a school car park when you don’t have a child attending. That, for me, describes the difference between Darren’s rich ministry here in Trinity College and my experience in University College Dublin. What was natural as Church of Ireland chaplain in Trinity wasn’t the same in my context because I had to answer a different question: what does it mean to be a chaplain without a chapel?
* Full article available in printed copies.
Scott Evans
Has completed ten years as C of I chaplain at University College, Dublin, initially as a layman, and worked since ordination also as curate in Holy Trinity Rathmines. He has recently been appointed rector of St Matthias in Dublin diocese