The bishop of Newcastle, at my interview for the post of co-ordinating chaplain to the University of Northumbria, said, “I reckon this is the hardest job in the diocese, why on earth do you want to do it?”* A good question; why did he think it was hard? I supposed that he meant something like: being a university chaplain in a large and secular university means that you don't have a settled congregation to pastor and your role is widely misunderstood and you are in a very pioneering situation with regard to discerning the mission of God and playing your part. So it's hard because you need to have a good degree of resilience, imagination, ability to cope without the normal encouragements of working in ordained ministry.
The lack of a settled congregation may be a surprise to some -remembering chaplaincies from student days as vibrant nexuses of Christian gathering and growth. Not so now: the demographic concern for falling numbers of young people participating in church life is showing up acutely in university chaplaincies; they rarely attract enough people for a critical mass of consistent and regular activity. young people who do identify as church-actively Christian tend either to go to the RC chaplaincy (by dint of a strong 'brand loyalty' on the part of the catholics and even here the numbers can struggle) or they are attracted by the vibrancy of the Christian Union -and whichever churches are most fashionable among the CU's members.
The role is misunderstood quite often because of this: the assumption is that a university chaplain is concerned mostly with students. And while some of it is, often in a quite expanded role working within teams concerned for student welfare, international students and religious equality and diversity, much is also concerned with staff and with broader institutional matters. I sometimes in the past described my role as being “an industrial chaplain to a knowledge-based industry” to try to get over the idea that it was a more institutional~ and staff-related ministry than many might have realised.
It is a pioneering role in that, with the traditional student role being less to the fore, more scope is given to encouraging wider and different forms of participation and offering different forms of ministry. In Bradford, I organised faith-related art-exhibitions, text-prayers, spiritual direction, meditation training as part of a de-stressing programme, vigils for peace at the time of the Iraq conflict, group facilitation services, life coaching, and fair trade advocacy among other things.
I am aware that this kind of institutional and staff-related ministry is much more like chaplaincy work in other sectors. In common with them I would also say that part of the role is to affirm and to facilitate ministry in Christ's name by 'ordinary' Christians in the workplace. The chaplain by their presence says, I hope, “your workplace is somewhere that God is active, a big part of the wider church's mission takes place there”.
*Interestingly, in the diocesan newspaper version of this, I toned down the actual quote; I was worried that some clergy in the diocese might take it amiss that the implication could be construed that he didn't think their job was. But of course, that would be an unfair implication; I'm sure that he was indulging in conversational hyperbole.
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