Prayer Letter: November 2022

Tuesday, November 1 - Friday, November 4: 

November 1 is the application deadline for students wanting to enter the MA in Education Leadership (MA-EL) program in the 2023 winter term. Please pray for wisdom for Gideon Strauss and Edith van der Boom as they review the students’ applications this month, and for these applicants as they make space in their lives to embark on a program of graduate study.

Our first Open Class of the fall is taking place on November 2, with Ron Kuipers welcoming prospective students into his Imagining the World with Ricoeur seminar. Anyone interested in finding out what an ICS course is like can RSVP to Elizabet Aras at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. Please pray for this and each of these open class sessions in the coming weeks, that ICS might speak to prospective students’ desires for their future studies.

Also on November 2, Gideon and Edith will be hosting one of our regular writing workshops for Junior Members. Please pray for those Junior Members participating in this event that they might make the most of their time together to share their questions and insights with one another and to strengthen their writing practices.

Please join us in thanksgiving for the successful event on October 27 celebrating the publication of the festschrift in honour of Lambert Zuidervaart, and the second volume of the Currents in Reformational Thought series, Seeking Stillness or the Sound of Wings. We’re grateful for Lambert’s contribution to the Reformational philosophical tradition, for everyone who attended the event in person and online, for each of the presenters and participants who made the event possible, and for everyone involved in the book’s writing and publication process.

Monday, November 7 - Friday, November 11 (Remembrance Day): 

The latest issue of Perspective and our annual Advent Appeal should be making their way to supporters in the mail over the next couple of weeks. This issue includes some deep reflections on the idea of “living tradition,” and we’re excited to be sending it out. Please pray for everyone involved in the final stages of the production process as they bring all the pieces of the mailing together. Please also pray for a strong response to our annual Appeal. We are always impressed and humbled by the faith our supporters place in us, and we thank God for your generosity during this time of year. 

On November 8, Nik Ansell is hosting the Open Class session of Biblical Foundations. Please pray for Nik and for those visiting students that they might spend an inspiring class time together digging into the life-giving scriptures.

Our search for a new Senior Member is moving onto the stage of evaluating the applications we’ve received and reaching out to applicants. We’re grateful for everyone who made the effort to apply. Please pray with us for wisdom and insight for the search committee as they consider these applications and discern who might best fit this position. 

Today, on Remembrance Day, we lift up all those who have suffered and sacrificed in the Great War and in the many wars that came before, that have happened since, and that rage today. Please join us in a prayer for peace:

God of all, remember your holy promise, 

and look with love on all your people, living and departed.

On this day we especially ask that you would hold forever

all who have suffered during war, those who returned scarred by warfare,

those who waited anxiously at home,

and those who returned wounded, and disillusioned;

those who mourned, and those communities that were diminished and suffered loss.

Remember too those who acted with kindly compassion,

those who bravely risked their own lives for their comrades,

and those who in the aftermath of war, worked tirelessly for a more peaceful world.

And as you remember them, remember us, O Lord;

grant us peace in our time and a longing for the day when people of every language, race, and nation will be brought into the unity of Christ’s kingdom.

This we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Monday, November 14 - Friday, November 18:

Our MA & PhD program Open House is happening on November 16 at 6pm. Please pray that word of this event might reach prospective students to whom ICS would make a nourishing academic and spiritual home, and that those students might be able to discern the vocations, academic or otherwise, to which the Lord may be calling them.

On November 17, Rebekah Smick will be hosting an Open Class for students interested in her seminar, Grace as an Aesthetic Concept. Please pray that the students who attend this Open Class might be intrigued by the aesthetic, theological, and historical insights put forward in Rebekah’s seminar and that they might take steps to join our academic community.

On Friday, November 18, the Board of Trustees will meet online. Please pray for grace and wisdom for our Chair, John Joosse, and all our Board members as they deliberate together on various matters pertaining to the stewardship of ICS’s calling and resources. Please also give thanks with us for those outgoing Board Members who have given generously of their time and talents during their terms of service: Hilda Buisman, John Joosse, Diane Stronks, and Ray Vander Zaag. 

This Saturday, November 19 at 2pm EST, our Annual General Meeting is taking place online. Please pray for John Joosse as he gives leadership to the meeting, for all those who will present reports, and for the time participants will be able to spend together talking about our hopes for ICS. We’re grateful for this yearly rhythm which affords the opportunity to attend to what we’ve accomplished, and the goals to which we aspire institutionally. We also give thanks for this chance to gather with the broader ICS community to reflect together on our educational calling and hopes.

Monday, November 21 - Friday, November 25:

In early October, CPRSE Associate Director and ICS PhD candidate Héctor Acero Ferrer was appointed as Interim Program Coordinator of Martin Luther University College’s Bachelor of Arts: Christian Studies and Global Citizenship program. We thank God for Héctor’s role in the Martin Luther community and for this exciting new opportunity for him to shape undergraduate learning experiences at the school.

There will be an Open Class for The Craft of Reflective Practice with Gideon Strauss on November 24. Please pray that teachers and school administrators can find time in their busy schedules to join this session and get a taste of the tools and frameworks this and our other MA-EL courses have to offer them in their practice as educators. 

On this Thanksgiving Day in the US, we want to share our prayers of gratitude for each and every one of our supporters in Canada, the US, and across the world. Your continued financial, prayerful, professional, and personal support of the day-to-day educational mission of ICS has carried us through the pandemic and keeps us going—so thank you!

ICS alumnus Caleb Ratzlaff was just elected as a new city councillor in St. Catharine’s, Ontario. We congratulate Caleb on his successful campaign! Please also join us in praying for wisdom and ingenuity for Caleb as he takes up his new role and familiarizes himself with how to best represent the interests of his community in St. Catharine’s and support their wellbeing at the municipal level. 

Monday, November 28 - Wednesday, November 30:

The season of Advent begins on Sunday, November 27. On this first Sunday of the season, please join us in the vigilant expectation for peace hearkened to in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “[The nations] shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!” (Isaiah 2:4-5). We pray that, during this season, and amid the looming darkness, all may awaken more and more to the light of the coming Lord.

ICS Junior Member Jimmy Ronald has been selected as this year’s CPRSE Research Assistant. Jimmy will be an integral part of the Critical Faith podcast team as it reboots production during the coming academic year. We pray in thanksgiving for Jimmy’s presence in our community and for his willingness to serve the ICS community in this role. 

This academic year, CPRSE will once again collaborate with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation—as well as many other community, faith, and academic partners—in the planning of the annual Our Whole Society conference. This conference offers a space for a nationwide conversation about the role of religion in Canada’s pluralistic society. Please pray for the CPRSE, and for the Canadian Interfaith Conversation and organizational partners, as they continue to plan this important event.

As we quickly move into the end of the fall term, we would ask you to please pray for our Senior Members and faculty as they teach in the final few weeks of classes, and as they prepare for their teaching in the quickly-approaching winter term. We also want to express our deep gratitude for the new students who have come to ICS this academic year, as well as all the returning ones. Our students keep us alive in all kinds of ways. So we pray that they may stay in touch with their infectious enthusiasm amid the demands that can be felt as we move towards the end of the semester and as they work to finish up readings and other assignments and as they start to prepare their term papers and projects.

Generations

“One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.”

—Psalm 145:4

Giuseppe Penone
The Hidden Life Within

Imagine a large, aged tree before you. What if you could peer inside this tree, and discern the shape of its younger self, secretly housed within the centre of its massive trunk? The Italian artist Giuseppe Penone’s tree sculptures create this very effect, providing a window through which to witness the passing of time in the blink of an instant.

Consider further that, from the point of view of the present, the younger tree is really the aged ancestor from which the larger tree has descended. Think of the way that the tree’s younger shape has, through the years, faithfully contributed to the structure and function of the current tree, helping ensure its stability, growth, and fruitfulness, as each year a new cycle of seasons adds a living layer that depends on the support this sturdy forebear faithfully provides.

Does this image not provide a wonderful way to think of a living tradition of faith? As each generation does its new thing, as it must, it does so in a way that is sustained by and patterned after the contours of what has come before. Psalm 145 speaks of one generation lauding God’s mighty acts to another, as if, by sharing these stories of God’s love for the good, broken world God made, the older generation gives the new one what it needs to continue to grow and be built up in that very faithfulness.

Like other Christian schools, ICS works at this intimate and vulnerable point of connection between the generations. While we arrive on the scene a little later than most other such institutions, we nonetheless participate in the vital work of helping a new generation understand what faithfulness means in these incredibly challenging times. We thereby demonstrate patterns of faithfulness for our students to emulate, patterns which will in turn help them laud our Maker’s mighty acts to future generations.

What are these mighty acts of which the Psalmist speaks? They are acts of liberation and exodus from systems of oppression, domination, and death. They are acts that serve as “good news” for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in our midst. They are the everyday miracles that save the world, bit by bit, mite by mite. God’s mighty acts reveal the way God wants us to follow, and Jesus Messiah goes so far as to tell us that the way we pursue justice for those in need is identical to the way we treat God (Matthew 25:31 ff.). When the generation who leads us shows us through the good fruit of their lives how we are to follow our Maker and Redeemer’s shalom way, scripture counsels us to “imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). And just so, another ring grows around the tree.

We join in this work together, friends. Thank you for sharing our efforts to laud God’s mighty acts to future generations!

Shalom, and again I say, shalom!

Ron Kuipers

Forthcoming: Transforming Vision 40th Anniversary Republication

J. Richard Middleton has signed a contract with InterVarsity Press to do a complete rewrite of The Transforming Vision (IVP), which he coauthored with Brian Walsh in 1984. Richard is an ICS-VU PhD graduate (2005) and is currently Professor Biblical Worldview and Exegesis at Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan University. He has been teaching a signature course on a Christian worldview over the past forty years (most recently called, “Being in the Story,” at Northeastern Seminary). The rewrite of Transforming Vision aims to deepen the original book’s biblical analysis and extend its cultural analysis. 

The new book is tentatively titled, Shaped by God’s Story: Christian Worldview in a Global Key (IVP Academic) and the aim is for the book to come out sometime in 2024, around the time of the 40th anniversary of the original publication.

The Transforming Vision arose out of worldview courses sponsored by ICS, which were then taught through Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship on university campuses in Southern Ontario. The book met a need among Christians in academia and has since been used in hundreds of courses on Christian college and university campuses, both in North America and overseas. It has been translated into five languages (Korean, French, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese).

Based on the popularity of the book in Korean and Indonesian translations (with new editions published in the past decade), Richard has also been invited to be the keynote speaker, giving two talks on a Christian worldview, at the upcoming International Network for Christian Higher Education (INCHE) conference for Asia and Oceania, at Handong Global University, Pohan, South Korea on June 20–22, 2023.

Open Classes and Open Houses in November and December

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an ICS student? Know someone who’s curious about ICS? 

During the months of November and December, we’re opening up sessions in several of our fall classes to any interested visitors who'd like a chance to see what an ICS course is like. We'll also be hosting an Open House for anyone who wants to find out more about our MA and PhD programs of study. All of these events will take place online and can be joined from wherever you are.

Anyone interested in attending these events can RSVP to Elizabet Aras at academic-registrar@icscanada.edu. The dates and times for each session are listed below: 

OPEN HOUSE:

MA & PhD Program Open House - November 16 @ 6pm EST

OPEN CLASSES:

Imagining the World with Ricoeur - November 2, 10am-1pm EST

Biblical Foundations - November 8, 4:15-7:15pm EST

Grace as an Aesthetic Concept - November 17, 10am-1pm EST

Craft of Reflective Practice - November 24, 4:15-7:15pm EST

Transformative Teaching - December 1, 5-7:30pm EST

ICS Co-Sponsoring Pontifical Institute Conference on Ritual Life

The Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies is hosting a conference on March 6-7, 2023 on the theme of Ritual Life in the Medieval Dominican Order: Liturgical Expressions. ICS is one of the co-sponsors of this event. 

The conference features presentations from many established manuscript scholars as well as opportunities for liturgical participation. The conference will focus on the rituals, chant, and texts of the Dominican liturgy during the medieval period, after the reform of the Rite under the Master of the Order Humbert of Romans (1256). Attention will also be paid to recent manuscript discoveries for the Translation of the Relics of St Thomas Aquinas.

Registration for the event is free, but the registration deadline is December 1. Please see the attached poster and conference programme below for more information. You can also visit the conference website at https://pims.ca/event/ritual-life/ for further details and to register.

Event Programme >

Event Poster

Prayer Letter: October 2022

Monday, October 3 - Friday, October 7:

October 3 is the application deadline for the opening for a Senior Member in Philosophy at ICS. We are grateful for all of the applications we have received, and we pray for the Search Committee as they now begin to evaluate candidates and start the interview process. Please pray that the committee may be granted wisdom in assessing these candidates and their potential contribution to the ICS academic community.

October 3 is also the first Educational Policy Committee meeting of the year at ICS. At this meeting, the EPC will consider the results of a survey of ICS students and instructors that was conducted earlier this year and will advise the Academic Council on the assessment of student work on the basis of those results. Please join the EPC in its own prayers for its work, from the collect for the feast of Hildegard of Bingen: God of all times and seasons: Give us grace that we, after the example of your servant Hildegard, may both know and make known the joy and jubilation of being part of your creation, and show forth your glory in the world; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Earlier this fall, Dr. Neal DeRoo joined the ICS team in the capacity of CPRSE Postdoctoral Research Associate. Dr. DeRoo is thrilled to put his experience and knowledge at the service of our ICS community. Please pray for Dr. DeRoo as he joins the CPRSE team, for a fruitful and smooth transition into his new role.

Senior Members Edith van der Boom and Gideon Strauss will be travelling to Grand Rapids, Michigan on October 5-7. Edith and Gideon will be meeting with the Friends of ICS on the evening of the 5th to give an update on the latest news and projects at ICS. Edith and Gideon will then attend the Kuyers/INCHE Conference at Calvin University. On October 6, Edith will present on “Decolonizing Christian Education for Human Flourishing” and on October 7, Gideon will present on “The Question in Hand: When Teaching Change Leadership Demands Change.” Please pray for Edith and Gideon as they travel and spend this valuable time meeting with colleagues and ICS supporters.

Monday, October 10 (Thanksgiving) - Friday, October 14: 

During this week of Canadian Thanksgiving, we want to join together and give thanks for the many answers to prayer this year. We have been blessed by our ICS community again and again as you faithfully supported us in our times of need and we have been encouraged by the grace and strength that God has given us during the difficult times. We are beyond grateful for the presence of each of our Junior and Senior Members and the unique contributions they make to the ICS community, and we give thanks for all of the ICS staff and the ways in which they faithfully serve the educational mission of ICS. 

CPRSE Associate Director and PhD candidate Héctor Acero Ferrer will be preaching this week at the CRC Campus Ministries at the University of Toronto’s Wine Before Breakfast service. Héctor’s reflection will focus on the image of God the pilgrim as articulated by Liberation Theology. Please pray for Héctor as he prepares his reflection, and pray in gratitude for the important work done by the CRC Campus Ministries, as they provide a space for faithful reflection and fellowship for the university students in the GTA. 

Our first staff meeting of the academic year will take place this week. This is a busy time of year for ICS administration, with many projects on the go and deadlines approaching. Please pray that the ICS staff might find mutual encouragement for their individual and shared tasks during this meeting and in their ongoing work together. 

During the month of October, the Critical Faith podcast will resume its activities after a year-long hiatus. The podcast’s re-launch episode will feature an interview with Eric Van Giessen, Toronto activist, artist, and PhD student at York University. Please pray for the Critical Faith team as they start activities for this academic year.

Monday, October 17 - Friday, October 21:

On October 17, the Academic Council will receive and discuss a report from Senior Member Nik Ansell reflecting on his own practices as a learner, teacher, and lover of Scripture. We pray that this might be a time of gratitude and celebration for Nik’s singular contributions to the academic and spiritual life of the ICS community.

On the evening of October 19, we will host an online Info Night for ART in Orvieto 2023. This event will feature an overview of the art, religion, and theology seminar led by Senior Member Rebekah Smick, the Artists’ Workshop led by David Holt, and the Writers’ Workshop led by John Terpstra. There will also be a Q&A period for any questions hopeful attendees may have. Email academic-registrar@icscanada.edu if you or someone you know would like to join us and find out more about this wonderful learning opportunity. And please pray that the event will prove both helpful and inspiring to those who attend.

Our Academic Integrity & Citation Management Workshop is taking place on October 20, led by Librarian Peter Gorman. Please pray for Peter as he prepares for this session and for the students who attend this event, that they might gain valuable insights and tools as they pursue their research projects and interests in the coming academic year.

The 16th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference is being held on October 20-22 in Los Angeles, California. CPRSE Associate Director Héctor Acero Ferrer, ICS alums Andrew Tebbutt and Abbi Hofstede, and PhD candidate Mark Standish will all travel to this conference to present the panel “Public Fragility, Fragile Publics: Ricœur’s Political Thought from Root to Branch.” Please pray for this ICS delegation as they share with the Society’s international audience the product of their reflection on the political, economic, and religious thought of Paul Ricoeur. 

Monday, October 24 - Friday, October 28:

It’s Reading Week at ICS! Please pray for our Junior and Senior Members during this week that they might make the most of this opportunity to attend to the various projects on which they’re working. Please pray for our Junior Members and students that they might have the creative energy and space to complete their writing and study assignments. Pray, too, for the faculty, that God would graciously encourage and refresh them in their educational vocations at ICS.

The next issue of Perspective will be on its way to a mailbox near you shortly! In this issue, you’ll be able to read some reflections from Senior Members Ron Kuipers and Bob Sweetman, alumnus Drew Van’t Land, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, as well as our newest Junior Members on the traditions in which they find themselves and the life they find therein. Please join us in thanksgiving for each of these contributors and the time they’ve spent sharing their insights, and please pray for the editors, designers, and printers as they put the final touches on this issue.

Please hold the Board of Trustees in your prayers as they oversee the vision and mission of ICS, especially as they plan for their next major Board meeting coming up in mid-November and attend to the details of the upcoming Annual General Meeting on November 19 as well. Pray for strength and wisdom for each Trustee as they continue to provide support and leadership in the working out of God’s call to ICS now and into the future.

On Thursday, October 27 at 3:00pm at Regis College, the ICS community will gather to celebrate the publication of Seeking Stillness or The Sound of Wings: Scholarly and Artistic Comment on Art, Truth, and Society in Honour of Lambert Zuidervaart, the second volume of the Currents in Reformational Thought book series. The celebration of this publication will also be an opportunity to honour the contribution of Senior Member Emeritus Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart to the Reformational philosophy tradition. Please pray in thanksgiving for Dr. Zuidervaart, as well as for the numerous contributors to the volume and all those involved in the planning of this celebration.  

Monday, October 31:

Please pray today for the Advancement and Finance teams as they work to organize and send out the necessary materials for the AGM on November 19th and this year’s Advent Appeal. Pray especially for Harley Dekker as he works with the auditors to finalize the annual audit of our financial records for the fiscal year which ended on June 30, 2022. We continue to be amazed by the generosity of our support community and have seen positive financial developments even amid the global financial stresses of this past year. We give thanks for God’s enduring care for us.

A Living Tradition of Faithfulness

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;

righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,

and righteousness will look down from the sky.

—Psalm 85:10-11

At ICS, we spend a lot of time thinking about and imagining what it means for a Christian tradition to be faithful. How do we recognize faithfulness when we see it? This question is harder to answer than it first seems, because we must avoid confusing faithfulness with the mere adoption or repetition of the intellectual beliefs or doctrines that have been codified by previous generations of Christians. Faithfulness goes deeper than that. Active reception and appropriation of a tradition includes an effort to make it “one’s own,” and that effort involves the communal discernment of what it means to be faithful in one’s own time. The answer to that question, an answer that is ultimately revealed by the fruit of faithful living, often is, and should be, different than the answers previous generations have produced. Yet somehow the faithfulness remains recognizable as a continuation of what had come before.

We know that faithfulness has something to do with accepting Scripture’s invitation to share a vision of a redeemed—a healed and transformed—world, the one so beautifully portrayed in Psalm 85. The psalmist envisions a world where chesed (steadfast lovingkindness and mercy, giving oneself completely in love and compassion) and emet (truth as faithfulness) meet, where tzedek (righteousness or justice) and shalom (peace, harmony, wholeness) kiss.

How can we be faithful to that vision today? While there is no automatic or simple answer to that question, we must never cease striving to answer it . Thankfully, the Spirit of our Maker and Redeemer is here to help us in this task, and Scripture provides much needed guidance and orientation for our approach. Even so, we still have the responsibility to discern for ourselves, in faithfulness, what faithfulness in fact requires of us today (and tomorrow, and the next). 

Scripture bears witness to God’s people struggling with this question time and again, and even shows them coming up with new answers that they are convinced remain faithful to this scriptural vision. I think we understand these people’s efforts at discernment better if we come to understand faithful living as something akin to a craft or skill, a way of living that organically evolves over time as it is passed from person to person and from generation to generation. While past virtuoso performances provide the necessary examples and inspiration to guide our current efforts, we remain called to contribute our own unique, novel performances, thereby making space for the spirit at work in this tradition to breathe new life into our own time and open an alternative future than the destructive one that today’s powers and principalities are constructing.

Friends, let us pray together for the eyes and ears that will help us notice and celebrate all the new ways of inhabiting our tradition that expand our imagination about what makes for faithful living, and which build our desire for our Maker’s chesed, emet, tzedek, and shalom!

Ron Kuipers

CPRSE at Society for Ricoeur Studies Annual Conference

The CPRSE will travel to present at the upcoming 16th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference, held on October 20-22 in Los Angeles, California on the theme of Capability, Fragility, and Joy. The event will feature keynote addresses by Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles) and Christina Gschwandtner (Fordham University, New York City) as well as a number of presentations and workshops from international conference participants.

CPRSE Associate Director Héctor Acero Ferrer will moderate some of the conference sessions. Héctor and ICS alums Andrew Tebbutt and Abbi Hofstede, and PhD candidate Mark Standish will also together present the panel “Public Fragility, Fragile Publics: Ricoeur’s Political Thought from Root to Branch,” exploring the political, economic, and religious thought of Paul Ricoeur.

You can find out more about the Society for Ricoeur Studies and their annual conference here.

October 4 - Season of Creation: Panel Discussion

On Tuesday, October 4, 7pm - 9pm EST, The Church of the Redeemer in Toronto will host a panel discussion on the church and climate change titled: "The Season of Creation - What If...?"

This event will be both in person and online, and will be moderated by the Rt. Rev’d Andrew Asbil, Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto. The panellists include: The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, (26th Governor General of Canada and an Anglican), Paige Souter, (Member, Bishop’s Committee for Creation Care), The Rev’d Alison Hari-Singh (adjunct lecturer at Trinity College), and Brian Walsh (activist theologian, former ICS Senior Member and former pastor of the Wine Before Breakfast community, Wycliffe College).

Please register here if you'd like to attend (whether in person or online). There will be a reception to follow the in-person event.

When?

Tuesday, October 4, 7-9pm EST

Where? 

Church of the Redeemer (162 Bloor Street West, Toronto)

Also possible to join online. Register for the link.

Save the Date: Online AGM on November 19

This year's Annual General Meeting for ICS Members will be held on the afternoon of Saturday, November 19th. The meeting will take place online so that ICS supporters can join from anywhere in the world to hear the latest on what's happening at ICS.

Voting materials, an agenda, and details for how to join the meeting have been sent out via mail and email to ICS Members, so keep an eye on your inboxes and save the date in your calendars. If you have any questions about voting or how to join, please email ics-communications@icscanada.edu. 

Edith van der Boom & Gideon Strauss in Grand Rapids

Dr. Edith van der Boom and Dr. Gideon Strauss will be travelling to Grand Rapids, Michigan from October 5-7. On October 5th at 7pm, Edith and Gideon will spend an evening with the Friends of ICS, providing an update on the latest news and projects at ICS. This event is being graciously hosted at the Woodlawn Christian Reformed Ministry Center by FICS President Barbara Carvill and Woodlawn CRC's Mike Abma. 

If you haven't already, you can let us know you'd like to attend by emailing ics-communications@icscanada.edu.

On the 6th and 7th, Edith and Gideon will then attend the Kuyers/INCHE Conference at Calvin University. On October 6, Edith will present on “Decolonizing Christian Education for Human Flourishing.” Here is an abstract of her presentation:

In this session I will highlight some of the history of residential schooling which was set up across Canada for the purpose of eradicating the culture and language of Indigenous peoples. I argue that those of us who are settlers need not only to continue to learn more about Indigenous peoples and our history but we also need to begin the task of decolonization for human flourishing. I suggest the practice of critical reflection as a means to expose unconscious assumptions, biases, and other forms of injustice. 

On October 7, Gideon will present on “The Question in Hand: When Teaching Change Leadership Demands Change.” Here is an abstract of his presentation: 

I teach a course in the graduate-level educational leadership program of the Institute for Christian Studies with the title Lead from Where You Are. At the heart of the course is an introduction to the practice of change leadership in the face of tough organizational problems. This paper is an account of how my annual teaching of this course over the years 2018-2022 demanded I exercise precisely those skills which I try to teach my students, including the cultivation of trust through the presentation of vulnerability. As such, this paper offers testimony to my lived experience of scholarship as discipleship. 

More information about sessions at the Kuyers Conference can be found here.