14.10.2016
New TCD Chaplain, The Revd Steve Brunn, is Formally Introduced
The Revd Steve Brunn has been inducted as the new Church of Ireland Chaplain at Trinity College, Dublin. Steve, who has been in post since January, was formally introduced by Archbishop Michael Jackson during Evensong in the College Chapel yesterday evening (Thursday October 14). The service was sung by the Chapel Choir and the Anglican Bishop of Spain, the Rt Revd Carlos López–Lozano and the Anglican Bishop of Lusitania (Portugal), the Right Revd José Jorge de Pina Cabral, who were visiting as part of the 800th anniversary celebrations, were also present.
The Archbishop preached at the service and said that many people had already come into contact with Steve. He said they had found him to be a person of compassion and commitment and paid tribute to his contribution to the life of the Chapel and the role it has and always will need to play in order to develop organically in the life of this College.
He suggested that contemporary Ireland and intellectual life were often barren ground for confident belief systems. “As a consequence, anyone who believes in God is encouraged and expected to believe tentatively, almost apologetically instead,” he said. “This type of attitude is now par for the course for people whose public work religion is; it has become an imposed expectation; it is difficult and harmful. It is genuinely as of nothing compared with the active degradation, destruction and death of People of Faith across vast tracts of the inhabited world of which we know nothing except through our iPhones and TV screens.”
He continued that open belief was often difficult for students and staff who witnessed to their faith in God in overwhelmingly uncomprehending and often negative environments. “In my own life and work, I have had the opportunity to be chaplain in a number of colleges. There is a tough tenacity about religion, about religious expression and about the religious voice in universities. Try as they might, such places find it very hard indeed to put religion out with the bin on a Sunday night in the hope that it will not return. This, as much as anything else, is because those who enter by The Front Gate of Trinity College for example enter and become contributors to a community of learning and a community of friendship and hospitality with all of its personal opportunity for experience and growth and excitement – they do so as people already with a persona. They bring their personality and their faith with them: their faith in God, their faith in themselves and their faith in their neighbour and their faith in a better world for more people; their personality and self–belief is such that they might just be the people to do some of it,” he said.
The Archbishop described chaplaincy as not being particularly religious, pious or ecclesiastical but as something that gives as well as receives and is attuned to the special and responsive environment that is Trinity College. He added that people of no expressed faith were vital to this collegiality. “It is not simply a caring profession. It is also a questing profession. It is a life of exploration and engagement with a community of learning, of teaching and of response in which people, younger and older, give of their intellectual passion for some cause greater than themselves,” he stated.
Steve trained initially as a mechanical engineer. He studied theology in Dallas Texas and in Aberdeen. He trained for the ordained ministry in the Church of England in Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and has already covered a range of interesting areas: curacy in St Peter’s Chertsey, counsellor at Royal Holloway University and incumbent of St Mary’s Oatlands in the diocese of Guildford. Steve is married to Sharon and they are parents to Joel and Emily.
The full text of the Archbishop’s sermon is below.
Photo captions:
Top – The Anglican Bishop of Spain, the Rt Revd Carlos López–Lozano, the Revd Steve Brunn, Archbishop Michael Jackson and the Anglican Bishop of Lusitania (Portugal), the Right Revd José Jorge de Pina Cabral on the steps of Trinity College Chapel.
Bottom – Archbishop Michael Jackson and the Revd Steve Brunn during the Service of Introduction.
Trinity College Dublin, Introduction of the Reverend Steven Brunn as College Chaplain
Thursday October 13th 2016 at Evensong Readings: Jeremiah 26.1–15; Acts 17.22–34
Jeremiah: 26.14: But here I am in your hands; do with me whatever you think right and proper.
a sermon preached by the archbishop of Dublin
INTRODUCTION
Evensong tonight draws us to this rather reserved and unendingly attractive College Chapel to mark, to celebrate the ministry as chaplain in the University of Dublin of the Reverend Steven Brunn. Steve has already been working in Trinity since the beginning of the calendar year and many, in this time, have found him to be a person of compassion, commitment and contribution to the life of this Chapel and the role it has and always will need to continue to play in order to develop organically in the life of this College. Contemporary Ireland and intellectual life are often barren ground for confident belief systems; as a consequence, anyone who believes in God is encouraged and expected to believe tentatively, almost apologetically instead. This type of attitude is now par for the course for people whose public work religion is; it has become an imposed expectation; it is difficult and harmful. It is genuinely as of nothing compared with the active degradation, destruction and death of People of Faith across vast tracts of the inhabited world of which we know nothing except through our iPhones and TV screens.
Open belief is tough on undergraduates, graduate students and members of staff at every level who witness to their faith in God in overwhelmingly uncomprehending and often negative environments. It begins to look as if religiosity is a deficiency, a weakness, a diminishment of human possibility, a still life of human frailty. In my own life and work, I have had the opportunity to be chaplain in a number of colleges. There is a tough tenacity about religion, about religious expression and about the religious voice in universities. Try as they might, such places find it very hard indeed to put religion out with the bin on a Sunday night in the hope that it will not return. This, as much as anything else, is because those who enter by The Front Gate of Trinity College for example enter and become contributors to a community of learning and a community of friendship and hospitality with all of its personal opportunity for experience and growth and excitement – they do so as people already with a persona. They bring their personality and their faith with them: their faith in God, their faith in themselves and their faith in their neighbour and their faith in a better world for more people; their personality and self–belief is such that they might just be the people to do some of it. Learning is an aspiration as well as an expectation; an inspiration as well as an aspiration.
There are, in my understanding, three areas at least that are part of the weave of chaplaincy. And none of them is in fact overtly religious, regressively pious or particularly ecclesiastical. And, rightly, they may also be lived in ways that are either religious or ecclesiastical or pious or all three. They are values and actions common to all who ‘want to make the thing work,’ in a way that gives as well as receives; in a way that contributes as well as takes; in a way that is attuned to the special and responsive environment that is Trinity College. This is what chaplaincy is. And people of no expressed Faith are part of this nexus of collegiality and vital to it. They connect a chaplain and chaplaincy with the values that are of the heart–beat of a university and are the expression of what we call ethos, or at least used to, until a secularizing society rather denominationalized and, in effect, sectarianized the word ethos, turning it into a word of indoctrination and limitation. Its origins lie deeper in the European tradition; it speaks of an understanding of living environment as old as Homer’s Iliad itself, as a place of pasturage where there is security and feeding. A chaplain, rather like Jeremiah in the Old Testament Lesson, can and does say to the institution that receives his or her presence, involvement and ministry, gifts, talents and desire to belong in a community:
But here I am in your hands; do with me whatever you think right and proper.
The critical point where justice and fairness meet is in that throwaway phrase: right and proper. It is this shared, and hard fought, hard won, sense of the things, the actions, the attitudes that are right and proper which connect the disparate, the disagreeing and the difficult in a college community with those who are buoyant, joyful and uncomplicated. This is where chaplaincy hits the road along with the work of all others in whom an ancient–and–modern institution like this subsists. It is not simply a caring profession. It is also a questing profession. It is a life of exploration and engagement with a community of learning, of teaching and of response in which people, younger and older, give of their intellectual passion for some cause greater than themselves.
CONTEXT
The importance of context is very clear to us from the talk given by Paul to the Athenians on the Areopagus. He is careful to take what we might call an apologetic approach, not in the sense of being embarrassed by the content of what he has to say, but in the sense of moving his argument in the direction of the thought–pattern and the mind–set of those who are listening to him. His focus is The Unknown God by which he means The Immaterial God. With a broad sweep of his theological hand he paints a picture of the God of creation who created the individuals who form the nations, who determined the eras in history and the limits of their territory – an interesting and timely concept for us to consider as ISUL continues to sweep through territories claimed by Northern Hemisphere military powers on the back of earlier colonial carve–ups with little, if any, respect for existing tribal and ethnic identities and cause untold human cruelty, devastation and death. He then ties his argument together by quoting from the poet Aristarchus to the effect that we are children of this God. It is at this final point that he introduces arguments about judgement based on incarnation and resurrection.
The Athenians overwhelmingly reject his argument once it becomes specifically Christian in its apologetic. The very same happens today: Give us the benefits of your religion, please but don’t ask us to believe anything, please …But, at the same time, Paul has read his context in expounding his argument and does so without embarrassment and without overwhelming ‘success,’ but with some positive outcome. This surely is the great invitation to Christians today to connect through context. It is not, nor can it be, an uncritical ‘down–load’ of Biblical and religious language; it is not, either, all about intellectual arguments; it concerns also what I call caritative altruism – an intentional caring for others in a way that frees them to look after themselves and contribute to the shared context. This is the crossroads at which a college chaplain meets the friendly and the hostile. If, like the Athenians, a number of people says: We will hear you on this subject some other time (Acts 17.32), so be it. In each new generation of students, a chaplain has the opportunity to test the criteria of engagement on the part of Christianity with a secular world, to be enhanced and informed by this and to live a life of faith.
CURIOSITY
Curiosity is also an important feature of chaplaincy. In many ways, it is the connecting factor with what people are doing and with what lies at the heartbeat of university life. It is important for a chaplain to have his or her own interests in this place. It is important for a chaplain to put to new purpose the skills of listening developed in a range of pastoral contexts and thereby engaging in the wide range of interests that are part of the lives of the people of the university. It is important for chaplains not to parochialize universities and not to look for what is not there. It is important to reject what a friend of mine calls the dark side of care, not to put oneself at the centre of the solution of someone else’s problem and go on to feast on that problem. It is important for chaplains to be pro–active as well as reactive. So much of the ordained life is reactive and there really is no benefit in being primarily reactive in ministry in a university chaplaincy; spontaneity is different and essential; nor is there any need to become instinctively conservative – particularly if you are not such by temperament. In a university setting, tradition is a floating concept. In one sense it is a visual backdrop. In another sense, it is the source and the inspiration of what we do. In another sense, it is an antiquarianism that can drag anything that really matters into the background. But it need not do so, as it can be a springboard for exploration. All of the conversation and discussion and activity need not, and ought not to, be about religious matters. Connection and cross–fertilization of ideas and activities around the wider general interest of others is what is exciting for a chaplain. And a university is full of such life and full of such interesting people willing to give this sort of thing a go.
COMMUNITY
Perhaps this seems the easiest; and in fact is the hardest. It seems fine on a day like this where things are up and running and there is a genuine spirit of celebration and the heating is on – and rightly. On a dank Sunday morning in January where you see something like four or five people in addition to the choir in what seems like a cavernous chapel it is a different matter. And it really is nobody’s fault! I would say directly to Steve (and to the other chaplains present): You are not here to fill pews as an end in itself. This has become too much the caricature of what church is about. It has become a yardstick of comparison and failure in diocesan and parochial life. It is demoralizing. In a university there are many communities already in existence and always will be more and more forming themselves, some surviving long, some popping up for a short period. You are here to enjoy being part of the life of the university. You are here to offer people a lived and a living choice and to be a walking and a working example of a life of faith and of discipleship. It is not, nor can it be, all jolly nor can it be all successful. Being a chaplain in and to a community means that you need to remain fresh and alert. You may have to move very quickly from being joyous to being serious depending on a whole number of factors. And in regard to questions around matters of faith, you may also get only one chance to give someone else a chance to say what she or he wants to say. And you need to be realistic that your calling is to create a community of care in a community yes of learning and scholarship but also it is a community of competition and there will be people who become tragedies of this and they will turn to you. In this regard the ministry of a chaplain is truly and properly conventional. It needs prayer.
STEVE
Steve, whom we welcome formally this evening as Church of Ireland chaplain to Trinity has long held a desire to be a university chaplain. Having trained initially as a mechanical engineer, he has studied theology in Dallas Texas and in Aberdeen. Trained for the ordained ministry in the Church of England in Ridley Hall, Cambridge, Steve has already covered a range of interesting areas: curacy in St Peter’s Chertsey, counsellor at Royal Holloway University and incumbent of St Mary’s Oatlands in the diocese of Guildford. Steve has already accompanied the chapel choir to Hong Kong for their tour earlier this year as part of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission. I know that he has many more ideas and schemes and projects in which he wishes to become involved. For my own part I want him to assist me and others in reviving that other society The Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur as a dynamic part of university and chapel life.
The prophecy of Jeremiah encourages and equips Steve to stand in The Temple Court and to speak for and with God as he speaks for and with others. Paul on the Areopagus encourages and equips Steve to try and to try again and not to be deflected or downhearted by those who say: We will hear you on these things on another occasion. The gift of God’s presence is shared and mediated through good people of faith and action. You will find Steve to be one such person. The gift of God’s compassion is shared and mediated through good people of prayer and practicality. You will find Steve to be one such person. I wish Steve and Sharon and their offspring Joel and Emily all that is best in the years ahead in Trinity College and its chaplaincy.
Acts 17.23b: What you worship but do not know – this is what I now proclaim.