Regina bound... back to my roots.

Regina is the town of my birth. In fact, I spent the first five years of my life there and I still have deep memories etched into my heart and mind from that time. But it has been more decades than I wish to admit since I have been back. And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. On a nice summer evening the town presented well. 

I tell you .. the sky put on a show..

Two lanes  Good highway  It's all good

The distance beckons..

Davidson, Sask.  Not your usual car

My first home.. all grown up.

I went to the home of Doug and Maureen Lancaster. Doug is the assistant Superintendent of the Saskatchewan District and the lead pastor of Avonhurst Pentecostal Church. And as it turns out, he remembered me ( and Point Grey Community Church and UCM ) from our days in BC, some years ago.  This is not a moot point. To me it is an ongoing wonder how the Kingdom network actually works, and how stuff done twenty or thirty years ago has a way of coming into the present.

We had a delightful time with Wes and Jan Dynna. Wes is a PAOC credential holder, presently working with Youth For Christ,  with a deep concern for the university and an interest in exploring the idea of campus ministry at U of Regina.  He is also well read and a deep thinker.  If we are to go forward, it would take people like Wes to help till the ground and provide leadership. This involves research, dreaming and planning. It is a necessary step .  It is sort of like tilling the ground before the planting can happen. Putting the seeds in the ground is the fruit of a lot of hard work that precedes it.

Lancasters and Dynnas 

I must confess, however,  I knew little about the U of R.  In doing my research I found that, since its origins as an offsite campus of the U of S,  it has been growing and has become a significant university in its own right. A walk through tour by my host ( and U of R staff) Maureen Lancaster more than confirmed it. It is a serious, full on university which has been the recipient of tens of millions of dollars of infrastructural  expenditures in the past several decades. It is functional ( essentially a large circle), and not entirely aesthetically displeasing. In otherwords, it has made an effort to avoid the Brutalist architecture ( SFU, U of Waterloo, York U ) of some of its contemporary universities.

a 'softer, friendlier institutional decore'....

From what I understand, it has been  difficult for Christian ministries to thrive on this campus. There are no doubt a number of reasons for this, but it is also apparently  reflects a somewhat militant, though not uncommon,  secularism within the administration and student union. There are different forms of secularism. Some seek to offer religion its diminished place ( demi-status) and others see no place for it whatsoever in an institution of higher learning. The latter simply ignores both the origins of the modern university and even the actual needs of the student. Could you imagine aboriginal studies that ignored the place of spirituality in its culture?  Anyway, that is the grist for another mill – another post. 

I am so glad I had the chance to walk its hallways, even though school was out. I am praying that we will be the dreamers of His dreams for this campus.