This time of year can be bittersweet for many of us. On the one hand, we have banked 30 more credits towards our degree. On the other, we’ll be leaving for the summer, will have good friends leaving for good, and for those of us graduating, this is the cap on the life we have known since kindergarten.

For many of us, it’s striking how terribly stressed out we are these days. We have so much on our plates, so many expectations – your own and other peoples’. Most of us are bound by our daytimers and driven by emails. We are tied up with fulfilling all of these obligations and expectations. We take roughly 20 minutes to consume the principle meals of the day.

Our culture has created this speed-up, rapid fire notion of ‘If you’re not doing something, you’re doing nothing.’ A tremendous amount of us are bound by the sense that we must do something all the time, and must justify ourselves, 24 hours a day.

Has the world gotten any better for all our fevered activity? Are things any more clear or pleasant or more comfortable for all of this? It’s a clockwork enterprise gone out of control.

As I look back on my time as an undergraduate, one thing I would leave students with is to stop and enjoy themselves. Our world is an exceptional place, and it is full of exceptional people. Get to know this place and those people.

One last thing you should know, is that even though you may have never uttered the word ‘God’ in your time at Trinity Western, aside perhaps in times of blasphemous distress, is that the God who brought you to Trinity Western and sustained you through your worst day, is going to see you through the rest of your life. And sooner or later, you ought to come to that realization, and it will be a comfort to you.

With Peace + Love,

John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

Christianity, like any large group, has more than its fair share of subcultures. Attending public schools my entire life, and finding kids I would meet at youth group weird and socially inept, I was resigned to be the only Christian in my groups of friends growing up. I was quite fine with this – not because it gave me the chance to evangelize my friends – but instead because I was stricken with fear of becoming like those odd kids I’d see at church.

After getting involved with Young Life as a high schooler, I quickly realized I had no ownership over my faith. Having a circle of friends without any Christians didn’t groom me to be an apostle. The people I met through Young Life pushed me to take ownership of my faith and be a more active Christian in the lives of my friends – something that surprisingly was very unnatural to try and do.
After working as a leader with Young Life for two years during university, I’ve become quite removed from the times when I was spending my weekends and summers trying to exemplify Christ to a bunch of rowdy high school boys. While Christian culture can be attractive in itself, becoming immersed in it is not what God has called us to. And though we are ‘in’ the world but not ‘of’ the world, the Gospels lay out a pretty fine blue print for how we should live.

The Christian life was not designed to be lived in isolation, so a community of believers is crucial to spiritual growth. And although it would be impossible to take away all of the lessons taught to us by Jesus, one of the most key is that we will feel most connected with God when we are being discipled/mentored/poured into/choose your verb by someone more Christ-like than ourselves, while we intentionally disciple/mentor/pour into those less spiritually aware or mature than ourselves.

With Peace + Love,

John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

Since the advent of social media in the last decade, it has become easy to be engulfed by its wide web. As young people, social media is sold to us as a tool to have ourselves more connected with others and the world going on around us. For many of us, these tools quickly turn into vices, but for most, they act as devices for keeping in touch with our friends, family, or estranged high school acquaintances we’d just rather forget about all together.

Musicians have been using social media for years to self-promote themselves, and in the last few years everyone from television shows to politicians have gotten in on the act of self-promotion through social media. Despite this flood of new users dying to attract our attention for a few minutes, not surprisingly, the level of media usage by young people is positively correlated with unhappiness. For most of us, we’ve realized that spending a half hour cruising Facebook for no particular reason doesn’t feel very fulfilling.

What is important, however, is not that we should monitor how much time we spend in our days trying to ‘connect’ with people, but rather why we’re doing it. For many of us we become like those politicians and musicians – using social media to self-promote ourselves for whatever reason. What shouldn’t be lost in this shuffle is that social media should be a tool for us to be better friends, siblings and children. It should be used as a means of helping us to stay and reconnect with the people that matter to us, and to help love them.

With peace + love,

John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

The university is a place for growth, and at Trinity Western, a large component of that is intended to be growth as Christians. In our last issue an article examining the deconstructionism of the Christian faith spurred us to examine just what type of citizens TWU is producing, and how or if we as students are being developed into ‘godly Christian leaders.’

For most of us, we enrolled at Trinity to hopefully leave as these. After a few years, however, we thought it prudent to calibrate how this was progressing, which you can read about in our Spotlight (page 10-11).

The one thing about the Christian faith is that it cannot be lived for you. Our university does a tremendous job of encouraging its students to not only learn and become better citizens of our cities and countries, it also gives us a tremendous opportunity to grow in our faiths. For many of us, we use this time to explore areas new to ourselves – some of which include behaviour or philosophies that wouldn’t necessarily be biblical. Whether this is healthy or not is not what is being debated.

It is childish to expect to be shaped by our university in the way we intended without any effort from ourselves. What we should expect is to be in an environment where that growth in a godly direction can take place. We are in that environment right now. It is up to ourselves as individuals, however, if we want to become more godly.

With peace + love

John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

If you’ve ever set foot on campus, you’ve seen those Globe and Mail banners – the ones that boast the A+’s in overall quality
of education.

This issue, we here at Mars’ Hill wanted to further measure up the things that go into a TWU education (see pg. 10).

While measuring up our school against other second-choice schools for TWU undergrads can be fun and necessary to identify where our school can succeeds and can improve, the individual regard of measuring up ourselves can be intimidating and
feel unnecessary.

Within our pluralistic society, the idea of measuring up one’s self seems old – having died when modernity failed. In case you do not pay attention to current affairs, modernity isn’t dead and is being embraced, but I digress. While individual pluralism is dominant in our culture and it dying is about as likely anyone on the cast of Jersey Shore reading a book, measuring ourselves up is necessary if we wish to grow as Christians.

As Christians, we have already been given people to whom we can measure ourselves up with, and more importantly take guidance from – the Saints. The idea of the Saints has widely been rejected by Evangelicals, who believed that it detracted from salvation by Christ alone. Today, that rejection has more to do with radical individualism, or radical arrogance, than radical faith. The fact is that we don’t want anyone to shape us in anything. That work is so important we choose to do it for ourselves. Mentors are for people who need mentoring – not us.

In our lives, maybe it was the mother that prayed you through a difficult childhood, the friend that never gave up on you even after you had given up on yourself, or the professor who listened to your yearnings after class and dolled out doctorial wisdom; these people are saints. They teach us things – some of which are the hardest to learn. They teach us how to forgive, how to say no, and how to forget about our own problems and turn to those in need. These people are more than a measuring stick – they remind us that others have been there before us, and they demonstrate that we don’t have to be alone in our faith. Let us be thankful God has given us these saints.

With Peace + Love,
John Hennenfent

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.Micah 5:2 (KJV)

Bethlehem means “house of bread,” and the name refers to the fact that the village was situated in a fertile place, where with labour its soil would yield food to the faithful. It was not a great market town or trading centre, and it was not the holy city, Jerusalem, the centre of worship and influence.

The prophet Micah, distressed with the wordly splendors of Jerusalem, points to this modest city of Bethlehem, as the place out of whose past will come Israel’s future hope. The text is a promise that in the midst of bad things, great things shall come from small things.

So, this Christmas when our hearts are stilled by the magnitude of God’s great love toward us, we are reminded that the greatness of God is seen in the wonder both of the ordinary and of the small. The test of God’s power is not in his capacity to move mountains and outmanuever the phenomena of nature, bur rather the miracle of God and his divine economy is that he can make much of nothing and something of almost anything. That is what he does in creation, that is what he does at Christmas, and that is what he does with us, if only we will let him.

In the Holy Land, there is the oldest church in Christendom, the Church of the Nativity, which stands on what is believed to be the site of the nativity in Bethlehem. It is this place where it is believed that Mary bore her son. It is the most sacred spot of our faith, for it reminds us of the tangible quality of the Incarnation.

Christmas lends itself easily to sentiment. But Christmas does not represent a sentiment, an idea, or even a feeling about God. Christmas belongs to those who recognize not the sense of the holidays but the real presence of God in their lives and in their world, not simply once upon a time, long ago and far away, but here and now, inhabiting our hearts. The world of little Bethlehem was real, Caesar Augustus was real, Herod was real, taxation was real, death and slaughter were real, despair was real and normal; and in the midst of all of this God had to be made real, and was made real not in an idea or an ideal but in the flesh, for that is what the Incarnation was and is, and that is why we bow before its presence.

So we join with Him and with one another on this day of days, for the gift of the Incarnation continues in the fellowship that we have with Christ around his Holy Table. In these most ordinary, most tangible creatures of bread and wine, flesh and blood, we become at one with him who for us became one of us. Every time we celebrate the Holy Communion we experience once again his Incarnation.

The miracle of Christmas: What is it? It is the star, the singing angles, the wondering shepherds, the lovely mother, the exotic kings? Is it the cold night, the hopes and fears? Not really. The miracle of Christmas is that God cared enough to send the very best, and that he continues to do so in the gifts now given to us in one another.

Merry Christmas,

John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief,
with Rev. Peter Gomes

While on the surface that may read like it could be conventional wisdom, such an attitude could not be more counterproductive or further from the truth. As young people living in climate we do, one cannot escape sexuality’s prevalence within society and within ourselves. To ignore that we are sexual beings, whether we are married and having sex or not, is to ignore a basic principle of our identity.

As some attitudes towards sexuality have changed in the last century, while others have simply gained in popularity, let us as Christians be able to address the issue that is sexuality. All too often in Christian circles, people are dismissed for wishing to speak on the issue or for holding views that conflict with the widely held beliefs of the Church. May we come to terms with the fact that despite that most of us are unmarried and not sexually active, every single one of us is a sexual being, no matter how uncomfortable that may feel to yourself or to others.

To the students who may be struggling with their sexual orientation, you are not a freak or a monstrosity, and you are not alone on this campus or within the Christian faith. I hope that you will take comfort in the fact that homosexuality has existed for as long as time has, and you are loved by God no matter the attitudes you may face from your family, friends, church, or self.

With peace + love,
John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

When someone asks why you spend $18,000 a year on your university tuition, you’d better have a good answer.

For most of us, we do. Still, some mindless souls are without a response. Others have rescinded their reasons for first enrolling at Trinity – the most common answer I have heard being because they have “outgrown” Christianity or the evangelical movement’s application of it.

For the overwhelming majority of us, TWU’s aspiration to be a Christ-centred university played a significant role in our decision to enroll. Of all of Trinity’s defining characteristics – its liberal arts focus, its small and communal atmosphere, its location in one of the warmest climates in Canada – it is its Christ-centredness that defines it.

At the risk of sounding like a mindless IDIS 400 student, just as our worldview defines and encompasses all other aspects of our life, so too does TWU’s Christ-centred approach define its identity and approach to education. As with everything within Protestantism, the room for interpretation on how to achieve this is never-ending. Obvious examples of this approach to education seemingly veering off the course of Christ-centredness are the university’s previously held Puritan values, which barred social dancing, the consumption of alcohol, and employed a de facto Essenic approach to the world outside the university’s walls.

What makes the mission of a Christ-centred university so difficult to achieve is easily understandable when thought of in the same light as an individual’s relationship with and understanding of God. While most religions may serve a god and hold a book as holy, it is Christ and Christianity’s dynamic nature that define the Christian faith, making it a much more difficult and personal faith to live out.

Rather than following a book of rules or even a socially acceptable value system, Christians follow a living God that is not static, simple or straightforward. Detractors to this sentiment may reach for the oft-quoted Hebrews 13:8, reading “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

We’ll trust the author’s (likely Paul’s) understanding of Jesus in his letter to the Hebrews, but as can be evidenced on numerous occasions throughout the Old and New Testaments, God’s heart is malleable and subject to change – sometimes on request, sometimes without warning.

This truth, among many others, makes Christianity an impossible faith to master. When understood in the context of a living relationship, TWU’s aspiration to be Christ-centred university almost seems foolish. When one understands the necessity of having a living relationship in order to be Christ-centred, the aspiration becomes admirable.

With peace + love,
John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

When we use the word ‘party,’ we like the word’s blatant vagueness. The word’s range can be used to include anything from a night of unashamed debauchery to a night spent playing board games.

As social beings, we need parties. Gathering our friends together in one place for an evening builds community within a group, and reminds us that our social foundation is more than several isolated relationships.

The way grabbing a coffee with someone has become our way of building relationships with an individual, parties act to build relationships with the group.

As our collective reaction to the nuclear family has shifted, our reliance on friends has changed as well. For many students, no longer is the family their support group and what defines them. These people have elevated friends from their previous status and placed them where the family used to be. For most, this has not been done out of callousness towards the family, but out of necessity. The family, if it has stayed together, cannot or will not fill these roles of support and characterization. For those who hold onto the family’s place as chief support and social network, parties hold less importance, although still keep their novelty.

For partying to have its desired effect, it must be enjoyable. There is no one out there who believes a good party is one that was thoroughly unenjoyable. In this regard, parties differ from most things we take part in, such as school, work, and family gatherings.
The way in which we party is less important than the fact that we must do it, yet our means often take priority over our ends. For many university students, our means for enjoying ourselves overtake our desired ends of enjoying ourselves and strengthening friendships. When this overtaking occurs, partying can still retain its ability to be enjoyable, but it ceases to be healthy.

While it is easy to lose sight of why we do anything after we have done it for long enough, may you find this letter a reminder of why we party. We are social beings, and we cannot feel whole by ourselves. We need relationships with others to help make us whole. Whether you’re attending your niece’s seventh birthday, your best friend’s stag, or a friend’s dinner party, may you realize why you are there in the first place before you decide on anything else.

With peace + love
John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief

Since the days of Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s gift to the world has been understood as multiculturalism. Though many countries are built through a single ethnic and religious group, Canada, a nation of immigrants, rejected this sentiment. Rather than seek to forge a new identity, Canada’s identity would be that it made room for everyone else’s.

The end of ethnic nationalism and the building of societies that promote civic nationalism with a universally accepted value system was born out of the idea of allowing and celebrating diversity. A set of universally accepted values rather than an identity forged on similar last names seemed sensible, but something has gone wrong.

Bombings in Britain, political assassinations in the Netherlands, and race riots in China all seem to be symptoms of the diversity experiment gone amiss. The world has seemingly rejected Canada’s gift.

The rise of violent intolerance should not be understood as something new to history. Its recent uprising against diversity has triggered a reconsideration of its value and acceptence, however.

At Trinity Western, our diversity comes at varying levels, from the obvious examples of different races on campus, to the more subtle differences of the beliefs of diverging Protestant sects.

While tensions can boil between ideas and cultures, and the gulf between understanding one another can feel as wide as the Pacific, let us understand that diversity is one of few things that can truly challenge our own identity and understanding. Diversity’s strength is that it can awaken a longing for something different, as well as demonstrate to us a deeper desire to know ourselves.

Do not let go of your own identity and beliefs so that others may practice their own with more prevalence and piety. Instead, let diversity act to broaden your perspectives on the world and its people. Become exposed to beliefs and cultures different than your own in the hopes yours may become more coherent and educated, and wherever possible, let this quest come through peaceful means.

With peace & love,

John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief