New La Sierra agreement builds bridge between university church and spiritual life office

“Adventist universities exist for spirituality,” Arthur said. “[Other areas of] the university are formally structured. We have well-defined curriculum. We have syllabi. You know exactly what to expect. We have contracts with employees and with vendors. When it comes to spirituality we think, ‘oh let’s just figure it out.’

“I’m hoping that by signing an MOU like this one, there is now some sacred accountability,” Arthur said, with clearly outlined expectations for the parties involved. “And hopefully the document reminds us that the chaplain is here as equally for the employees as they are for the students,” to provide spiritual nurturance and care on occasions when the chaplain, as campus pastor, is the best individual to meet such needs.

Through the agreement, the university pastor will have office space within the chaplain’s offices on campus, and vice versa. 

The La Sierra University Church has served the La Sierra campus as a central house of worship since the church’s opening in 1947 but operates under the Southeastern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Because La Sierra is an Adventist university, this partnership between church and university is symbiotic. 

The distinctive identity of an Adventist university is its spirituality. The president provides the leadership for La Sierra’s spirituality. The university’s spiritual life office, under the leadership of University Chaplain Derrick Cruz, works with the president to set the spiritual tone and meet the spiritual needs of university. The office serves La Sierra University students and employees.

Robinson’s vision going forward includes providing spiritual care coordinators to athletics teams trained by the Office of Spiritual Life in such activities as leading devotionals and providing guidance when traveling for games, including ways to observe Sabbath on the road. The head chaplain will also reach out to academic and staff departments toward planning and providing intentional spiritual care.

“Each major group will have a spiritual connection,” she said. While a close relationship has existed between the campus and the church for decades, “the MOU means that we are going to be working more closely and more intentionally.” 

In addition, the agreement supports the spiritual life office’s plans to work closely with the H.M.S. Richards Divinity School faculty in serving the campus while strengthening the education and training of divinity schools students who are aiming for careers in pastoral care.

“The signing of the MOU officially and formally articulates what has long been part of the informal culture of collaborative work between the university and church communities,” Cruz said. “With this relationship formalized, the stage is set to build on this collaborative work using the professional expertise of divinity school faculty in the pastoral studies department. This will impact the future for Adventist Christian higher educational institutions that are increasingly responsible for the care of souls of a diverse religious student population. The consequence of such an arrangement results in a modeling of best practices for the work of chaplain pastoral care in denominational higher education.” 

A fully operationalized and lived agreement bridges any perceived gaps between the two institutions, Arthur noted. 

“The student should not be able to tell the difference between the university and the university church,” Arthur said. “Students should so experience the church pastors on campus in their daily lives and so experience the chaplain at church services that for them the experience should be that students will say, ‘I can’t tell the difference between the university chaplain and the university church pastors because they do the same things for me.’”

“We’ve created, unintentionally, this dichotomy, … two separate entities. We’ve allowed students to be the ones to figure it out. Now I’m saying, let’s do the work [so] that it happens organically, because the church is the university and the university is the church.”