In my book ‘An Improbable Feast’ I explored how hospitality became the unifying and informing practice of Oasis.

An understanding of hospitality informs every aspect of the relationship of Oasis with the University, the wider community, the use of the Oasis itself as a centre, how conversations and relationships are initiated by members of the Oasis team with students and staff, and also within the team itself, and how discernment is exercised among those seeking support at Oasis.

Oasis fosters health and well-being by informal, social means through the practice of hospitality, complementing the University’s Health and Counselling Service which fosters health and well-being by formal means through the practice of therapeutic intervention.

In the development of Oasis this year, the Oasis team has identified elements within the process of offering hospitality.
https://travellingchaplain.com/resources/

Now the question arises, how might the skills needed to accomplish each of these elements be developed and sharpened?

I suggest for discussion:

1. The motivation and attitude of the team member
The voluntary nature of the Oasis enterprise assures that team members are more likely than not to be motivated toward contributing to the achievement of the vision of Oasis in an attitude of service. However, the question of whose needs are being met and how, requires constant interrogation.

2. Information and practice
The directions and fortunes of the university contextualize Oasis.
Fundamental changes challenge the whole university enterprise. For example: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/the-changing-face-of-university-education/5011596#transcript

If the prophet above is anywhere near the mark, and I suspect he is, and universities become less and less places people go to get information in order to buy credentials for employment then the role of an Oasis on campus becomes called into question; and credentialing pastoral care through traditional processes may also need to be reconsidered within this conversation.

It would be possible, for example, for Oasis to create a MOOC in pastoral care aimed at a national constituency in the first instance, to provide information and quizzes that generate cognitive understanding. Responsive learning, through conversation, might take place face-to-face in regional centres, and those with the wisdom go to them to provide foci for encouragement and practice. These encounters might create small communities of ongoing reflective learning and support.
The role of credentialing might become the concern of professional bodies in partnership with MOOC providers and the institutions and employers in which such credentialed persons operate.

Oasis is a welcoming and enabling community, open to all, contributing to personal and communal spiritual enrichment while promoting mutual respect and appreciative understanding of diverse religious paths and cultural traditions.

Oasis as an Interfaith Centre

The mission of Oasis is to enact and promote the practice of radical hospitality.

Radical hospitality may be described as making space – in which we enter respectfully into each other’s worlds in order to understand appreciatively, whether that space for the other be physical, social, emotional, religious or intellectual.

For members of the Oasis team, radical hospitality is intentionally for the benefit of the other, rather than for the satisfaction of one’s own needs.

Hospitality… means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbour into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit. It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opportunity to others to find their God and their way. The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt a life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find their own.

(Henri Nouwen. Reaching Out: The Three Movements in the Spiritual Life. 1975 Doubleday. New York. p 68)

Interfaith Hospitality

In its practice of interfaith hospitality, Oasis enacts and promotes the principles of:

1. The Faith Friendly Communities Charter:

Principle of Mutual Recognition

A faith friendly community recognises the right of all faiths to meet the needs of their respective members in any given community.

Principle of Mutual Concern

A faith friendly community intends to meet the religious and spiritual needs of its members of various faiths.

Principle of Mutual Understanding

A faith friendly community seeks to understand the values and beliefs of each faith in a given community rather than to pass judgement on them.

Principle of Mutual Respect

A faith friendly community seeks to respect the differences between the values and beliefs of its members.

2. Four basic principles of interfaith dialogue identified by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (formerly the British Council of Churches):

Dialogue begins when people meet people
Dialogue depends upon removing misunderstanding and building up trust
Dialogue leads to common service within the community
Dialogue is a means of authentic witness

Oasis as an Interfaith Centre

The mission of Oasis is to enact and promote the practice of radical hospitality.

Radical hospitality may be described as making space – in which we enter each other’s worlds in order to understand appreciatively, whether that space for the other be physical, social, emotional, religious or intellectual.

For members of the Oasis team, radical hospitality is intentionally for the benefit of the other, rather than for the satisfaction of one’s own needs.

Hospitality… means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbour into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit. It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opportunity to others to find their God and their way. The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt a life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find their own.

(Henri Nouwen. Reaching Out: The Three Movements in the Spiritual Life. 1975 Doubleday. New York. p 68)

Interfaith Hospitality

In its practice of interfaith hospitality, Oasis enacts and promotes the principles of:

1. The Faith Friendly Communities Charter:

• Principle of Mutual Recognition
  A faith friendly community recognises the right of all faiths to meet the needs of their respective members in any given community.
• Principle of Mutual Concern
  A faith friendly community intends to meet the religious and spiritual needs of its members of various faiths.
• Principle of Mutual Understanding
  A faith friendly community seeks to understand the values and beliefs of each faith in a given community rather than to pass judgement on them.
• Principle of Mutual Respect
  A faith friendly community seeks to respect the differences between the values and beliefs of its members.

2. Four basic principles of interfaith dialogue identified by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (formerly the British Council of Churches):

• Dialogue begins when people meet people
• Dialogue depends upon removing misunderstanding and building up trust
• Dialogue leads to common service within the community
• Dialogue is a means of authentic witness

Suggestions for amendments I think worth adopting.

Beatrice Panne, lecturer in Pastoral Care at the Uniting College, has suggested adding a piece to our Elements of Hospitality schema – ‘entering each others’ worlds: understanding‘ – thanks Beatrice!

And the word ‘appreciative’ has been added to our vision statement:

Five months on from Oasis being incorporated and resourced by the University:

* who we think we are:

Oasis is a welcoming and enabling community, open to all, contributing to personal and communal spiritual enrichment while promoting mutual respect and understanding of diverse religious paths and cultural traditions.

and in a nutshell (but maybe a bit of a mouthful!):

Oasis – community and spirituality through hospitality.

* We have defined an Oasis Team – an inner core of the Oasis community who:

• want to contribute to realising the Oasis vision,
• are volunteers, working within the codes of practice of Volunteering Australia,
• want to develop new skills and understandings that enhance the quality of their  service.

“Oasis is a welcoming… community…”

* we have identified elements we think combine to enact the “welcoming” Oasis offers:

* these elements are helping us identify some of our skill development needs

“Oasis is… an enabling community…” 

* In the university and wider community we seek to enable by forming partnerships and collaborations, asking the question: ‘What do you need from Oasis?’

* We are replacing ‘meetings’ with meals, fostering the Oasis Hospitality Elements.

Following discussion of the schema we came up with – “Oasis Hospitality Cycle” – posted previously, I am proposing the following refinement.

The commentary on each of the elements still stands.

A particular model I call ‘traditional chaplaincy’ is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the church. Such a deep and resistant image continues to dominate the church’s understanding of chaplaincy, influenced by the weight of history. ‘Traditional chaplains’ are agents of the church ministering to adherents who are geographically removed from parish life, and in particular, administering the sacraments to those who, through life’s circumstances, are displaced from their local church.

 Such chaplains have typically been ordained clergy who go about the business of parish life outside the parish – conducting worship, ministering the sacraments, educating, providing pastoral support and being the focus of the Christian community life of adherents distant from the parish. Traditionally, chaplains were appointed to institutions such as armies and prisons and hospitals.

‘Traditional chaplaincy’ has suited the purposes of the church over millennia – to ensure a presence in society’s major institutions, to do the church’s business there and to convey and strengthen the influence of the church. This is a model of chaplaincy that is about cultural transmission of parochial life. And it is probably the default understanding of chaplaincy among most church people.

In our current context, such a model is of no import to the institution itself save what the institution or a smarter chaplain may make of it. Traditional chaplaincy is marginalized from the real life of the institution and the institution has no interest in supporting what churches may or may not do. There is a dis-connect between the churches and the institution.

So today, chaplains who hope to survive the decline and irrelevance of the church are adapting to this marginalization. There is a movement by chaplains to provide pastoral care in a secular way. Institutions are rewarding this inclusive approach. Such chaplains have given up on the traditional model. They minister without condition (not just to their adherents) and they articulate their role in terms of the ‘spiritual’ rather than the religious. The ‘spiritual’ has become the purvue of the chaplain, while the parish minister is inevitably dispensing ‘religion’ – that is, upholding those practices important to the culture of the church.

The parish minister is protected from the disconnect between the church and the world because the focus of the church and the seat of power of the church is founded in the parochial – the effort to continue parish life.

The theological insights of the Dutch Catholic theologian Erik Borgman shine a light on our modern dilemma – the irrelevance of the church and its message, from the perspective of the world.

Fig. 1 Traditional church consciousness

Borgman suggests that the typical consciousness of the church assumes that the world is god-less and in need of salvation. The world is the domain of sin. The church mediates the means of salvation between God and the world. God has revealed the means of salvation to the church. Chaplains within this paradigm are the church’s representatives bringing the good news of salvation to ‘unsaved’ people in the world, or pastoring the church’s adherents in the world.

The church is discovering that the world is not interested in the church’s ‘answers’ and finds such a paternalistic approach offensive. The church, if it is listening at all to feedback from the ‘World’, is being given the message that the World’s people (at least in the West) are “spiritual, but not religious”. Commitment to institutional religion has declined dramatically and continues to do so – which may be an indicator that the traditional approach, based on the assumptions underlying figure 1. is failing in the very mission it has assumed for itself.

Many churches are responding to this failure by ‘trying harder’.

Fig. 2 God-in-the-world consciousness

Borgman argues:

Theologically, it is the task of churches to respond to Gods salvific presence in the midst of our confusing world, not to preach their own presence as salvation from the confusing world. The pastoral task to be and stay close to people in their experiences, is based on the firm belief that it is there that God is kenotically present, as the Biblical traditions teach.

Borgman is not suggesting the traditional approach ‘in situ’ – that is a Figure 1 approach that embeds itself in the world, like a journalist in a combat unit.

The Church should not be seen as the community of those firmly convinced of the truth of their tradition, but as the community of people seeking the support of the Christian tradition to discover Gods salvific presence in the world, and to walk — and to help others to walk – the path to true life God’s presence opens.

At the heart of this God-in-the-world consciousness is the conviction that God is present and active in the world. The chaplain is therefore looking for the activity of God in the world, to cooperate and support that activity, not seeing herself as an agent of the church mediating God to the world (nor a mere agent of the institution).

This, incidentally, is perhaps why many effective chaplains, effective from the point of view of the institutions in which they work, often find participation in traditional church life so problematic and say they “don’t feel at home” there – if they attend church at all! They feel at home in the world, where they find God, and are uncomfortable in church culture.

While the church continues to assume the model of figure 1 and chaplains increasingly discover and embrace the model of figure 2 it is likely that we will see the following:

1. 1. 1. 1. the churches defunding chaplaincy because it cannot see how chaplaincy is delivering the goods according to the assumptions of figure 1.
         2. Institutions embracing a secular chaplaincy model that is inclusive and articulated in terms of spirituality.
         3. A refusal by chaplains to engage in conscious attempts at evangelization.

It may be that chaplains become prophets to the church, agents in the church’s own reformation, by helping the church examine how it has arrived at such a position of impotence.

In my view, the church should reject the assumptions of Figure 1 and its concomitant outmoded structures. It may then be in a better position to interrogate any addiction to a self-interested exercise of power and any propensity for denial in the hope of protecting itself. And may position itself for creative support of what God is doing in the world.

Reference: Borgman-Mission, www.travellingchaplain.com/resources