Leaders for the Liturgical People: Shaping Students for Ministry in the Twenty-First Century

In my first year of undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, I enrolled in a course entitled “The Christian Imagination.” It introduced the students to Christian art across the ages, and it was taught by a very clever and energetic woman with a French accent. It was a mind-bending experience. In the course of the semester, Dr Langan showed us hundreds of slides of sculpture, painting and architecture. Quite apart from the incredible amount of material, it was the challenge to appreciate the great variety of expressions of the Christian experience that took my breath away. At the end of the semester, I vowed never to take another course in the Christianity and Culture program. It was just too stressful. Yet the next semester I found myself signing up for more of the same and after four years graduated with a major in the program. I have reflected upon what it was about this program which caught and held me. I believe that I was fascinated by the challenge to see Christianity from new and varying perspectives, to understand and evaluate the ways in which the Christian faith has been and continues to be lived in differing situations, and to imagine how the church might faithfully and creatively live the faith in the future. It was this fascination that brought me to the study of liturgy and which I dream of passing on to others.