Syd Hielema

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14: 5-6).

One of the (many) privileges of serving as campus chaplain is that I hear literally hundreds of stories testifying to the ways in which the Redeemer community has been a blessing to people. Even so, there’s always a dark side to Christian community as well. Every Christian community that I’ve ever belonged to has also left people wounded.

I spend about 4-6 hours a day on my laptop and it feels like an extension of myself and my relationships; however, I've learned that such a shift in a major part of one's life requires developing new guidelines for social etiquette, so I often ask my students to sign the following laptop usage contract:  "I wish to have the privilege of using my laptop in this class as a note-taking device, and I commit that the only window open on my laptop during class time will be the one used for note-taking."