Alida Van Dyke, chair of the Educational Standards Committee for the Association canadienne de soins spirituels and a licensed pastor in the Christian Reformed Church, co-chaired this year’s association’s annual conference. The conference, co-chaired by Dale Nickel, took place April 14-16 in London, Ontario, and attracted approximately 200 participants and 60 volunteers.
Van Dyk is a member of Good News Christian Reformed Church in London and founded the London Community Counselling Centre five years ago. In 2007, he took a leave of absence from his work as a pastor to become a student member of CASC/ACSS and undertake his first clinical psycho-psychiatric training. It was here that he first learned about what it meant to be a psycho-psychotherapist – a practitioner who uses psychology and spiritual methods to support people.
Currently a CASC/ACSS certified psychopsychotherapist, Van Dijk also oversees the unit of psychopsychotherapeutic education, one of the areas of CASC/ACSS training.
The theme of the 2024 national conference was “Making Space,” with Canadian rapper and presenter Shad and US-based professor of pastoral care and counselling Carrie Doering as keynote speakers.
Femke Visser-Ellenbarth, a hospital chaplain at Hamilton Health Sciences, Immanuel CRC in Hamilton, Ontario, attended her third national CASC/ACSS conference in 2024. She said it was a wonderful time to reunite, hear from her colleagues and learn together. “We all work as chaplains, but each situation is unique,” Visser-Ellenbarth said, adding that the conference was like a “home base for chaplains” where she could “reunite with people with a sense of purpose and a sense of community.”
During the conference, Visser-Ellenbarth attended a workshop titled “Developing Skills with Communities of Practice and Advanced Certificates in Palliative and Bereavement Care.” She said she meets monthly virtually with a community of people working in palliative care to exchange resources and support one another. Visser-Ellenbarth said that engaging face-to-face with some of these pastors at the conference was “very helpful and encouraging.”
Tim DeJonge of Kingston General Hospital in Ontario and Jolene Veenstra of Mountain View CRC in Grimsby, Ontario, are Canadian pastors affiliated with the CRCNA who also attended the London conference.
