“How God Allowed My Service at
TWU To Be Part of His Story”
The 1637 Van Brummelen family
Bible (the Dutch equivalent of the
King James Bible)
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My illness prevents me from being at the
retreat. But a more handsome and articulate
colleague has agreed to be my narrator . . .
Harro Van
Brummelen
Matthew
Etherington
[Just to prove that in my terrible twos
my curls were also second to none!]
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My full name is . . .
Harro Walter Van Brummelen
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So what?
Well, the Van Brummelen part of the name is of little
importance. In 1826 my great-great grandfather declared at his
City Hall that from now on the family’s last name would be
“van Brummelen” (“from the blackberries”) . He lived just out
of town in “the blackberries wood” so everyone already for
years had called the family “van brummelen.”
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But what about that unusual first name?
Why “Harro Walter”? In
1923 on her seventeenth
birthday my mother was
given a new novel as a gift.
The novel, Harro Walter,
dealt with a young pastor
of a large church in
Rotterdam whose first
name was Harro and
whose last name was
Walter.
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The statement made by my parents . . .
Children in my family had
always been named after grandor great-grandparents. But my
parents broke with that
tradition. My name, Harro
Walter, appeared nowhere
among our ancestors. My
grandmother was so furious
that when she first saw me that
she said that I was the ugliest
baby she had ever seen.
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So what statement did my parents make by calling
me Harro Walter? As Christians, we were to:
 Provide for the poor, the abused, the
exploited, the ailing, and the grieving.
 Bring the simple gospel of Jesus
Christ to those in need.
 Ensure that women have equal
opportunities in life.
 Faith has to affect every “square
inch” of life. Therefore they
supported the operation of a
Christian university, a Christian
political party, Christian schools,
Christian media, etc.
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Emigration & Calgary
 In 1953 my family emigrated to Canada. In
Halifax we received Canadian church literature
as we boarded the train to Calgary.
 My father declared (too quickly?) that perhaps
God sent us to Canada to change what he felt
was the churches’ dominant “individualistic
fundamentalism” that would undermine a broad
vision of the Kingdom of God.
 Upon our arrival we attended and appraised
many churches, but eventually settled in a
Christian Reformed Church, not because of its
“Dutchness,” but because of his hope that it
would be most open to a “Kuyperian vision.”
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McGill University
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A degree in math & physics was not the
most important aspect of my time at
McGill.
After a year of wondering and wandering
about my faith, I wrestled with God
many nights, asking whether the “faith of
my parents” was real and relevant.
God convicted me to trust Him, follow in
Jesus’ footsteps, and “work out my
salvation with fear and trembling.”
BUT: even for the early stages of my
calling it took me several years of
thinking through the implications of what
that meant: God wanted me to take on
that responsibility personally.
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Teaching
 My first formal teaching experience
was a computer programming course
for university professors while I
worked on a master’s degree in
computer science.
 I realized I enjoyed teaching more
than the research aspect of computer
science, and ended up teaching math
in an Ontario public high school.
 However, I soon felt constricted in
this large school by being forced to
follow textbooks page by page, giving
common assignments and joint tests.
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Moving to a Christian school
I was attracted to a Christian high school for several
reasons:
 First, the school had a team of teachers interested in
impacting our culture for Christ.
 I was given the freedom to teach math in a cultural
context, as creatively as possible.
[The school is, as far as I can tell, still the most
technically and aesthetically and educationally
creative one anywhere in Canada, with a student
population that is ethnically and religiously diverse.]
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Coordinator of BC’s Christian Schools
Five years after becoming principal of the Edmonton
Christian High School, God called me to move to
British Columbia to become coordinator of a group
of about 25 Christian schools.
These nine years of leadership prepared me for
my TWU vocation:
 Knowing the K-12 school system in BC
 Giving Christian curriculum and pedagogy
leadership to schools and teachers
 Working with the government to implement
BC’s independent school funding
 Learning much about biblical servant leadership
 Completing my doctorate in curriculum at UBC
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Moving to TWU in 1986
The main reasons for coming to TWU:
[My wife Wilma was
taking her degree at
TWU before my
arrival at TWU.]
 Opportunity to develop a teacher education
program in an evangelical, inter-denominational
setting
 Having the freedom to base my teaching, writing,
and leadership work with students and supportive
colleagues based on a distinctive faith framework
 Contributing to but also learning from evangelical
traditions other than my own
 Being part of the first Canadian Christian
university, with long-term opportunities to
implement grad programs
In the remainder of this presentation, I will
give you a few examples of how God allowed
my service at TWU to be part of His Story.
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Example #1 of how God allowed my
service at TWU to be part of His Story
In my first year at TWU I found that there were
no suitable introductory texts for Christian
approaches to teaching and learning—and yet
TWU existed in order to enable students to
consider, adapt, and implement biblically-based
educational theory and practice.
So in the summer of 1987 I wrote what was
intended as a student CoursePack, initially with
no plans to publish the manuscript.
Now in its third edition and available in ten
languages, the published text is still (to my
surprise!) used all over the world, promoting
Christian educational thought and praxis.
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Example #2: Foundations of Education
Two intended learning outcomes of this course:
 Value the significance of the implications of
worldview perspectives on the theory and
practice of teaching and learning
 Appreciate the importance and complexity of
educational issues such as teacher neutrality,
pluralism, tolerance, moral and values education,
and indoctrination
One aspect of this course was to analyze the thinking
of a selection of Christian and other educators, both
historical (e.g., Comenius, Charlotte Mason), and
contemporary (e.g. , Paulo Freire, Nel Noddings)
 One surprising student response
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Example #3: EDUC 495: Critical Issues in
Education and Culture
Arguably my favourite course at TWU is the School
of Education’s IDIS 400 equivalent. Two of its
intended learning outcomes:
Learn why . . .
 A biblical view of justice can provide an
important basis for dealing with educational
issues and dilemmas.
 It is important to consider and deal thoughtfully
with complex issues in education such as religion
in the classroom, choice in education, education
for indigenous students, globalization, and
educating for a just and sustainable future.
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Example #4:TWU’s Core Values
A highlight of my time at TWU was when Guy Saffold
and I headed a task force to come up with TWU’s
core values. Why?
First, the whole TWU community from custodians
to staff to faculty became involved in the
discussions, with papers written by committees, vetted
widely, and then adopted by the Board. We knew what
we were about!
Second, our six core values are still relevant today:
 Obeying the authority of Scripture
 Faith-based and faith-affirming learning
 Promoting excellence
 Practicing servant leadership
 Discipleship in community
 Impacting culture for Christ
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Example #5:The Supreme Court Case
TWU took up the challenge when the BC College of
Teachers turned down TWU’s teacher education program
because of our stance on homosexual behaviour. The case,
in our view, was about a much broader issue: can faithbased institutions play a significant role in the public
square while upholding their religious views? We gained
widespread support when framing the issue this way, with
the Supreme Court ruling 8-1 that“freedom of religion is
not accommodated if the consequence of its exercise
is the denial of full participation in society.”
Though tension-filled, I was glad to be able
to be part of this process, as well as still
being able to maintain good relations with
the College of Teachers over the long run.
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Example #6: My writings . . .
TWU gave me the freedom to research and
write about topics that were important for
growth in my worldview perspective. My
thinking about student assessment, for
instance, deepened so that in a book
published last year I developed a model for
assessment based on four metaphors:
 Assessment as blessing
 Assessment as grace
 Assessment as justice
 Assessment as covenant
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Example #7: Servant Leadership
TWU enabled me to practice
servant leadership in a number of
ways:
 Designing the Educational Leadership
program of the MAL degree
 Being an informal leader as well as a dean
 Giving leadership provincially, for instance,
by being a founder of the Association of
BC Deans of Education and, in God’s
divine irony, representing all BC teacher
education programs as its President at the
College of Teachers after the Court Case.
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What does it all add up to?
If this all sounds too good to be true: it is! My journey fell
short in significant ways:
 Many faltering steps and insufficient insight
 My (stubborn Dutch) personality getting in the way:
compromise has not been my strength!
 Periods in my life when it was difficult to hear God’s voice
 Maintaining balance among my family life, my spiritual
journey, and my work (with, regrettably, often the first
losing out)
YET: Like many of you who can also tell many distinctive stories,
in hindsight I am deeply thankful for God’s guidance, and how He
prepared me for every step along the way.That made it possible
for me to serve Him, my students, and my colleagues within the
framework of “holding firmly to the Word of Life . . . [so that] my
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service has been an offering to God.”
One final thought . . .
TWU will always be primarily a tuition-driven teaching
university. Much more than when I came in 1986, our
current generation of students is a de-traditionalized
one where students choose their own identity and often
adopt the patterns of consumer culture. Christian identity
now involves a student choosing an explicit option, one
that is often not culturally supported.
This makes it all the more important
that while we are a university that
promotes critical thinking, at the same
time we more than ever need to help
students explore and be ready to choose a
responsible Christian identity: our SLO
discussions this coming year will
be both vital and promising!
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