Now I must confess that I know very little about dog training. However, I have thought about the relationship between humans and animals in the Bible and this might be a good starting point in developing a Christian perspective on dog training.

In the beginning, God entrusted the well-being of the animals and plants to humans. We were called to exercise loving and accountable rule over non-human creation. The bad news is that the harmonious and mutually beneficial relationship between humans and animals that God intended was distorted by human disobedience. As a result, human-animal relations in our world are frequently characterized by violence and exploitation.

The good news is that God is in the process of restoring all creation, including the relationship between humans and animals. The prophet Isaiah spoke to the coming of one who would bring an end to the violence and distortion of human and animal relationships.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
[Isaiah 11:6-11]

As a Christian, I understand Isaiah's prophesy as being fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus is in the process of restoring all things to God and making them new. So what light does this biblical picture shed on the work of training dogs? If I were a Christian dog trainer, such a perspective would help me to see my work as a calling or means of serving God, not simply how I make my living. You see, as a dog trainer, I can share in Jesus' redemptive work of restoring the broken relationship between humans and animals. Every day I call domineering humans to exercise a loving rule over their dogs. I call people to live up to their God-given responsibilities to care for and respect their canine friends.

I know that the most fruitful animal-human relationships are partnerships in which both the human need for companionship and the dog's need for exercise, food and fair treatment are met. I call those who would abdicate their responsibilities to their animals to account and insist that they give their animals the time and attention they deserve. By training dogs, I also call on them to behave in ways that promote safe and productive relations with human beings. I work hard to curb aggressive tendencies in the animals I train.

Moreover, I know that a properly trained dog brings much joy into a person's home. I know that close relationships with pets are good for the mental and physical health of human beings. So in that sense, my work contributes to human happiness and relief from suffering.

I believe that if I were a Christian dog trainer, such a perspective would help me to see that my faith has real meaning and relevance outside of the church walls. It would affirm that I have a part to play in God's unfolding story of redemption. Moreover, that knowledge would make a big difference in how I feel about and actually carry out my work.

This article first appeared in the diocesan newspaper Dialogue, and is reprinted with the author's permission.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have heard this remark. The same goes for its partner, "I can worship God without going to church." Together they might be called The Credo of Lapsed Church-Goers. If you are a priest, listening to this particular credo comes with the territory. But I am sure that clergy are not the only ones to be on the receiving end of such statements. Any Christian is liable to be put on the spot in this way, when it becomes known that she or he regularly attends church.

And how do you respond? How have I responded? In all my 20 years as a priest, this credo nearly always caught me off balance. What is the problem? In my own case, a great deal of the block arises from the merits of the lapsed church-goer's credo. For the claim that it makes is true -- about as self-evidently true, so soon as it is stated, as any claim can be.

Of course one can believe in God, of course one can worship God, without going to church. You and I do so. We don't need to drive or walk to a church once or twice a day in order to read the Scriptures and pray and meditate; we do such worship in our homes and in other places besides churches. Indeed, if someone were able to worship God only when inside a church building on a Sunday morning, we might wonder whether that person has really "got" what Christianity is all about. But if the credo of the lapsed church-goer is true, why should the rest of us bother to attend church at all?

There are moments when it is good for Christians to step back and ponder the purpose of our practice, or rather to boldly go where so few have the inclination or take the time to go and -- horrors! -- do theology. In short, the beginning of planning for a new church year may be a season when it is good to consider why -- why we do what we do Sunday after Sunday, weekday after weekday, season after season, year in and year out.

And what is it that we do? Before, after, and in the course of all the activities that fill a Christian community's life through the year, we do the Holy Eucharist. It has been noted that the frequency of the Eucharist as the principal service on Sunday is a fairly recent development in Anglicanism. How this came about is not my concern here, nor is it my purpose to enter into controversy over whether or not it is a good thing. The fact is, the Eucharist is what most Anglicans do before, after, and in the course of all the other activities that fill their communities' lives through the year.

Nor is it anything less than a true reformation of the church that baptism has come once again to be celebrated as a part of the principal Sunday liturgy, no longer relegated to the duller stretches of Sunday afternoons. Perhaps we are beginning to own -- and own up to -- the significance of a principle that our tradition has always acknowledged, that baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two sacraments that are "generally necessary to salvation." Salvation is as great a work as the making-be of "the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home" -- and why should the church, of all communities, consent to hide its celebration of salvation in a corner?

But what does "salvation" itself mean, and why are the baptismal and eucharistic liturgies "generally necessary" for sharing in whatever it means?

Sacraments as 'things'

First of all I should acknowledge that the Prayer Book Catechism does not speak of the baptismal and eucharistic liturgies as "generally necessary to salvation"; it says only that the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper are such. To speak in these terms, however, is to reduce the two sacraments to the status of things; and in the past theologians have all too often extrapolated from sacraments-as-things to the question of the bare minimum of matter and form required to constitute a valid sacrament-thing. This has led some people to think that it is okay to celebrate the bath of regeneration and rebirth with an eye-dropper, and that all they need in order to confect the body and blood of Christ is to recite the bare words of institution and nothing else. Something is missing here, and it is not simply common sense. It is the failure to recognize that a sacrament is, first and foremost, an event, an action, a doing. To be sure, our tradition (of which the Scriptures are a fundamental element) tells us that we will need certain materials -- water and oil, bread and wine -- and that we will need to include certain formulas when we do the sacraments. But baptism and the Eucharist do not exist in a liturgy-free zone somewhere "out there," from whence they may be plucked and inserted into a liturgical celebration, according to need or desire. We may -- and in the age to come we certainly shall -- have a liturgy without a sacrament, but we cannot have a sacrament without a liturgy. So it is not just the thing we call baptism, and the thing we call the Eucharist, which are "generally necessary to salvation." It is the whole liturgical action of baptizing, and the whole liturgical action of eucharistizing, that are "generally necessary to salvation."

But again, what do we mean by salvation? The Second Letter of Peter, for instance, proclaims that God "had given us ... his precious and very great promises, so that through them you ... may become participants of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4.) Of course, what participation of the triune life of God might actually be, much less "feel like" (if such a phrase is not a theological oxymoron), is not to be had on the cheap. "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). We walk as yet in a realm of images, in a territory of likenesses, amid shadows of what we shall be. But there are no shadows without light to cast them, and the images and likenesses of our participation in the divine nature really do convey the life that they betoken. That is why we have sacraments; that is also why we have the liturgy.

Yes, of course we can believe in God, of course we can worship God, without going to church. But we cannot share in the life of God without going to church, without sharing in liturgia, in the public and corporate worship of the people of God. For the three-personed God, the Source of all being, the eternal Word made flesh, and the Holy Spirit, seeks to make us partners of a transcendent communion through "the mutual society, help, and comfort" that is our communion with one another in the gathered body of Christ.

This is not so today. Most chaplains, like myself, are volunteers. In Canada, there are only two full-time, paid police chaplains, serving the Edmonton Police Service and the Quebec City Police.

The police chaplain today is a trained professional who works with police in serving the community and attending to the officers and civilians employed by the police force.

Chaplain John Price of the Albuquerque Police, a founding member of the International Conference of Police Chaplains, said in a speech to chaplains: "Response in crisis is the calling of the police chaplain. Response to God's call is his daily fare. He is a person who brings to the lost, the least, the lonely, the love of God. Here is the arena of life, and here, people are battered and beaten and questioning the existence of God.

"Here, by all the Jericho roads, lie all the victims that the frightened and fearful would pass by. Here in the gore and the grime, people cry that God, if he does exist, doesn't care. This is where the chaplain lives."

Just what are some of the responses that a police chaplain must make?

Looking at the Thunder Bay police chaplain's logbook for the past year or so, we get a glimpse into the work both of the police and the chaplain.

The past year (1997) began with three homicides in the first month. The year was less than two weeks old when a double homicide occurred and then as January ended, a third murder took place.

The third murder was that of a 19-year-old gas bar attendant. Blair Aitkens was closing up the Can-Op station when he was shot. He was rushed to hospital and the watch commander called me to go to the intensive care unit.

Blair died almost immediately, but his family wanted their son's organs donated to others in need. I spent many hours with the Aitkens family in the intensive care unit and then at their home. The family did not have a church affiliation and requested that I take the service.

The community was rocked by this tragic event and I found myself ministering not only to the family, but also to Blair's many friends and, to a lesser degree, to the entire community. As it turned out, the same man had committed all three murders, and he subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for at least 25 years.

One of the common calls that come to chaplains is to accompany a police officer to make a death notification. When a person dies as a result of a traffic or industrial accident, the police must be the bearers of bad news. It is probably the task that officers dislike most.

There is no easy way to tell someone that a husband, son, father, wife, daughter, or mother has died. People go out the door to their day's work and, unfortunately, there are those who never return. The chaplain accompanies the officers to give this terrible news, not because the chaplain can do it any better, but to try to offer comfort and assistance to the bereaved.

It is the role of the officer to make sure that the family's questions regarding the cause of death are answered. The officer knows the facts of the case. The chaplain is there to help the family contact other family members and the clergy person who may be able to assist the family.

In many cases, the family will ask for a prayer and help right at that time.

The most frequent calls for death notification are after suicides. No two suicides are the same. There was the man who took his life in the police parking lot. Another overdosed on drugs. Others use guns. One young man soaked himself with gasoline and struck a match. Just before Christmas, a young woman hanged herself. Another died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

In many of these cases, be it murder, accidental death, or suicide, the officer who is involved may also need comfort and help in coming to grips with the dark side of his or her profession.

It is not easy to see what happened when someone has shot himself, or after a young boy sets fire to himself. It is not easy to have to go out to a quiet home and tell a family that a son has been murdered. It is not easy to pick up what is left of life at the scene of an accident. And then there are others who need ministry, such as the man who tried to smother the flames on the burning boy.

On 10 evenings in the past year I found myself in the passenger seat of a Thunder Bay Police cruiser. These evenings are called ride-alongs. They give me an opportunity to understand the stresses of life as an on-duty police officer.

Many evenings the calls are routine, but sometimes I find myself ministering to people in their homes as we answer calls. The calls range from breaking and entering to domestic abuse, to a teenager who has trashed a home or apartment. And there are always calls to bars where trouble has erupted.

In some cases, things quiet down when the troublemakers see a priest. In other cases, the chaplain has the job of picking up officers' hats that go flying in the scuffle.

As the year ended, I was called to testify at the coroner's inquest into the death of a young man who had taken his own life, as I had been one of the persons who had negotiated with him.

Listening again to our taped conversations and our pleas with the young victim, the negotiators and I were overcome by our unfortunate failure to convince this young man that he was loved.

There are also pleasant tasks for a chaplain. From time to time officers have asked me to officiate at their weddings. I am also asked to speak to community groups, service clubs and churches regarding police chaplaincy.

There are times when I am called upon for confidential counselling.

It has been my practice to pray with the officers each Thursday morning at briefing before they head out to the streets. Throughout the year, many members of the police service, sworn and civilian, have brought their prayer concerns to me and these are remembered as we gather on Thursdays. I feel that this action has been of benefit to all as we come to think of ourselves as a "police family."

On a sad note, this can also mean comforting officers and their families when loved ones die. Towards the end of the year I spent many hours with a retired officer who was dying of cancer. And, as 1998 began, one of my first duties was to bury that man.

On the last Sunday of September, the annual Police Memorial Service is held on Parliament Hill. As many of our officers never have the opportunity to attend this, I have held a similar service in Thunder Bay for the past six years, going to a different church each year.

At the annual training seminar of the International Conference of Police Chaplains (ICPC) in Duluth, Minnesota, in July, I was elected to the office of first vice-president, having served two years as second vice-president. The ICPC is a worldwide, professional organization of more than 2,000 chaplains in 12 countries. There were more than 350 chaplains in attendance from Canada, the United States, Jamaica, Australia, Great Britain, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

I also attend the annual training seminar of the Canadian Police Chaplains Association in Niagara Falls in October. Much of our instruction has been on problems inherent to gambling casinos. There are several new social and criminal problems that accompany the introduction of a casino to a city or town.

This article is based on my annual report to the Thunder Bay Police Services Board, in which I acknowledged with thanks the patience and understanding of my wife, Marilyn. Her support allows me to spend the volunteer time and effort necessary to make this chaplaincy effective.

This article first appeared in the Algoma Anglican. It is reprinted here with the author's permission.

Having spent only a couple of months as the chaplain, the full measure of the work is not clear in my mind yet. Then again, I have only to speak with my ministry colleague Fr. Monte Peters, the Roman Catholic chaplain at the university since 1970, to get the best possible one-line description of the ministry.

Monte calls the work "intentional loitering."

Being a Christian chaplain in a secular university is a textbook example of being "in the world and not of it." There are no courses in religious studies at UNB, and the opportunities to infiltrate have to be taken with ingenuity and timing, never losing grasp of tact and charity. It is a change to be truly an adjunct who is technically described as "a welcome guest of the university."

That being said, university chaplaincy has been a breath of fresh air for me in many senses. Most contacts are one-on-one. They are initiated by God's grace, and they grow when the chaplain allows that grace to shine through by being an attentive ear, by being a person who will be commended by students and faculty who have turned to him in a time of need or a time when they just wanted a sense that someone cared.