Alida van Dijk, an endorsed chaplain of the Christian Reformed Church and the educational standards commission chair with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care/Association canadienne de soins spirituels, co-chaired the association’s annual conference this year. Co-led by Dale Nikkel, the conference took place April 14-16 in London, Ont., attracting about 200 participants and 60 volunteers.

Van Dijk is a member at Good News Christian Reformed Church in London and founded Community Counselling Centre of London five years ago. In 2007, on sabbatical from her work as a ministry director, she became a student member with CASC/ACSS and took her first Clinical Psychospiritual Education. This is where she first learned more about what it meant to be a psychospiritual therapist—a practitioner who uses psychology and spiritual methods to support people.

Van Dijk, now a certified psychospiritual therapist with CASC/ACSS, also supervises units of Psychospiritual Therapy Education, one of the streams in CASC/ACSS training.

The theme for the 2024 national conference was “Making Space,” with keynote speakers Canadian rapper and presenter Shad and U.S.-based professor of pastoral care and counseling Carrie Doering.

Femke Visser-Elenbaas, a hospital chaplain with Hamilton (Ont.) Health Sciences who belongs to Immanuel CRC in Hamilton, attended the national CASC/ACSS conference for the third time in 2024. She said it was a wonderful time to reconnect, hear about other colleagues’ experiences, and learn together. “We all work as chaplains, but each of our contexts is unique,” Visser-Elenbaas said, adding that the conference is like a “home base for chaplains,” where they can “reconnect with people in a sense of community with a sense of purpose.”

During the conference, Visser-Elenbaas attended a workshop titled, “Enhancing your Skills with a Community of Practice and Palliative and Bereavement Care Advanced Certification.” She said she meets online monthly with a community of people who work in palliative care to exchange resources and support each other. Visser-Elenbaas said it was “very beneficial and encouraging” to connect with some of these chaplains in person at the conference.

Tim DeJonge, who works at Kingston (Ont.) General Hospital, and Jolene Veenstra, who works at Mountainview CRC in Grimsby, Ont., are also Canadian chaplains with the CRCNA who attended the London conference.