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Christ-centred. Creative. Canadian.
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For the 985 students at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois (not to be confused with Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C.), this is a summer for goodbyes. After 66 years of Christian liberal arts education, Trinity closed due to financial challenges.
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Most of these works are still in limbo. The Seerveld family tried to bring ten of them home to Canada, but those pieces remain at the border until import laws are satisfied.
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“Where does a legacy go when the institution meant to carry it closes?” asks Chris Cuthill. “The works will find homes. But a certain chapter is closed: the particular shape of Seerveld’s return to Trinity, the gallery named for him, the students who staffed that February 2025 exhibition and the trust extended across an old wound, created something that cannot be transferred or appraised or bequeathed again.”
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Most of us won’t leave a collection of rare art as our legacy. But we will leave a legacy. Will it be:
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Did someone forward this newsletter to you?
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WHERE DOES CAL'S LEGACY GO?
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When Trinity Christian College closed its doors in May, the Calvin and Inès Seerveld Collection needed a new home. But where?
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Chris Cuthill
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The Seerveld collection is being distributed, not abandoned. There is a difference, and it matters, even when it is hard to feel. What Cal and Inès Seerveld gathered over a lifetime is now passing into other hands, other walls, other eyes. That is a loss. It is also – if we can bear to see it that way – a kind of continuation. The people working on the distribution are handling the task with love. In Seerveld’s world, that was never a small thing.
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RESURRECTING HYMNALS
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When a new hobby leads to bookbinding forgotten and damaged pew Bibles and hymnals.
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Jessica Lum
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It’s not a secret that I’ve been repairing and bookbinding my church’s Bibles and hymnals. I’m not surreptitiously stuffing them into my backpack, though I suppose the optics might be a bit confusing to members of my congregation. It came about naturally; after all, part of learning a craft involves becoming curious about the product. During the pandemic, some people picked up knitting clothes or baking sourdough or singing sea shanties. I picked up bookbinding,
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A PARABLE FOR OUR TIME
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Syd Hielema
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Imagine a coffee shop in a small American town, its walls adorned with ninety portraits of town residents rendered by a local artist. Then, a mysterious stranger moves into town and buys the paintings one by one and gives them to the persons portrayed. This is the plot of Theo of Golden, a book self-published by Allen Levi in 2023 that sold so successfully by word-of-mouth, a major publisher picked it up in 2025. It quickly became a New York Times and Amazon Books best-seller.
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WRITING CURRICULUM TOGETHER
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Curt Gesch
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It might have been 1984. The late Harro Van Brummelen made a call for high school teachers interested in writing curriculum units for novel study. We discussed at length what an explicit and implicit Christian perspective would contribute to writing a curriculum unit on these novels. Curriculum and pedagogy began to merge in our work.
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SINGING IN CHURCH
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Kurt Armstrong
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Tone-deaf melody wanderer,
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alto next to me, her voice like cake,
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barrel of baritone bouncing
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If you are a church, good news! CC is offering subscription bundles at 50% off our regular rate. It's our small way of connecting churches across Canada to redemptive journalism. Contact Michelle at [email protected] to learn more. If you already subscribe, consider making a donation to cover the cost of a bundle for a church (bundle of 20 issues/$60 a month; bundle of 100 issues/$280 a month).
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