Board of Social Witness - Student Services

The Bush

The Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Queen's

The Chaplaincy is in two locations: Derryvolgie Hall and The Bush. Regular events are held at both.

Sundown Sunday Nights, 9.30pm, Derryvolgie Hall	Through the Bible in 2 years... warm intimate connection with the Divine in the meditation, reflection, prayer and study... cuddly but not comfortable... and always expect the unexpected and beautiful surprises.
Peculiar Treasures Wednesday Nights, 8pm, Derryvolgie Hall	A bunch of peculiar treasures gather to worship the God who made them that way to be inspired by those examples from scripture where God engaged with the most peculiar characters to make them eternal treasures.
Boots On Comrades Tuesdays, 1pm, upstairs in the Bush	If you're interested in the radical call of Jesus to live a revolutionary life then this group will throw down practical responses, accountability and support.
Football and Netball Wednesdays, Derryvolgie Hall	Football meet at Derryvolgie Hall, 1.15pm. Netball meet Derryvolgie Hall, 1.30pm.
The Bush Café Wednesdays, 12 Elmwood Avenue	Daily drop-in café with good food at good prices and the Chaplaincy team around... come up and introduce yourself - we are shy!

Keep your ears to the ground for other events of mind-blowing fun and soul-blowing provocation...

The Chaplaincy Team

Steve Stockman - Chaplain in Residence

This is my tenth year as part of the Chaplaincy team at Queen's and third as Chaplain. I went to Queen's as a student so I have spent more time round these streets than I did in my home town of Ballymena. Though a keen sports fan-com on Man City-my two great obsessions outside my gorgeous wife and amazing kids (Caitlin 6 and Jasmine 4) are art and faith. There are a lot of arty references in my sermons. I love where music and faith caress and collide. As I grow old (would love to have written older but actually...) I find myself in book shops longer and CD shops less.

Books - By the time you read this I will have read Douglas Coupland's new novel Eleanor Rigby-he's my favourite writer-and I have a friend who has read the new Roddy Doyle which he says is fab. I am reading Doyle's children's book The Dog That Saved Christmas to my daughter and lovin' that! For three years I was writing books about faith and music so I read hundreds of rock biographies and had no time for anything else. The best rock biog so far is Bill Flanagan's At The End Of The World about U2. This year I was going to South Africa with students so all my reading has been geared to that. I thoroughly enjoyed Donald Woods' biography on Steve Biko and Fergal Keane's Bondage of Fear. On the spiritual side Brian D McClaren's Church On The Other Side has been a real inspiration and challenge.

Music - OVER THE RHINE are my favourite band just now. Order OHIO on the net; amazing! I also currently love The FINN BROTHERS, EVERYONE IS HERE which is not Crowded House but the same terrain and equally good... THE KILLERS, HOT STUFF which my students got me rocking to... The BLUE NILE have another gentle hypnotic masterpiece... JULIE LEE is our old favourite volunteer so I used to be her boss and now some of Nashville's most legendary musicians work for her. Her new one Stillhouse Road is a cool album some of which she wrote in Derryvolgie.

Films - We have children and never get out (AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!). My assistant told me to take my wife to 21 GRAMS for our anniversary. Powerful but not to take your wife to for an anniversary.

Lynn Ferguson - Assistant Chaplain

I have been hanging out at Derryvolgie Hall for 7 years over which time I have been a student, a resident volunteer and I am now the Assistant Chaplain at Queen's. I moved into Derryvolgie during September 1997 a couple of days before I started a Foundation course in Art and Design at the University of Ulster, Belfast. After obtaining a degree in Fine and Applied Arts I spent a year volunteering for the Presbyterian Chaplaincy and I am now about to begin my third year as Assistant Chaplain.

I never miss Big Thursdays on E4... ER, Friends re-runs, The OC, One Tree Hill, Sex and the City are all my favourites!! I read lots of informative and cultural magazines such as Heat, Now, OK and Hello magazine. One of my more enjoyable reads has been the Bridget Jones novels. Recently I have read Lucky and The Lovely Bones, both by Alice Sebold. I enjoy books written from a female perspective and concerning female experiences. These two books deal with serious and traumatic female experiences while the Bridget Jones books deal more humorously with the day-to-day issues that both girls and young women face.

I enjoy a wide variety of music and can listen to anything from Blondie, Atomic Kitten, Rosie Thomas, Coldplay and Bob Dylan.

Mark Drennan - Resident Volunteer

I reckon that it's pretty unlikely that you'll read down this far to see what makes me tick so I could probably out myself as a huge fan of Runaway Bride and Cher without much loss of credibility. The truth allows me to maintain some semblance of masculinity but is probably less interesting.

When I start thinking about books and movies that I love I realise there's a whole lot more out there that I want to see and read than I actually have... particularly working with Steve who throws out a new book title every day. In the past favourite authors have been JRR Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and the rather contrasting John Grisham but the history degree that I have just finished involved so much reading that it killed my enthusiasm for reading anything else. Now that the joys of historical research are at least temporarily a thing of the past I've been reading books that really I should have read years ago, like Catcher in the Rye, 1984 and Martin Luther King's autobiography.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I love movies and trying to work out my favourite ones is not an easy thing. The Lord of the Rings, City of God, Fight Club, and The Last of the Mohicans are all greats with Jerry Maguire showing that I have a sensitive side. As well as that anything by M Night Shyamalan is always worth a look. In the last year you really should have seen 21 Grams, Mystic River, Spirited Away, and Lost in Translation but I will forgive you if you've only managed to see Shrek 2.

As far as music goes I have a pretty wide range of tastes but at the minute I'm listening to a lot of Martyn Joseph, Over the Rhine, Paddy Casey and The Frames.