New Buena Vista chaplain: Exploring faith became a passion for someone who didn't like school much

An office stacked full of research journals doesn’t seem like the type of place for someone who never enjoyed school.

Yet that is how Dallas, Texas-native Rev. Randle Lewis chose to fill his office at Buena Vista University in his new position as chaplain.

Lewis never liked school. He came from a time when school in inner-city Dallas was more about managing students than teaching them. He was constantly discouraged in school and convinced he wasn’t smart and couldn’t learn. He barely graduated high school.

Lewis is a scholar today, though. His conversations with students are replete with Greek and Latin. He’s well-versed in every major story in the Bible and can explain their historical context.

Lewis says his love of faith fostered his transition.

“Two things,” said Lewis of the factors that have landed him in the chaplain’s office. “Becoming a Christian and academically doing what I love.”

Lewis wasn’t born with the faith. It took him until age 20 to finally join a church.

At age 22, he says he felt called to join the ministry.

He then began his undergraduate and became the first college graduate from his family seven years later. While in college he met and married his wife, Debbie, and upon graduating in 1998, they moved to Boston, Mass., for Lewis to attend Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Exploring the faith from an academic approach became his passion.

One of Lewis’ professors was teaching the six fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and the professor said he would add a seventh if he could: being a Calvinist. From there stemmed a long and meaningful conversation with the professor and his classmates about Calvinism.

“At that moment, I realized that there was a lot more to understanding the Bible, understanding theology, than what I had been learning that past year or so in Sunday School,” says Lewis. “I guess I’ve always been a thinker, just never found that area where thinking excited me, or that area that excited me enough to think more about it.”

It was in seminary that he decided he wanted to do ministry in an academic setting. But he didn’t want to teach. He wanted to preach.

Before coming to BV, he was working as an assistant minister at St. Paul’s Anglican in Visalia, Calif. But he still felt a pull toward academics. He wanted to work in a university setting. With the retirement of Ken Meissner, BVU’s chaplain for over two decades, Lewis saw an opportunity.

Lewis, a Calvinist, was intrigued at working at a Presbyterian college that opened its chaplain position to ministers of other denominations. 

“When I found out that, even though there was a denominational heritage, the chaplain didn’t have to be a part of that denomination [Presbyterian], I was even more encouraged and enthusiastic about the position,” says Lewis. “I could then bring a much more multi-denominational focus to campus ministry.”

That’s what Lewis has been trying to do since he began three days before classes started in August. Lewis says it’s been a whirlwind trying to get up to speed with campus culture, while serving as spiritual counselor to the BVU community. Now, Lewis leads Thursday morning chapel, advises student campus ministry organizations and helps run the Center of Diversity and Inclusion.

“To say that it has been an adventure would be an understatement,” says Lewis. “Arriving on Aug. 21 and starting work on Aug. 22 and classes starting three days later, it has been, in one sense, a baptism by fire.”

Now halfway into the semester, Lewis is finally beginning to settle in. Last weekend, he took students down to Omaha for a service trip. He’s learning students’ spiritual dynamics to better inform his sermons.

“I’m hoping to be a surrogate, or step-pastor, if you will, to the students and staff and faculty of BV,” says Lewis. “[I’d like] to be there for counseling, prayer, spiritual growth, and I’d like to show where faith can exist in a pluralistic community.”

*Originally published in The Storm Lake Times.

*Photo credit: Olivia Wieseler