“Rough cross” created for CBC prayer chapel

Erwin Cornelsen, seated beneath the cross for the new prayer chapel in the Student Centre at Columbia Bible College. The cross was designed and made by Cornelsen of maple and cottonwood.

Rough cottonwood rests on polished maple, bits of moss still clinging to the outer bark. It is symbolic on so many levels: the unfinished branch on the transformed maple a symbol of the human and the divine, a picture of the work that needs to be done in our lives as we allow God to transform us, a reminder that the cross was not an easy place. This cross, created by Erwin Cornelsen, a pastor and carpenter, was made deliberately so, to bring to mind all these things and to inspire people to pray.

“I’ve never been impressed by shiny, smooth crosses,” the 86-year-old Cornelsen said. “For me the cross was always a rough thing . . . I accepted Christ under Hitler, so it’s always been rough for me.”

Cornelsen shared his thoughts and his story with a small group of faculty and church leaders at a brief dedication service of the cross for the Columbia Bible College prayer chapel in the new Student Centre held here May 12. Guests were moved to tears as they heard Cornelsen speak passionately about his commitment to CBC and the way in which he was involved in its beginnings.

In the early 1960s, at the delegate sessions of the General Conference (GC) Mennonite Church convention (Mennonite Church, B.C.), the costs of a Bible school were discussed.

“I had the audacity to suggest that perhaps the GCs and the MBs could work together,” Cornelsen remembers with a smile. “One dear brother stood up and said, ‘you don’t know the MBs!’ Maybe that’s true, I said, but I won’t stop knocking on their doors.”

He invited J.A. Toews, pastor of Fraserview MB Church, Vancouver, to join him in prayer for the concerns of their Bible schools. Together the men prayed that the two conferences could come together to build one school. That same afternoon, at an inter-Mennonite ministerial meeting, the two pastors shared their dream to an enthusiastic response.

That evening, George Letkemann, chair of the MB Bible School board, called Cornelsen for the phone number of the chair of the Bethel Bible School (the GC school). Cornelsen asked if someone had spoken to him and when Letkemann said no and asked why, Cornelsen described the day’s events. After a long silence, Letkemann responded, “Erwin, this comes from God.”

“I had a wonderful peace come over me,” Cornelsen said. “I knew it wouldn’t be a problem and here it is! My heart is so much in this place – it is a miracle! And I thank God so much for what He has done in 40 years here.”

It was his heart that led him to create the cross for the prayer chapel when Walter Bergen, VP of Resource Development at CBC, asked him in passing if he would consider making one.

“I thought it would be a longer conversation,” Bergen said. “But two weeks after I asked him, it arrived at my office.”

The dedication service concluded with a prayer and Cornelsen asked if he and guests would kneel to do so. Beneath the rough cross, the symbol of our salvation, all kneeled in prayer to dedicate the cross and the room, asking that all who would come here would be inspired by Jesus’ work on the cross and His transforming work in our lives.

—Angelika Dawson