CMU graduate studies addiction and care in Canada's poorest postal code
While completing his Master of Divinity at CMU, David Naylor worked with Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
David Naylor is never sure what his workday will look like when he starts his shift. "It can be anything from giving out a pair of socks to reviving somebody with naloxone in the back alley," he says.
Naylor works at Union Gospel Mission (UGM), a non-profit organization that does community outreach as Christian ministry in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood with some of the highest urban rates of addiction, homelessness, and poverty in Canada.
"A lot of our work is in relationship with people in the throes of addiction," he says. "Ultimately, it's asking the question: how do we care well for these people at this time? It builds honouring relationships that acknowledge people's dignity in the midst of that."
David Naylor graduated in 2026 with a Master of Divinity from the CMU Graduate School of Theology and Ministry (GSTM). As part of the program's field education requirements, students complete a ministry-based research project connected to their experiences. Naylor chose to explore how Christians understand addiction through textual research and interviews with UGM staff members. "My research was concerned with how to equip ministers engaged in addiction care as unique contributors to the addiction field," he says.
He started working for the organization in 2024, while doing youth ministry at a church in the same neighbourhood for the supervised ministry experience component of his CMU degree.
UGM serves hundreds of people daily with its soup kitchen, overnight shelter, addiction recovery program, and social events like movie screenings and weekly karaoke nights. Naylor and his fellow outreach workers also bring this support to the streets—they offer a listening ear, distribute clothing and supplies, provide spiritual care, and connect people to resources like housing and employment assistance.
"There are so many different circumstances in our work that we cannot predict, and so many situations that challenge our understanding of addiction and our faith," he says. "That novelty actually outpaces our ability to make sense of things, especially in light of our faith."
Over time, he realized he and his colleagues needed a framework to help them process the realities of frontline addiction ministry.
His advisor for the project, CMU Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality and Pastoral Ministry Dr. Andrew Dyck, is enthusiastic about Naylor's study of the topic. "There was something about David's project that was so grounded in the ministry work he was doing—the connection was so direct. It allowed him to bring everything together in a way that we dreamed of when we created the MDiv."
The MDiv is offered in seminaries across Canada and the US and is widely regarded as a leading degree for church ministry preparation. The MDiv program at CMU includes practical ministry experience, theological reflection, and opportunities for students to discern how their faith connects to their future work. "I think there's more than ever a chance to integrate your book learning with your personal spiritual formation and with specific skills of ministry. The opportunity for integration across all those spheres of formation is really good in the MDiv," Dyck says.
Naylor's research identified three major ways Christians understand addiction: as self-medication for suffering, as misplaced desire, and as a loss of wholeness and connection.
The first perspective considers how trauma, structural oppression, discrimination, and isolation can combine to create deep suffering and torment the soul, leading people to seek relief through substances. The second sees addiction as the result of misplaced desires, recognizing that addiction can take many forms in modern society—from consumerism and digital algorithms to opiates—and that people often struggle to discern what is good for them. The third approach understands addiction as emerging from a loss of divine purpose and broken relationships with ourselves, others, creation, and God.
While the study participants varied in their theological understandings of addiction, Naylor found they "had a mostly uniform Christian response to addiction care, which centred on imitation of God as healer of the wounded and showing non-judgmental solidarity as spiritual siblings to those experiencing addiction."
The participants also reported that the group case study reflections, in which they shared their real ministry experiences and reflected together on God's activity within addiction care, helped prepare them for future situations in ministry.
Naylor writes that the array of traditions strengthened participants' ability to respond to different situations, "providing ministers with theological tools that can adapt to a variety of circumstances in which no single theological understanding of addiction can fully explain."
Dyck says Naylor's research addresses a reality churches cannot afford to ignore. "Addiction cuts across socioeconomic lines, neighbourhoods, and identities, and it's present in congregations, regardless of whether or not it's discussed," he says. "Every minister's going to have to work with people who are struggling with addiction."