Why We need Chapel and Convocation

My journey to experience the joys of a Christian liberal arts education as a student and as a faculty and staff member first began in my local church. I was affirmed by my pastor in pursuing a call to ministry and was encouraged to attend a local Christian liberal arts university. While attending, I was formed not only by professors and the curriculum but also through the relationships and the strategic Christian community that was formed on campus.

I began at a small Christian university and eventually transferred to a larger Christian university. The smaller institution held a regular chapel gathering a couple times per week while the larger institution held a convocation multiple times a week. The chapel gatherings mimicked a church service, without either of the ordinances or church leadership. The gatherings consisted of singing, prayer, the preaching of God‘s Word, and a time of reflection and response. At the larger university, convocation involved elements of chapel. For the most part, each week consisted of singing and prayer, but the main portion of speaking was not always preaching from Scripture. It may have involved leaders from different organizations, professional athletes, or politicians sharing about the Christian worldview or contemporary issues.

In my undergraduate studies at the larger institution, I was frustrated at times that convocation did not reflect the components of chapel more closely. I, along with some of my friends, concluded that we need to be more Christian and less concerned about these other topics we encountered in convocation.

Now, as a leader of spiritual formation at a Christian university, I’ve come to realize my own misunderstandings. Each of the different approaches offers opportunity for Christian growth and discipleship. From worship and preaching to talks on academic disciplines and cultural issues, both chapel and convocation help equip students to know and love God, and to live in God’s world God’s way.

To be clear, the Christian college or university is not the local church. It shouldn’t attempt to be the local church, but it should seek to mimic some essential practices of the local church. In what follows, I want to make a case for why both a chapel model and a convocation model are valid expressions of our Christian faith and why we should actually seek to practice both approaches in Christian colleges and universities.

I believe chapel is a central component of the Christian higher educational enterprise. While colleges and universities have the explicit mission and responsibility to train students in degree programs that prepare them for leadership and service in their communities in a variety of vocations, we are ultimately seeking to make disciples as we train students. As I learned from one of my mentors, faculty and staff ought to view themselves as academic disciple-makers. We’re not simply trying to produce teachers and nurses and scientists. We’re trying to form Christian teachers, Christian nurses, Christian scientists, and to equip them to teach, care, and study Christianly. We want our students to be enthralled with the glory of God and to live in God‘s world God‘s way.

Whether you serve in an open enrollment school or a confessional school, the heart of our identity is both what we believe and profess, as well as who we worship. When we study the book of Acts, or any of the New Testament letters for that matter, we see that as Christians gathered together, they worshiped, they prayed, they reflected on God‘s Word and work. We should take every opportunity to form our students by the Word of Christ and to offer praise and glory to our God, as we are instructed to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and to give thanks to God from our hearts. Chapel is the essential way of practicing this in the life of the university, collectively. While there are certainly micro expressions that often appear on Christian and secular colleges and universities, a primary way to worship the Lord and hear from his word ought to be through chapel.

Convocation is often a more general gathering of students. While it may involve elements of chapel, it also extends to focus on other topics from a distinctly Christian worldview. The Christian college or university certainly will instill a Christian worldview to her students through a variety of avenues, particularly in its curriculum. But our Christian convictions and commitments ought to also drive the co-curricular. Convocation is an essential medium for exploring these ideas in the larger campus community. As professors, we know the limitations of our curriculum. We can’t talk about everything we want to discuss with our students. We know there are more things they need to learn. A strategic curriculum in convocation will compliment and further extend our Christian witness to our students as we seek to equip them for love and good works, even in the negative world.

From this, I argue that we need both chapel and convocation in Christian colleges. We need to help our students see and behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and we have a responsibility to equip them to be like the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do. We need more graduates from Christian colleges and universities who are rooted in God’s Word and equipped to engage our neighborhoods and the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ. God help us to do it, especially through chapel and convocation.