CHICAGO, IL (November 20, 2006) – North Park University chapel services are taking on a new look and appealing to an expanded audience, thanks in part to the vision of new interim campus pastor Judy Howard Peterson.
“We hope that chapel is the place where faculty, students and staff gather,” she explains. “This is a new vision for chapel.” She would like to see students “transformed, not only by words that are spoken by people God has inspired, but by the fact that they gathered together with the people who both teach them and serve them and walk beside them.”
The new approach began with the first chapel service. Faculty blessed the students as part of the worship.
To encourage greater faculty involvement, Peterson has started an aggressive campaign, inviting faculty and staff to chapel through personal invitation and, according to Prof. Don Wagner, “more intentional invitations (via email) for faculty and staff to come.” He finds himself inspired by the services. “Taking a small role – serving communion for example – shapes spiritual community, and I’ve really felt that.”
Peterson also hopes that campus chapels will be multigenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic. “There needs to be a place on campus where the entire community can gather for a common message, a common thing. With that goal in mind, no service will be just traditional or contemporary. In all services we will figure out how to see what it is to be blessed by various inputs and styles.
“Today, we had a brand new student organist who is amazing, and students love to hear him and sing hymns with him,” she offers as one example of the expanded openness. “We also had the North Park dance team doing liturgical dance. Within the same service we would find many traditions. Our hope is that if you came consistently, you would find your voice somewhere along the way.”
The approach has been popular with students. Chapel attendance is not mandatory, but 500 students attend the Sunday night service and 300 are present during the week.
The speakers chosen for October were a blend of those who serve on campus as well as newsmakers from across the country. They included North Park Theological Seminary Prof. Soong-Chan Rah, pastor and author Greg Boyd, and author and activist Jim Wallis.
Peterson said the speakers brought their own “different perspectives on living in the Kingdom that not all may agree with, but we need to be challenged.” While the speakers have been chosen to bring diversity of message, her hope is that “as we become more diverse as a student body and faculty . . . everyone can find a voice (in chapel) and that being together means something, not because their style is always present, but that being together says something.”
Towards this goal, chapel liturgy also has been diverse. October was Hispanic heritage month, so chapels included scripture in Spanish read by Latin American Student Organization (LASO) students, communion liturgy in Spanish and English, and Hispanic church leaders and missionaries from Colombia who were invited to share about their work. Spanish professors also served communion to students.
As Middle Eastern Heritage month, November involves the Middle Eastern Student Association (MESA) taking part in chapel services in similar ways. Lillian Samaan preached November 1. A communion liturgy was celebrated in Arabic and English, and Middle Eastern treats were shared following the service.
Pastor Yunan, who is from Iraq and in the United States where he has sought asylum, was scheduled to share his testimony and talk about his ministry. Hands On, the University Ministries publication, will also focus on the Middle East, giving a presentation and distributing Arabic New Testaments for those who want them. The gospel choir sang on November 15 and Brenda Salter McNeil spoke. “Chapel appears eclectic, but so are we,” says Peterson.
The hope she has for the students is that “if they have an opportunity here to come into contact with Jesus Christ through various styles of speakers and ways of worship, different languages and cultures, they will leave here and not forget how God would want to continue to use them.”
God already is using them at the chapel, says Peterson, noting that 17 students help plan each service.
To learn more about University Ministries and its work, visit its website at University Ministries.
Editor’s note: Kerry Staurseth and her husband, Phil, have served the Evangelical Covenant Church in world mission for three years and in the Covenant camping ministry for 10 years. She is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Education and serves as an admissions counselor at North Park Theological Seminary, where her husband is an M.Div. student. The accompanying photo is of Peterson preaching during one of the July services as part of CHIC 2006 in Knoxville, Tennessee, which drew more than 6,000 high school students and adults.
