The power of video Chapel services

The Reverend Nicholas Russell, Chaplain | Christ Church Grammar School, WA A few years ago, I was hiking with a group of Year 10 students on the Bibbulmun Track near Walpole in southern Western Australia. We often passed other hikers and struck up conversations. One woman to whom I spoke had been walking the track for weeks with her husband and was intending to complete all of it. She said, “Being out here like this, reminds you of how little you really need in life.” Some food, water, shelter, warmth and company and life was complete, even if you could fit most of it in a backpack.

Unusual situations do indeed have the power to remind us of things we otherwise would not have remembered. During the last two years many schools across the country have had to adjust the nature of their school worship because of COVID. Christ Church Grammar School has only recently joined this experience. Our adjustments to chapel services have reminded me of some important truths about worship, particularly in school settings. This has been especially evident in our Preparatory School services, directed at five to twelve-year-old boys.

Good Worship is sensory Our Preparatory School services have moved from being a Pre-Primary-Year 6 gathering in our large chapel to a pre-recorded video service that students watch in their classrooms at the same time across the school. The feedback has been that students and staff preferred the video services over the in-person gatherings. I found this perplexing. What was more appealing about a video service? This is certainly not true of parishes, where overwhelmingly parishioners prefer to be there in person. One of the reasons, I believe, is that the video services effectively involve the senses. Music features in every moment of these services. This may be the congregational hymns or songs the students sing along to in their classrooms, but more often it is the background music that accompanies the call to worship, readings, prayers, or homilies. Colours and pictures feature throughout. It just will not do in a video service to have a ‘talking head’ on the screen for too long.

Good Worship involves many As our video chapels developed, I found myself featuring less and less in the videos and students featuring far more instead. Editing the videos showed me that variety of involvement created more engaging viewing. Two Chapel Captains are appointed each term to assist with chapels and they ended up introducing chapels, conducting readings and prayers, and even writing and conducting the homilies. They would regularly involve friends when extra roles or bodies were required. Back in the classrooms, students would sing to hymns led on the screen, involving them and reminding us that the word ‘liturgy’ translates as ‘the work of the people’ and that it would not do to make these videos an entirely passive experience.

Good worship is storytelling The services of worship in our prayer books contain something of a story. A story that moves through praise and confession, absolution, revelation, response and participation. Video services are no different. Children and adults are gripped by stories. The ‘screen-time’ we so quickly limit our own children to usually involves engagement with stories of some kind – whether these be in movies or TV shows, or even video games which nearly always involve a narrative of some kind. Worship without story is like food without flavour; bland and unappealing. Our series during Lent explored the Joseph story in Genesis. This was a story that seemed to grip the students and remained in their memories, so much so that throughout the term I found many students in class would mistakenly forget that we had covered Joseph in chapel, not class. I knew at these moments that the story had entered into their minds and would now not easily leave.

Good worship is Christ focused As I spent many hours over the last term editing chapel videos and viewing the end result, I was also reminded that no matter how slick my videos, no matter how much music or colour, narrative or student involvement I had, I could never compete on entertainment with what these students view in their own time. A Marvel movie, any Marvel movie is always going to be more entertaining to the students of Christ Church Grammar School than a Preparatory School Video Chapel. But this reminded me that a video chapel is not primarily there for entertainment (even if they are entertaining). They offer something much more significant than the movies and games the students engage with in their own time – they offer Christ. Without a focus on Christ, these videos would be just a laughable attempt at entertainment. But with Christ they offer meaning, hope, purpose and life itself, even life to the full. My inability to match something of studio quality reminded me that this video worship is offering something far more powerful than any Marvel movie ever has. I wonder if the life of the woman I met on the Bibbulmun Track changed once she returned to her home and normal life. Did she have a looser connection to her possessions, a greater desire to give rather than to receive, knowing that most of what we really need can fit into a backpack? I hope so. Likewise, will our worship change when restrictions are lifted and chapels return to normal? I hope so. Indeed, ‘normal’ has been irrevocably changed. Our in-person gatherings, when they return, cannot forget the need to engage the senses, a variety of people, story and most of all Christ himself.

God bless you on this journey in your school.