Chapel in the Time of COVID ANTHONY BIGORNIA
I
n my second year of being the point person for coordinating chapels at the institution I work for, I finally felt like I was starting to get a handle on it. It’s a lot of work, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this role and consider it a blessing and a privilege to play a part in creating a space for others to encounter Christ. Demographically, our school is a very interesting mix of students. In some of the older grades, our international student population is as high as 45 percent, and it is not a guarantee that our students are necessarily from Christian families, let alone consistent church-attending families. This has implications for teaching and learning from a biblical Christian worldview because we cannot assume that all the students are biblically literate or have been in a church/chapel setting. Despite this, school chapels are a valuable opportunity to share what we believe with anyone who enters our doors, and our diversity makes our student life rich with opportunities for intercultural understanding. Now before I continue, I want to acknowledge my use of the first-person pronoun “I” in discussing chapels in Christian grade school settings. Ultimately, I am not the one changing hearts and minds toward the heavens, but it is God who changes the hearts of the students. I work to create space for the individuals within our community to encounter Jesus, and it is he who changes them. In this article, I will recount my past few years coordinating chapels at a K–12 Christian school, particularly the changes and rethinking about the nature of chapel that have come about because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, I was encouraged to see a growing consistency in the rhythm and flow of chapel and assemblies. When Friday mornings came, students generally knew what to expect and how to help setup chairs, the transitions from class to chapel were getting smoother, and assembly etiquette had much improved. The number of students who served in the worship teams increased, in large part due to the efforts of our music teachers who led by example and put in many hours of work in inspiring the students to use their music and leadership capabilities to serve. And finally, a culture was emerging in which students were looking forward to the variety of speakers who would visit our school and share what they were passionate about and how God was working in their lives and in their ministry. It wasn’t perfect; not every student was necessarily engaged or even listening. Perhaps they were exhausted from studying or from other facets of school life, or perhaps they weren’t able to relate to this week’s speaker. But it felt like growth, and it felt like God was slowly working through the students. I remember a particular conversation I had with a student that challenged and frustrated me. In what I thought was going to be a ten-minute Christian Educators Journal October 2021 9
School chapels are a valuable opportunity to share what we believe with anyone who enters our doors, and our diversity makes our student life rich with opportunities for intercultural understanding.
