WITH JOY & GRATITUDE Reflections on a Year of Celebration at Duke University Chapel
A
lmost five years ago, on a normal day at Duke Chapel, a tile from the vaulted ceiling in the nave of the sanctuary fell to the floor. No one was injured and that fallen tile set grace in motion. A piece of it rests in my office to remind me of the blessings that come to us from unexpected places and by unimaginable means. Who could have dreamed that a fallen tile would result in a year-long restoration of our beloved Chapel? Two years ago, we emptied our offices, removed the candles, the hymnals, and the Bibles. We watched as the altar and pews were removed and the scaffolding went up. For exactly one year, we were exiled to remote offices all over campus while skilled architects and craftspeople restored the building. But the true work of the Chapel, a chapel without walls, continued. When we returned in April of 2016, to honor the generous restoration, we embarked on a full “Year of Celebration” with special programming, events, and initiatives to hallmark the year. We are grateful to President Brodhead for the generous support provided to enhance the celebrations. Now, at the end of our Year of Celebration, we remain filled with abiding joy and gratitude. We are grateful to God for the community that surrounds our mission and assists us in bridging faith and learning every day. In this short booklet, you will find reflections of our work together throughout this special year: our work with students and faculty, with the citizens of Durham, with the congregants at Duke Chapel, and with all of God’s children who pass through these doors. The Chapel is open again and filled with a spirit of joy. The next time the sky is falling—in any area of our lives—I will remember these days and believe again in the providential grace of God and the beloved community at Duke University. With gratitude,
Luke A. Powery Dean of Duke Chapel
In this Year of Celebration, we opened the doors to this sacred place and welcomed friends and strangers. Every day, the “great towering church” envisioned by James B. Duke stands as an icon for the whole University and as a reminder of our shared mission to welcome and educate the next generation to face the great challenges of our time. Open to the public 364 days out of the year, the Chapel is a sanctuary for all people. This year, we are on track to welcome more than 220,000
visitors to the Chapel. Some people come for worship or concerts; others come to tour the building and learn its history; and still others come for a quiet a moment of prayer, meditation, or reflection. At the grand reopening celebration on May 11, 2016, as seen on the previous page, President Brodhead and Dean Luke A. Powery cut a Dukeblue ribbon to welcome close to 2,800 visitors to a day filled with music, lectures, and tours. The annual Christmas Open House gave more than 1,500 visitors two hours to experience the decorated chapel by candlelight, as they listened to the organs and singers in preparation for the holiday season.
It’s no secret the Chapel is part of the University landscape and has one of the best views in Durham. Scheduled climbs to the top of the Chapel’s tower—all 239 steps!—are open to the Duke community. About 2,000 people from 75 different campus groups made the trek this year (many snapping “selfies” at the top!). Another 1,000 people received an introduction to the Chapel’s architecture and history through free visitor tours led by volunteer docents. The Chapel is truly a beacon of hospitality.
Hospitality VA L U E
The Chapel offers its building as a hospitable place on campus for celebration, prayer, and the quiet reflection so direly needed at a busy university. But the Chapel is more than just a building: it is “a church without walls,” extending its ministry of hospitality to the larger community.
Clockwise from top left: A candle is lit at a prayer station in Memorial Chapel. | Students take a selfie at the top of the Chapel tower. | More than 1,500 people celebrated the first Christmas Open House in the newly restored Chapel.
A SPACE TO LISTEN, LAMENT, AND LEAN INTO HOPE.
In this Year of Celebration, we made space for the needs of “the whole person.” Beginning with Baccalaureate last May, the Chapel resumed its role as a site for community ceremonies, celebrations, and sorrows. President Brodhead welcomed the class of 2020—“a perfect sight”—at the Chapel and will soon send forth the class of 2017. The Chapel has also been a place of lament this year, hosting a memorial for a beloved former Duke president, H. Keith H. Brodie, as well as a vigil for the people killed, injured, and harmed in the Orlando nightclub shooting. In another poignant moment at the Chapel, the architect Phil Freelon was an example
of resilience and artistry in his Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration address. Many more moments of care happened at the Chapel this year during more than 125 pastoral services—baptisms, weddings, and funerals. As in the past, future brides and grooms have returned to camping out in front of the Chapel to secure a wedding date! In our busy world, the Chapel bears witness to the human need for community and for times of solitude and silence. This year, the Chapel initiated an intentional Silent Time, weekday mornings from 8:00 to 8:30 a.m. With so much strife and pain in the news, on campus, and beyond, we also began a regular time of Prayers for our World, weekdays at 4:45 p.m.
Care Photograph: In early November, students of Duke Voices for Interfaith Action (VIA) organized an interfaith prayer vigil for peace. Students gathered in the Chapel arcades despite rain, lifting their voices and uniting in generous hospitality for all members of our Duke community.
Less visible than these events is the work of more than sixty trained leaders in twenty-two officially recognized faithbased campus organizations who attend to the needs of our students in small group meetings and informal conversations. Through their dedicated attention, students are heard, known, and cared for. Every member of the Chapel staff shares a deep commitment to the well-being of the campus and the community. As part of that commitment, this year many Chapel staff members are receiving training through the Greensboro-based Racial Equity Institute to deepen our understanding of the communities we serve.
VA L U E
The Chapel cares for the community by sharing in its sorrows and joys, and by fostering wholeness —the integration of its members’ spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual lives.
In this Year of Celebration, we prayed, preached, and fasted together for the common good. The Chapel’s commitment to ecumenism is reflected in our worship services. This year we welcomed guest preachers from Orlando to New York and Cape Town to Bethlehem, coming from Mainline, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Black Church traditions. In March, we held a Celebration of Preaching day which highlighted the Chapel’s distinguished preaching
tradition while also making room for young spoken-word poets. The Chapel’s new Jazz Vespers worship services continued this year with guest artists Nnenna Freelon and Cory Henry. The worship services combine traditional evening prayer with jazz and soul music. Other traditions of special services continued as well, including the candlelit All Hallows’ Eve and Blessing of the Animals, which draws community members and their pets to the Chapel lawn.
The Duke community is vibrant, inquisitive, and diverse. Our students come to campus from locations across the country and around the world. At the Chapel, we are committed to meeting their needs by being a “chapel without walls” and welcoming those who may have little or no faith as fully as we welcome those for whom faith is a defining part of their identity.
And, of course, four Christmas Eve worship services fill the Chapel from 2:00 p.m. to past midnight.
Ecumenism VA L U E
The word ecumenism in the Greek denotes “the entirety of the inhabited world.” The Chapel welcomes mutuality and reciprocity within the whole of human society, inviting people to cross over the boundaries of denominations, races, nations, generations, faiths, and academic disciplines.
Clockwise from top left: A grand reopening procession leads worship back into the restored Chapel on reopening Sunday. | Duke Music Professor John Brown's “Little Big Band” closes the fall Jazz Vespers worship service. | The Rev. Otis Moss III delivers a sermon at the closing worship service for the Celebration of Preaching day.
Integrative Education
Photograph: Students bag potatoes at the annual Potato Drop event.
In the Year of Celebration, we challenged ourselves to continue to learn and to serve. With a mission of bridging faith and learning, the Chapel not only comforts the campus community, but also challenges it because we know that education does not just happen in classrooms, it happens in communities. The Chapel's PathWays program provides opportunities for students to hear and respond to God’s call for their lives on campus, in Durham, and beyond through study, artistic expression, counsel, service, and community. Ten sponsored mission trips, Habitat House building days, field placements in local nonprofits, academic advising, and spiritual direction
combined to allow students the time and space to consider what it means to live a good and faithful life. Students sing with us in our Chapel choirs and work with us in our offices as volunteers as well as in work study placements and internships. The student group Duke Voices for Interfaith Action, advised by the Chapel, sponsored student vigils and interfaith conversations throughout the year. A group of recent graduates lived and served as Fellows at the Duke Chapel PathWays House in Durham’s West End neighborhood. In honor of the house’s tenth anniversary, we held a reunion of Fellows featuring an address by community organizer John Perkins. Four members of the Chapel staff taught academic courses this year, including Acts of Engagement—Interreligious
VA L U E
Through curricular and co-curricular education, the Chapel strives to educate the whole person—head, heart, and hands —by standing at the intersection of the spiritual and academic worlds, embodying the University’s motto, eruditio et religio.
Approaches to Service and Leadership; Balm in Gilead: The Spirituals as a Homiletical Resource; Chapel Choir; Choral Conducting; Chorale; Ethics in an Unjust World; and Introduction to Christian Preaching. Public “Bridge Panel” conversations explored the relationship of faith to peace in an age of terror and the life of faith at a research university. Our Finding Sanctuary speaker series brought women religious leaders to campus to reflect on the ways in which their lives and work meet at the intersections of faith-based advocacy and social justice. The series began a new type of public engagement at the Chapel, entitled Conversations in the Crossing. These lecture/ discussions bring thought leaders together to consider peace, equality, and justice for all of our students and community members.
In this Year of Celebration, we gave thanks for the traditions that undergird our innovations. The psalmists tell us to sing a new song. The scribes remind us to rejoice and be glad. This year, the Chapel celebrated the work of composer J.S. Bach in a yearlong series of concerts. We even took Bach to downtown Durham for the Coffee Contata at FullSteam Brewery. We commissioned new hymn settings and expanded our visual art program to include a collaboration with the Nasher
Museum of Art and the Duke Initiative in Theology and the Arts (DITA) to present Miserere et Guerre a series of 58 intaglio prints by Georges Rouault (French, 1871-1958). The eighty-third annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah, Victoria: Requiem, and the opening Celebration of Music at the Chapel reminded us, once again, of the power of music to enrich our lives. Every week, creativity infuses worship services with the excellence of our Chapel choir, Vespers Ensemble, and Evensong Singers, while the Flentrop and Aeolian organs continue to astound visitors with their complexity and elegance.
New this year, the Chapel selected two undergraduate students to be the first C. Eric Lincoln Theology and Art Fellows. The fellowship supports these students in creating original works of art to be displayed in the Chapel. Every day, the campus community ends the work day with the signature sound of the carillon chiming the five o’clock hour. This year, two recitals gave the broader community the chance to hear the excellence of our carillonneur of fifty years, Dr. Samuel Hammond.
Creativity VA L U E
The Chapel views the creative arts as both an expression of worship to God and an expression of human longing for God; by creating art from the materials of creation, humanity takes part in both the broken beauty of our creatureliness and of its glory.
Clockwise from top left: A viewer observes Georges Rouault's art at the Miserere et Guerre opening reception. | Special blue lighting set the ambiance for Victoria: Requiem, the fall Vespers Ensemble concert. | All three Chapel choirs unite for the Celebration of Music concert.
#F i n d
Sanctuary CHAPEL.DUKE.EDU/FINDSANCTUARY
In this Year of Celebration, we added to our history and created a new foundation for our future. Where do you find sanctuary? This is the question we posed this year to the Duke community. We distributed free cameras and asked that the users return them to us for processing. And they did! We created the successful Instagram hashtag #FindSanctuary and invited the online community to share their images with us. More than 2,500 photographs were collected and together create a new understanding
of the role of the Chapel in people’s lives. We are more than an icon of the university and more than a collection of pictures of this marvelous building. The Chapel is a vibrant collage of people and places, joys and sorrows, music and silence. The Chapel is dedicated to sharing our programs to the broadest possible audience. The first live broadcast of our Sunday services occurred on the radio in the late 1950s. Today, Chapel services are streamed into patient rooms at Duke Hospitals, available on YouTube, and broadcast on two local radio stations. Every month, we receive messages from these virtual audiences reminding us of the value of sending the Duke Chapel experience out into the world.
Social media outlets have become cornerstones of our connection to friends of the Chapel on and off campus. With more than 9,000 total followers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, we reach beyond the walls of our Chapel and into the hands and homes of our friends. But as fleeting as social media and the internet may be, in partnership with Duke University Libraries, we also added to the archive of services and sermons to leave a lasting trace of the history of Duke Chapel. You can learn more about the history of the Chapel by visiting the Duke Chapel Recordings website and the site for last year’s exhibition An Iconic Identity: Stories and Voices of Duke University Chapel.
Communication VA L U E
Images: More than 2,500 photographs were submitted for the Chapel’s #FindSanctuary project. Together they created a picture of the Chapel.
Whether the space is physical or digital, the Chapel utilizes creative communication as a tool, both to connect local and global communities with its mission and ministry, and also to invite individuals and communities to connect with the Chapel in purpose and belonging.
Highlights from
2016-2017
Bridge Panel Conversation: Peace in an Age of Terror
#FindSanctuary Launch 9/1/2016
Christmas Open House
10/24/2016
Potato Drop 9/3/2016
12/20/2016
Duke Faculty and Chapel Scholars Lunch
All Hallows' Eve
10/31/2016
PathWays Reunion / John Perkins Event
#ThankDuke
12/4/2016
11/10/2016
Christmas Eve Worship Services
12/24/2016
11/5/2016
Carillon Recital 9/11/2016
Celebration of Music 9/29/2016 Victoria: Requiem 11/18/2016
Blessing of the Animals
10/2/2016 Janette Fishell 10/16/2016 Cantata 135 9/11/2016
Glimpses of Genius 9/4/2016
Jazz Vespers with Nnenna Freelon
11/7/2017
Youthful Exuberance 10/2/2016
Erik Suter 11/13/2016 Cantata 62 11/27/2017
Cantata 179 & 29 10/23/2016
First Steps 9/25/2016
Handel Messiah 12/2/2016 12/3/2016 12/4/2016
Taking Counsel 10/30/2016
Master Craftsman 11/20/2016
A German Christmas 12/18/2016
Finding Sanctuary Lecture Series: Every Campus a Refuge
2/7/2017
Beyond Bridges Art Exhibition
Finding Sanctuary Lecture Series: Creating Sanctuary with the LGBTQ+ Community
4/24/2017
3/8/2017
Bridge Panel Conversation: The Role of Faith at a Research University
Rouault Art Exhibition
2/5/2017
Finding Sanctuary Lecture Series: Women Warriors: Revolutionary Love in the Era of Enormous Rage
3/2/2017
3/28/2017
Green and Fair Chapel Day
4/6/2017
Celebration of Duke Forward Campaign and Final Sunday in the Year of Celebration
4/23/2017
Last Day of Classes Celebration
4/26/2017
Celebration of Preaching
3/30/2017 Carillon Recital 2/5/2017
Thomas Murray 1/29/2017 Coffee Cantata at Fullsteam Brewery 1/21/2017 Something Old & New 1/22/2017
Deep River 3/24/2017 Jazz Vespers with Cory Henry
Jonathan Moyer 2/26/2017
Instrumental Musings 2/19/2017
Robert Parkins 4/2/2017
3/7/2017
Cantatas 9 & 159 2/12/2017
Cantatas 38 & 54 3/19/2017
Italian Renaissance 3/5/2017
Disciplines 3/12/2017
Organ Recital series
J.S. Bach Cantata series
J.S. Bach Complete Organ Works series
Berlioz Te Deum & Poulenc Gloria 4/30/2017
St. John Passion 4/15/2017 ClavierĂźbung III 4/9/2017
Programs and Events Key Special music programming
DuprĂŠ Stations of the Cross 4/13/2017
Other Year of Celebration Events
Miracles 4/16/2017
Life & Death 4/23/2017
Last Words 5/7/2017
88weddings
2,000
climbs to the top of the tower
30baptisms
220,000+ visitors 98 guided tours
18
31,600+
facebook post “likes�
local ministries supported
17
guest preachers
27
guest choirs
22
300+
religious life groups
600,000+ webpage visits
worship services
100
chapel scholars
919-681-9488
dukechapel@duke.edu
@DukeChapel
Box 90974 | 401 Chapel Dr. | Durham, NC 27708