CommUNITY: Rooted in Jesus, Chapel Aug. 23-27

We began our chapel life together on the first day of school. We’ll be working with the school theme of “CommUNITY: Rooted in Jesus”. As we go through the year, we’ll be using the gospel of John to guide our weekly emphases. However, this first week featured a number of things that we usually do at the beginning of the year to begin to get oriented to our chapel life.

On Monday, Lee Ebersole, chapel coordinator, led us looking at our theme based on Romans 15:1-7. Paul refers to the example of Jesus three times in this passage. Jesus is our example of what it means to be in community with each other. We also were introduced to the chapel committee faculty and student members who each shared a bit of what we’re looking forward to in this year of chapels.

Tuesday’s chapel introduced the small group part of our chapel life together. We heard from a number of students who shared about their past small group experiences. All students then had an opportunity to sign up for small groups.

On Wednesday and Friday, we interviewed the new Hillcrest staff. We were privileged to hear from Donna Swartzendruber, Dick Yoder Short, and Mike Goudy on Wednesday and then Shawn Sandersfeld, Andrea Farrier, and Pam Gerig Unruh on Friday. Welcome, all!

Thursday’s chapel involved talking about our chapel etiquette, how we conduct ourselves in chapel. Along with logistics, we discussed what we do when we agree or disagree with what is going on in chapel. After this, all had the opportunity to fill out a survey which listed ways to be involved in chapels this year.