The infamous Monday-Wednesday-Friday lunch rush after chapel may become a thing of the past next fall semester. After alterations from former Student Government Association presidents Garrett Fitzsimmons and Joel Ernst as well as two scrapped plans for a new schedule for next year, a third plan is up for approval by SGA and Academic Council.
Previous chapel times were early enough to evade the long lines in the dining hall immediately after chapel. According to Margery Avery, director of academic records, “Back when chapel was at 11:05, students either went to class after chapel or they went to lunch. Normally 65% of them went to class after chapel. And, lunch wasn’t open from 7:00 to 7:00, so there was just a certain amount of time. So, if 65% of people walked out of chapel and went to class, then you still had a number of students who could go to lunch. Students ate in shifts.” This pattern continued even after a time change to 10:15.
The current starting time of 11:30 was originally changed to fit in science labs or three non-lab classes prior to chapel and provide enough room to schedule four-hour credit courses afterward. However, for many students with multiple afternoon classes scheduled, the only window for them to eat lunch was between the 12:10 ending time for chapel and the 12:45 time for their first afternoon class. Avery states that the time period “was never intended to be lunch. The theory was they would go to class or they would go to lunch. They wouldn’t wind up doing both. But, the students tried to do both.”
A version C of next year’s campus schedule has chapel set from 11:00 to 11:40. However, Avery stresses that there is no guarantee this will be the official schedule for the 2014-2015. For now, the schedule is to be proposed to SGA for input from the student body.
“I’m very intentional about talking about worship as rooting us in a bigger story,” Dean Michael Jordan said after settling into his office chair. This story is the larger Christian story, but it is also Houghton’s story.”
Although the morning was quite chilly, Jordan wore flip-flops with his suit coat, adding to the informal, yet intimate nature of the conversation. “It really occurred to me how lonely people are in general,” Jordan said, going on to talk about the pressure on students at a Christian college and how they feel the need to find God’s will for their lives and to be confident in their spiritual walks when, quite frankly, some are not. Jordan said, “Chapel is about connecting students and helping them see you’re not alone.” Therefore, Jordan hopes that chapel will serve the function of binding people together in a Christian community through worship.
One of the ways the community comes together is through music. After praising the Philadelphia Eagles in one of his recent chapel talks, Jordan mentioned his desire for the college to be fluent in three forms of worship: hymns, contemporary Christian songs, and Gospel music. In doing so, Jordan said his ultimate goal is to help students “love a breadth of Christian music and to be a grateful participant [as] one.”
His plan seems to be successful judging by the ovation the Gospel choir regularly receives, and the heartfelt singing accompanying hymns such as “Be Thou My Vision.”
“We should ask questions about worship and how each contributes to the service”, he stated. In this way, Jordan believes we can see the value in each form of worship and how all are used to bring God praise by the various church backgrounds represented by Houghton students.
In addition to music, chapel speakers and their messages are an important topic of discussion on chapel days. As he leaned back in his desk chair, Jordan explained that he chooses chapel speakers in collaboration with the Spiritual Life Committee; they select speakers by looking for people who will share topics they believe are important to the community and ones that will build connections to the outside world. For example, Dr. Lenny Luchetti who spoke in early October came from Wesley Seminary, representing both one of Houghton’s sister schools and a reputable seminary for graduate work. Also vital to picking chapel speakers is finding people Jordan referred to as understanding the difference between teaching and preaching. He elaborated on this distinction as the knowledge of when to present facts and when to realize the urgency of a message, and his or her need to make their intent clear and accessible to the audience, in this case, the Houghton community. One of Jordan’s regrets from his time as a Houghton student is that the speakers sometimes lacked this urgency, so he hopes that now chapel speakers will be able to provide that clarity. On days when Jordan speaks in chapel, the passion he has in presenting God’s word and drawing people together in Christ is palpable, evidenced by post-chapel conversations around campus.
In between his duties as chaplain, SPOT engagements, and family dinners in the cafeteria, Jordan works hard to make chapel the spiritual center of campus life. He hopes that students will stop thinking of chapel as a duty someone has forced them to fulfill; rather, over time chapel will form and shape student if they give themselves to it, he said before taking a sip from his coffee mug. If one does this, Jordan said, one will realize that “taking that time really helped me to look at God differently and understand myself differently and to root me in a community that I wouldn’t have been otherwise.”
After serving as Interim Dean of Chapel for the past semester, Dr. Michael Jordan has decided to accept the position permanently.
“I look forward to helping to shape Houghton’s spiritual life. I especially look forward to helping people see that our spiritual life is not something the administration creates for the students, but something that we create together as we give ourselves over to the rhythm of worship and work, study and rest, prayer and play.” said Dean Jordan.
Hailing from southern New Jersey, Jordan entered college at Houghton for undergraduate studies where he earned a B.A. in History and Bible with a minor in Linguistics. There he met his now wife, Dr. Jill Jordan, mathematics. After graduating from Houghton in 1999, he went on to attend Eastern Baptist (now Palmer) Theological Seminary where he graduated with a Masters in Divinity in 2002. He was a pastor at Exton Community Baptist Church in Exton, Pennsylvania from 2002 to 2009. During this time, he studied to receive his P.H.D. in Liturgical Studies from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. In 2009, he left his position as a pastor to come back to Houghton after Jill was offered her current professorship.
Jordan enjoys working at the college in a position of religious leadership. He said,”I’ve always enjoyed both preaching and the academy. Pastoring had a lot of the latter without the former; the people in my church didn’t always get my drive to study. Teaching as an adjunct on the other hand is great, but doesn’t let me explore my full pastoral side. The dean position will be great in allowing me to mix and enjoy both the academic and pastoral parts of my role here at the college.”
Dean Jordan hopes to serve the community as a “spiritual tone setter.” He wants to take chapel in a direction that is more deeply liturgical with a focus on worship and connection with God. Instead of having a chapel focused on information, he wants to see one focused on formation. He plans to provide more opportunities for communication between students and chapel speakers.
Jordan’s view of chapel in the next year is one that moves away from a previously consumerism-like model. As it stands currently, students tend to choose which chapels they attend based on who is speaking, who is playing worship, or any other small aspect of the service and decide whether or not that chapel will interest them. In the future, Jordan wants to make chapel into a practice and experience that allows the students at Houghton to take some time out of their day to give back to God and refocus on His teachings.
He jokingly refers to this as taking time to “paint pictures for God’s refrigerator” through our worship and, more seriously, as taking the time to lift our voices up to Him and devote our hearts to His glory.
When asked what he enjoyed seeing this past semester in chapel, Jordan recalled several highlights including faith journeys, the gospel choir’s performances, and the support he has received from the students as he has taken on the position. He remarks that even the complaints about chapel that he receives do not give the impression that they are personal, but rather critical of the institution of chapel as a whole.
In some ways, this worries the Dean. He would like the chapel to move from being a faceless body and towards being an accessible and organic part of campus. While he has avoided shaping the structure of chapel in his interim period as the dean, Jordan hopes that he can more deeply integrate chapel into the lives of students as something they can openly discuss and feel that their opinions are heard.
When discussing how Houghton has changed since his time here (’95-’99), Jordan remarks that very little has changed. “There is still the same mix of academics and Christianity that was present when I attended,” he said. One change he notes is the increase in mobility and accessibility to the outside world. The college is a lot less isolated than it was in the past.
When asked about social justice movements at Houghton, Jordan replied,“I’m a social justice guy.” The seminary he attended is very well known for its unique focus on social justice, which has shaped his views on Christians in society. Defining his goals for social justice at Houghton, he wants to call out sin to rectify it and, in his words, “make a world here that Jesus will recognize as good when He returns.”
Academically, Jordan would like to see more engagement with students about social and political issues. One source of engagement he views as being successful is the meeting of panels on social issues including same-sex attraction and sexual assault. The topics of these panels are often controversial and harsh, but Jordan sees them as bringing about positive change through open discussion.
“I hope students find me invitational: I know that they will not always agree with what I say, or my ideas, but I’m very open to the input of others and want to help us find our best way together,” expressed Jordan.
At the start of the spring semester, Professor Benjamin Lipscomb, philosophy, began a ritual of not only attempting to attend every chapel from now until the end of the school year, but also of documenting each experience via online blogging.
When asked what he hopes to achieve from undertaking such an intentional challenge, Lipscomb said, “It’s several things; it’s wanting to be more gratefully receptive to the work of my colleagues who put the chapels on, the students, the chapel deacons… it’s partly just seeing what it’s like or what it might do for me; partly to get a better sense of the value or lack of value of it.”
Though the blog’s origin and ultimate subject is Houghton College, Lipscomb aims towards a broader audience by minimizing the use of names and allowing chapel lectures to lead him to more broadly relatable topics.
He said, “I try to keep it anonymous in some small ways. I don’t use the name ‘Houghton’; I edit comments if they use the name ‘Houghton.’ I never use the name of anyone on campus.”
Lipscomb establishes his goal for such anonymity by saying, “It’s something that also maybe makes [the blog] more widely accessible, as something that someone might be interested in who’s not a Houghton person. I try to make it about a certain kind of experience that’s recognizable in a number of evangelical communities or evangelical colleges.”
Courtesy of houghton.edui
Professor David Huth, visual communication and media arts, and friend of Lipscomb, said, “The blog certainly isn’t ‘about’ the chapel events, or the chapel program, or even Houghton College. If you read his posts, you can see that all of these things are simply jumping-off places for reflections and questions in his mind. The structure and schedule of Houghton’s chapel programming (and general subject matter of religion and community) are providing prompts for Professor Lipscomb’s thinking.”
Lipscomb’s interest also resides in the exploration of the idea that a mandated chapel schedule serves as a shared, communal experience.
In the first entry of his blog, he wrote concerning this aspect of chapel, saying, “I think it’s supposed to contribute to the formation, both of the spirituality of individual community members and of a communal ethos. And I’m not being formed in whatever way that is, or not much. I wonder too what difference it might make in my interactions with students if we had this experience in common. Would it become a topic with us, a point of connection?”
As the college requires regular chapel attendance of students, and faculty are encouraged to do the same, chapel acts as a point of intersection, which tends to elicit interaction or common conversation amongst chapel attendees.
When asked more about this idea of exploring the effects of such a shared experience, Lipscomb said, “What do I hope might come of it? I hope more conversation about chapel – not only critical; not even principally critical… We’re a college; we’re a community of intellectual conversation. The more I can cultivate or provoke people to talk about what they’re experiencing, what they’re listening to… the happier I’ll be.”
Thus, Lipscomb views his goal of faithful chapel attendance as not exclusively an act of self-discipline, but rather an act of community.
While discussing such an idea, Lipscomb went on to say, “I’m joining in the community in a way that I haven’t been required to… It seems to me it heightens the sense of community, it makes some more community than there would be otherwise, between the students and myself. It gives me a chance to see how chapel functions, or whether it functions in that way.”
Since Houghton College refrains from requiring faculty members to attend chapel lectures like it requires of its students, Lipscomb’s new habit also functions as a deliberate act of self-discipline.
Lipscomb plans to explore the students’ chapel requirement in light of the faculty’s lack of requirement.
He said, concerning Houghton’s current chapel practice, “It’s coerced. Sometimes coercion ends up working for our own good; sometimes it’s just coercion… there are times when we are coerced to do things that are for our good and we’re glad in the end that we have been. I almost wonder whether the choice should be, ‘We will coerce this of our students and of ourselves as the rest of the community, or we won’t do either.’”
By willingly placing himself in the position of Houghton students, who are required to attend two-thirds of all regular chapels offered, Lipscomb hopes to relate to such an experience while simultaneously analyzing its purpose.
As Lipscomb muses in his blog, “The students living under the requirement–they’re busy. They make the time; they have to. What would it be like for me, I wondered, if I did too?”
To read Lipscomb’s blog go to http://thedoubleusee.wordpress.com/
