The university’s chapel committee has asked students for input on the topics and speakers for this year’s chapel theme, “Facing the Issues.”
The theme was selected this summer by President David Burks and the chapel program committee, which consists of several professors and administrators such as Bruce McLarty, vice president of spiritual life, and Michael Claxton, associate professor of English, who coordinate certain days of chapel.
“It is a little different approach,” Burks said. “Instead of picking the theme and selecting topics and speakers at the beginning of the semester, this year is open-ended as we ask the student body to suggest the topics and use a student committee to rate the topics and the speakers.”
Burks said the chapel committee has always included student input, typically the Student Association president and spiritual life chairmen, but this fall chapel has had more student input than ever.
The student committee, which consists of 10 students including senior Ryan Rummage, junior Brooke Ramsey and freshman Sara Sims, helps organize the “Facing the Issues” chapel programs.
“This past summer I was working in Dr. Burks’ office, and he came to me and told me he wanted this year’s chapel theme [to be] student-led,” Rummage, who leads the student committee, said. “So we began organizing a committee from a diverse group of students from each year to try and meet a good balance of representatives.”
Rummage and the student committee created the Pipeline survey to allow the student body to choose topics for “Facing the Issues.” Rummage said about 250 students responded to the Pipeline survey. From the results, the student committee was able to determine the seven most popular topics.
Both Burks and Rummage said one of the most requested topics focused on the problem of hypocrisy. The student committee selected Harding alumnus Harrison Dell to speak on the issue last Wednesday, Sept. 6.
Rummage said that many topics to come will possibly feature two speakers, one to speak on each side of an issue.
Burks said he hopes the students will seriously consider and talk about the topics after they leave chapel.
“You can’t possibly deal with some of the topics in 15 minutes,” Burks said. “You can certainly state an opinion in 15 minutes, but I think what we would like to happen is more of a beginning of or a continuation of the discussion. This wouldn’t be an issue unless it was something people were thinking about. For example, we will be talking about suffering, and suffering is a very broad issue. You can’t completely answer that in one presentation in 15 minutes. I would hope it would generate some discussion on the part of the people. But I hope that would be true of any presentation that is made in chapel.”
Rummage said the goal of “Facing the Issues” is to bring clarity or closure to several issues that may be keeping students from knowing God. He said that the student committee is working to benefit students outside of the usual 45 minute length of chapel with other resources.
“We want to provide students with resources for these issues we discuss in chapel,” Rummage said. “Whether it is an evening board discussion, information on the Counseling Center or simply something they could read in the library, we want students to know there is more help out there for them.”
Burks said students should always feel free to make suggestions about chapel and should contact members of the chapel committees. He also said that student input is not limited to the “Facing the Issues” theme and that suggestions will be taken into consideration for any aspect of chapel.
To find out more about the chapel committees, check out the full list of staff and student members on The Link
