Written by Maggie Samples // Photo by Macy Cox
The University started gender-split breakout chapels last week for the purpose of spiritually encouraging both men and women. The women will continue to meet in the Benson Auditorium, and the men will meet in the Rhodes-Reaves Fieldhouse.
University ambassador Lisa Williams, as a part of the Women of Faith initiative, has been asking female students what they need spiritually and has heard that they want spiritual mentors.
“[I kept] hearing people say, we need mentors,” Williams said. “Knowing how much mentors have meant to me over my lifetime, what a shame it would be for our women to come through this place and not have a mentor.”
Women’s chapel will be using the same curriculum as the women’s mentoring program. The curriculum is called Arm in Arm and will focus on “find, follow, fortress and flourish” as its key words.
Williams said the splitting of chapel was for the goal of reaching more people across campus and also providing spiritually for the male students.
“So when we saw [the curriculum], and we thought, we’ll never hit everybody,” Williams said. “We’ll never get this out to everyone because there’s too many people here — we’re just starting and this is good; this is really good.”
Williams encouraged students to take advantage of the opportunity the mentoring program provides.
“Let [the program] be something that you can take with you and treasure for the rest of your life,” Williams said.
Junior Hannah Holcomb said she hopes the women’s chapels continue to go deeper on women’s issues.
“I think they need to go more in depth with women’s struggles in the church, because it was very surface-level talk,” Holcomb said.
The men’s chapel is following the book “The Men We Need” by Brant Hansen.
Dean of the Department of Education Donny Lee said the impact of the gender-split chapels will be determined by the individual and how much thought they put into their reception of the message.
“My understanding of what [chapel] is, is to be able to speak to men and be able to speak to women about things that are more relevant to them in their respective places in life,” Lee said.
Lee said he mentors between 30 and 35 male students, and he thinks men on campus need help understanding their identity in God.
“God wants them to be and needs them to be in the role of a man,” Lee said. “There’s a lot of views people have about what it means to be a man and be manly and all. I’m really not even a big fan of the word manly, because people conjure up the stereotypes that aren’t always accurate. I don’t think to be a man means you need to go out and chop wood and wrestle bears. I think you could be a man and be really counter to what we stereotypically call a man, but I do think it’s from what comes from inside.”
In reference to the lesson during last week’s men’s chapel, sophomore Isaac Bunner said he disliked the dismissal of toxic masculinity but sees potential for future men’s chapels.
”I think that a lot of good can be done from having all the men together,” Bunner said.
