Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2019

The clock strikes 9:40 a.m., and all across campus professors begin wrapping up their lectures, introducing final points and preparing to transition students toward one of the most important experiences in their 1,000 days on campus. As students file out of classes and pour onto sidewalks, the pulse of campus starts to beat a little faster. Once inside Jeremiah Chapel, between 9:50 and 10 a.m., the energy level rises by the minute as students find their seats. The buzz of conversation is fueled by the joy of friends connecting with each other yet again. The clock strikes 10, the lights transition, and chapel is on. For anyone who has joined us for chapel, in person or online (and we do encourage you to do both as much as you can), you know that we offer faculty, staff, and students a steady nourishment of theologically rich musical worship, expositional preaching from God’s Word, and testimonies of faithful living. Throughout this 45 minutes, the focal point is understanding and living out the Word of God. While there is much I love about the biblical and theological heartbeat of our chapel programming, there is one other vitally important outcome: the community nurtured through daily chapel. You see, the many fruits of chapel last far beyond the moment a final prayer is offered, and the students flow out of the auditorium to pursue the remainder of their day. Shortly after chapel, the clock strikes 11. Some will linger in the auditorium, visiting with friends, while others talk with faculty and staff and benefit from life-on-life discipleship moments. Yet, most will be off to class, lunch, or some other pursuit. In this daily rhythm, something remarkable happens: Community is cultivated through gathering and scattering. GATHERING How does daily chapel form community on campus? Simply, the act of gathering portrays the reality of community we share in Christ. While it may seem obvious, one cannot overlook the basic nature of community and the treasure of gathering together with other believers. Perhaps those of us who gather in settings of religious liberty can too easily forget the simple benefit of gathering. Speaking into a cultural context where opposition to the Church was expected, the author of Hebrews recognizes the correlation between individual perseverance and corporate gathering when he calls his readers to “take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort