I Found My Way Back to Chapel Last Week: Confessions of a New Seminary Professor

I wrote this 5 June 2001, after completing my first year as a seminary professor. No one wanted to publish it.

I found my way back to chapel last week. That’s undoubtedly a shocking admission to hear from a brand new seminary professor. It’s certainly an unsettling confession to make. I remember that, when I was called to teach preaching at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago just over a year ago, one of the things that excited me most was the opportunity to participate in daily worship. Certain sermons and liturgies from my own years in seminary stand out in my memory as formative experiences in my life. Over the years of my ministry recalling them provided an oasis from which I drew refreshment. Yet, reflecting on those years in seminary, I had to admit that my insight about the importance of chapel came only after I graduated and daily worship was no longer an option. While I was in seminary, there was so much to do that my chapel attendance was not what I wished it had been in later years. But now I was older and wiser. I knew better. Coming to LSTC, I really looked forward to spending a part of each day gathering with God’s people to hear God’s Word, to sing and to pray, to celebrate the sacraments, and to be sent back to work grounded in the Gospel. I remember thinking that daily chapel was a luxury, a privilege that I was determined to take advantage of. In the fall I was very deliberate about attending daily worship. I never scheduled anything during chapel time and stopped whatever I was doing in order to attend.

Then winter came and things got a little crazy. I found myself bouncing from my preaching lecture to five preaching labs to meetings with students to committee and all sorts of other meetings to administrative responsibilities to discussions on important issues and out the seminary door to teach and preach in the church. Part of this craziness came from being new and still needing to figure out how to manage my ministry in this context. Part of this craziness is inherent; LSTC is a fast, busy, challenging, roller coaster kind of place. I’m not complaining. In reality, the zaniness of winter quarter at LSTC isn’t very different from many of the weeks that I spent during thirteen years in the parish. So it won’t be surprising to hear that there were days during my first year as a seminary professor, too many days, when I looked at my calendar and found that the only free moments I had to even catch my breath were during daily worship.

This made going to chapel harder. To be honest, chapel made going to chapel harder. You see, chapel wasn’t always in keeping with my preferred “style.” Even when it was, chapel wasn’t always to my “liking.” This affected my attitude toward daily worship. I was hearing twenty sermons a week in class, most of them very good, but I couldn’t figure out how to shut off the sermon critic when I went to chapel. As I participated in worship, I inevitably found something to criticize, and sometimes it required little if any effort. So chapel time became catch-up time. I stayed in my office. At first I felt uneasy but soon I felt justified. As the winter wore on, I also found myself feeling more and more disappointed and depleted, even deleted.

Let’s be clear. My struggles aren’t the important point. They’re not new; they’ve been around at least since I was in seminary. They’re certainly not unique to LSTC. It occurs to me that the specifics are not even relevant. Suffice to say, the struggles of this first year as a seminary professor are part of being new. They are also part of being in a fast, busy, challenging, roller coaster kind of place. They are part of what happens whenever you bring together a bunch of people who are on fire for the Gospel, who are in love with the church, who are highly invested in the kingdom, and who bring with them a wide range of perspectives and experiences. What I am saying is that my struggles in this first year as a seminary professor are no different from the struggles of the church and the parish and ministry in any context. And this is the point. How often pastors and seminarians (I can’t speak for AIM’s and deaconesses) get so caught up in the struggles that we find ourselves lamenting the fact that the first place we cut corners is our devotional and spiritual life. And how adept we are at coming up with reasons to justify doing so.

I drifted in and out of chapel throughout the winter and into the spring. I told myself that I needed to do better when it came to daily worship but knew that I wouldn’t. Then last Wednesday I sat down for chapel in the auditorium. As one who is legally blind, I am always uncomfortable in that space, afraid that I’ll trip, fall down the steps, and break my neck on the way to receive communion. As I sat there before the service meditating (worrying) about getting down the stairs, the assisting minister came up and offered to bring me communion. It was Margo, one of my students. Her tone was respectful but determined. No bones about it, they were bringing me communion. I quickly agreed, and found myself feeling wonderfully stunned that “they” would think to do this all on their own. Then I was even more stunned to find myself stunned. When had this community, my community, become “they”? Why was I surprised that my community would think to do this for me? When had my perception of this community become so askew? I was aware once more that, as we strive for diversity and inclusion, it is often the smallest gesture that makes the biggest difference, providing dignity and challenge all in the same instant.

My internal sermon critic noted that there was nothing particularly spectacular about the service. The sermon was quite fine. The hymns were good. The presiding and assisting ministers brought me communion—dignity and challenge. Then, after communion, we came to the service of sending our interns. It hit me all at once and I wasn’t prepared for it. These were my students—the first Lutherans I taught to preach! My colleagues will fight to claim these same students as their own but they’re mine. We spent the winter learning a theology and method of preaching. We worked through texts and exegeted congregations together. I heard them proclaim the Gospel and listened as their faith, their hopes, their fears, their questions and convictions were all given expression. I was privileged to accompany these students, as their preaching voices grew from quivering to confident. Now they were on their way into the church. As their names were called, along with the names of the places where they were being sent, I was overwhelmed with all sorts of feelings—pride, hope, sadness at their leaving and excitement for their going. I even felt a twinge of envy as I recalled my own internship. I certainly didn’t feel disappointed or depleted.

That’s when it occurred to me that my first year as a seminary professor was similar to my years as a seminarian. I was allowing all the things I had to do get in the way of understanding and appreciating what God through the church has called the seminary to do. I allowed all the things that this community struggles with to overshadow the reason that we struggle. We are equipping leaders for the church and the world. I prepare, form, and shape men and women to preach, to be proclaimers of Jesus Christ. And these men and women, the ones I had taught, were on their way to preach the good news to congregations and communities all across our church. They were going to fast, busy, challenging, roller coaster kinds of places where they will struggle because they are new and because that’s the way ministry is. And, if they’re not careful, they, like their teacher, will take on a skewed view of God’s people because they will lose track of daily “chapel” and find countless reasons to justify themselves for doing so.

In the next instant, I found myself feeling protective…like a bear! I didn’t want my students to make the same mistake that I had—twice! I didn’t want these students we were sending to get so caught up in all that they had to do that they lost sight of what they were doing. That’s when the preacher’s words came booming into my ears. She had said that the best way to keep this from happening was to take time every day to sing, pray, hear God’s Word, celebrate the sacraments, and be grounded in the Gospel. I had nodded in agreement but now it was hitting home. The preacher wasn’t only talking to the ones we were sending. She was talking to the ones who had been sent here.

On that Wednesday last week, being in chapel reminded me of all the reasons that I need to be in chapel—for me, for my students, for the church, for the world, for my community and for my way of looking at it. Daily worship is a privilege. It is a luxury of being in seminary. It’s also a necessity, a responsibility, at least for me. And so I’m finding my way back to chapel. I’m getting back in the habit of scheduling nothing during that time and stopping whatever I’m doing in order to attend. There are plenty of other things around here to be absent from in order to catch up on work or to pause long enough to catch my breath. And lately I’ve been excusing myself from some of them. But I’m not excusing myself from chapel. And I am attending chapel differently. I do my best to leave the sermon critic at the door. Chapel is still not always in my preferred ”style,” and certainly not always to my “liking.” But more and more, I find myself attending daily worship not as a seminary professor, not as a homiletics or liturgical scholar, or even as a pastor. More and more, I attend chapel as a beggar, as someone begging to hear the Gospel, longing for a word of life and hope and promise, needing a bit of good news. Somewhere in chapel I find it, even (especially) when worship is not to my liking or in keeping with my preferred style. And I am seeing things differently these days. You see, for me, the gift of chapel is perspective.