Redeeming Chapel: A Success Story

In 2018, a group of us at Baylor helped start the Baylor Faith and Character Study (see here for more). We did so for a variety of reasons. First, we wanted to know the faith and character of our incoming students. As any good missiology or pedagogy course will teach you, you have to know your audience before you try to reach them.

Second, we recognized that accountability is one of the hardest virtues to practice. Few of us enjoy evaluating the outcomes of our efforts to see if all the sweat and tears were worth it. Even worse, we often do not evaluate issues related to faith and character because we take comfort in the supposed fact that these things are immeasurable. But many elements are measurable. Drawing on expertise from educational research and the social sciences, we decided to undertake a mixed methods study involving first-year students, seniors, and 10-year alumni to determine if and how students change over time. Our research team realized you cannot improve something if you do not know what is currently happening.

The Role of Chapel in Spiritual Growth

One of the important elements we knew we could measure was students’ perceptions of what helped them grow spiritually. Thus, in our survey of seniors, we included a question that asked: “Please explain what ways the following experiences have changed your religious and/or spiritual beliefs.” We gave them four options (Strengthened, Weakened, No Change, and Not applicable).” We then listed some things we thought would be important elements of their experience:

• Relationship with my roommate
• Involvement with campus Christian group
• Involvement with another student group
• Living on-campus
• Living off-campus
• Required religion courses
• Other general education courses
• Courses in my major
• Chapel
• Relationships with Faculty
• Relationships with campus staff
• Relationships with friends
• Involvement with church or place of worship

We were not surprised by what we found that strengthened students’ beliefs. Students indicated friends, church involvement, positive relationships with faculty, involvement with student groups and the required religion courses all played a positive role.

We were not expecting to find what we found regarding the top reason listed for what weakened their faith. Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) indicated chapel weakened their faith. Only 19% said it strengthened their beliefs and 54% said it had no influence. That is not the outcome one wants for an institution’s chapel program (for the journal article reporting these results see here).

In retrospect, I (Perry) should not have been surprised. At the time of the first senior survey (Spring 2019), Baylor conducted chapel as a 50-minute, in-person service in a large performance hall. On Monday and Wednesday, 1000 or more students would gather in one of three chapel services featuring a speaker, music, drama, or some combination of the three. Both my oldest son and nephew had endured this traditional model of chapel with plenty of complaining. The survey revealed that their views of chapel were not unique. Seniors and alumni gave similar responses to the influence of chapel.

So, we undertook additional qualitative research to find out the source of the problem. We asked students a similar question in person, “Would you say Chapel strengthened or weakened your religious beliefs?” and then asked, “Why?” Students gave us a clear understanding of the issues. They disliked what some perceived as a lack of Christian content, the failure to make it like a worship service, the atmosphere of disrespect, and the top-down nature of how they perceived it being run. Of course, they also added that deadly teenage complaint, “It is boring.” Some students called it Nap-el. 

In contrast to the existing chapel format, students wanted Bible teaching, good worship music, a clear focus, smaller options, choices, and relevancy. As one student told us, “I would go there but sometimes it didn’t even seem as if God and religion were really integrated with chapel if that makes sense.” Another shared, “Like they had a comedian, and he came in and [the chaplain] told us he was supposed to like to have a Christian comedian act but it was just like a regular comedian act and I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t understand the point of that in chapel. Like at least make it somewhat related the faith.’”

The large atmosphere made disrespect more likely as well. One participant shared,

I think the only thing that I really did get to see in chapel was maybe the lack of respect that some people hold for chapel and things to do with God. Yeah, because you do see a lot of people sleeping, people doing things that really don’t need to be done in Chapel. Yeah. I would say more than from the material that I learned in Chapel, I learned more about people and their attitude towards things like that.

We found one other important thing. A few alternative chapels existed at that time separate from the main chapel service. Not one student in our interviews complained about those chapels. In fact, they spoke highly of them.

Doing a New Thing: The Creative Chapel Team

Understandably, Baylor’s chaplain was hurt by these results, but he did not languish in them. He, along with the Vice President for Student Affairs decided to request major changes in how Baylor did chapel. Ironically, COVID actually helped. In the Fall of 2020, all of chapel had to be online anyway.  As a result, it provided a perfect opportunity to try something new.

Spiritual life leaders at Baylor decided to get rid of the one big chapel and make two important changes. First, in light of the student feedback above and other findings from the Baylor Faith and Character Study that revealed a low rate of Bible reading among entering first-year students, spiritual life staff implemented a video series that takes all students through the larger Biblical narrative by looking at seven broad biblical themes. 

Second, instead of having one big chapel, they started a variety of chapel alternatives. Students could attend chapels with different styles of worship (e.g., Facetime with God had gospel music), Callings and Career Chapels, (e.g., Faith and Arts, Faith and Business, Faith and the Healing Professions), chapels associated with a campus group (e.g., Cru, Young Life), Community Prayers Chapels and other variously themed chapels. I (Perry) noticed the difference in my own family. Whereas my oldest son had complained about chapel and certain chapel speakers, my youngest son enjoyed getting to pick attending a campus ministry chapel that related to his interests.    

Of course, there were also important results at higher levels. A few years ago when visiting with Baylor President Linda Livingstone she commented that she had not received a single call from a parent complaining about chapel in the past year and a half. Obviously, that made her happy. To be specific, getting rid of one major chapel limits the damage that can happen from having that controversial speaker or chapel event. Today, there are 66 different types of chapel alternatives.

The benefits of this numerous chapel options model have been tremendous. It encourages student initiative and allows for different worship styles. I (Perry) remember one of my Hispanic students telling me that she felt like she belonged as a Christian and a Hispanic at Baylor. But those two identities rarely intersected. The music she sang at her Spanish-speaking church growing up was different than what was sung in Baylor’s large chapel. Now, there is a chapel that celebrates world Christianity and sings worship songs in multiple different languages.

Also, the different Callings and Careers chapels get professors, staff, and other committed Christians from within the focus discipline (e.g., business) up front to talk about how they engage in their professional life Christianly. This move is vitally important for something David Smith, a CSR contributing blogger, and I once discussed. David and I were talking about how we both got the message that being a Christian missionary was the highest Christian calling, pastor second, helping professions third, and so on with perhaps being a lawyer or businessperson being near the bottom. We noted that no one ever taught us this hierarchy. We simply absorbed it.

Then David said something profound, which he often does. He mentioned that he thinks it stems from who is allowed to speak up front in church. We do not have Christian businesspeople or lawyers up front in our churches talking about how they apply Christianity to their profession. If we did, they might inspire young people to absorb a different vocational hierarchy. Now, Baylor students experience the Dean of the Hankamer School of Business giving his testimony and sharing how Christianity influences his view of business during the Callings and Careers Chapel.

Going back to our original survey question. What do students say now about whether chapel helps them grow? The chapel staff surveyed chapel participants this past spring and asked them that question. Ninety percent of students said that chapel helped them grow spiritually. To reiterate, we have gone from 19% of our seniors saying chapel helped them grow spiritually to 90% of recent participants saying that chapel helped them grow spiritually. By any measure that is a redemption story.  Yes, even required chapel can be redeemed.