Required chapel in Seminary

Required to go to Seminary Chapel

Requiring students to go to chapel is rather silly. There is no harm in attending, but there is much harm when assuming that those who don't attend have some sort of problem, or issue. Many married students with children, jobs, ministries, etc. may very well use that time much wiser by doing other things than filling the seats for the speakers. Sure, there are those who would rather go back to their dorm and hang out...but whats wrong with that? You could easily make the argument that they could be wasting their time...but why is anything other than chapel during that time a waste of time? It is one of those silly things that is becoming increasingly more dangerous in the christian world. That danger is tallying up who goes and how often they go. Just plain silly.

 

So, why don't we require church attendance? Why don't we require our students to be in a ministry?

gb should like this one.

Why don't we require our students to make disciples?

Why do we require our students to listen to chapel speakers and not perform ministry?

Did I miss something? Did Jesus say, "Peter! Come here and listen to me!"? Or did He say, "Feed my sheep?"

 

I have reviewed many a church's constitution/by-laws that do in fact require the membership to be faithful in regular church attendence. In many of those same documents, deacons are absolutely required to be faithful in worship attendence.

 

Peter

But, how should that affect chapel attendance?

 

I wouldn't have a problem with that, as long as they didn't hound you for missing the occasional service.

 

So, why would a minister be needing to miss a service?

 

It affects chapel attendance when you have pastors come in and tell you that "forsaking the assembling" means don't miss chapel. (Yes it actually happened.)

Chapel does not equal church. There is no pastor, no deacons, no practice of Lord's Supper nor baptism. But you wouldn't know that from some sermons you hear.

 

Not all ministries are involved in every service. A person's ministry might be with downtown youth on Saturdays. If this person misses a Wednesday prayer meeting to study for an exam on Thursday morning, I highly doubt he's going to incur the wrath of God. Things come up.

I would be against requiring students to be in church "positions" like pastor, youth leader. As long as ministry is being done, I couldn't care less.

 

OK

The only positions that I think of in ministry are pastor, minister of music, associate pastors of ____ .

I forget about the others.