On Wednesday Dr. Craig Hovey, AU Religion professor and Director of the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, gave a message entitled “Strange, Good Tidings” for the weekly chapel service at 3 pm in Lower Chapel.

The service started with a call to worship given by the Executive Director of Christian Ministry, Jason Barnhart. Students then got involved by leading a worship song and scripture readings. The speaker was introduced and Dr. Hovey delivered his message and then one last song was played to end the service for the day.

Both before and after the service faculty, staff, administrators, and students all gathered together talking about a variety of things from the message given to their everyday lives. The midweek chapel service is a great way to build community on campus however, it just started last semester.

AU’s provost Dr. Eun-Woo Chang was the person who came up with the idea to have a Wednesday afternoon chapel service.

“As the new provost, I have to look into all five pillars and see what I can do,” Dr. Chang said. “Academic excellence is pillar one, I have to think about it. Number two, is Christian identity. So I actually studied a little bit about church background and one thing I was actually considering was whether we have a chapel service here or not in the middle of the week.”

When Dr. Chang found out there was no midweek chapel service, he got to work with Barnhart on creating one.

“One thing we found was lacking was in the daily rhythm where everybody’s here, faculty, staff, administration, and students, we didn’t have any kind of sacred time for them,” Barnhart said. “This is kind of a way to start a rhythm midweek afternoons where students faculty, and staff, could come together and have that common time.”

One of the biggest purposes of the Wednesday chapel services is to allow everyone to attend.

“We provide these kind of services for students in the evening and so on, but the employees here do not have gathering time during the weekdays, they just work,” Dr. Chang said. “I wanted to have our staff and faculty relax a little bit in the middle of the week and think about who we are and chapel was one of the ways that we could do it.”

The provost believes that the chapel service is not only a good way to build relationships on campus, but it extends out into the Ashland community as a whole.

“I was thinking that this is a way to engage local communities as well, because we are very good internally, but if you see the Ashland community, and I visited a lot of churches in town since I started, some of the smaller churches desperately need our help,” Dr. Chang said. “By having this chapel service and inviting the pastors of those churches in town to come here and give a sermon, is one way we can get connected together.”

Wednesday chapel services are just one of the many services AU offers. The Well is every Thursday at 8 pm, Newman Nights are Monday’s at 6:30 pm and Mass is every Sunday at 9 pm. If you prefer your own time, the chapel opens at 7 am and stays open all day.

“The overarching goal with all of our ministries is I want people to know that our faith is one of hospitality,” Barnhart said. “I want people to feel cared for, I want them to feel welcomed, I want them to feel loved.”