Ferrier Hopes Chapels Reach Students Where They Are
As he was planning for Upper and Lower School chapels this year, Jake Ferrier, the Director of Spiritual Formation at Worthington Christian, said the best way to find out what students are concerned with is to ask them. Ferrier spent a great deal of time last school year asking students about what they needed to hear from chapels.
Ferrier produced four themes for the Upper School: Behold (August through October), Masterpiece (October through December), Real Talk (January through March), and Step In (March through May); and two for the Lower School: Search for God (first half), and Finding Me (second half).
“In my role, it’s really easy to think, ‘Okay, I have this arsenal of things I want to see the students learn and grow in. This is what I’m going to go with,’ ” Ferrier said. “I realized that’s aiming at a target, but it might be the wrong target. I’ve been asking students to help me form the target.”
Ferrier spent a lot of time listening to students’ feedback. He asked the leadership class, “If you were in my shoes and had to plan chapel for the year, what would you talk about?” He sought out students in study halls and in the lunchroom, asking them, “What are the three biggest questions you’re asking about God right now?”
“It’s been so helpful,” he said. “The beautiful thing is our students are awesome. I think I knew what they needed, but talking with students is important. (Their answers) supplied additional vision.
“A lot of Barna studies I’ve read say Generation Z is not asking a lot of apologetics-based questions. My assumption was that students would ask questions about spiritual burnout. I was shocked to hear that our students were asking questions like, ‘Why does Christianity get to claim exclusivity instead of the other world religions?’”
BEHOLD
Ferrier and several guest speakers will present the BEHOLD series. Last year, he observed many students settling into a spiritual comfort zone.
“I wouldn’t call it apathy; it was more complacency,” he said. Originally, I thought about calling it ‘Wake Up!’ but one of the students in the leadership class said, ‘That sounds really abrasive. It’s too much of a callout.’
“When I was observing our students, I recognized there’s such a familiarity with the Gospel and Christianity. Sometimes, even those foundational truths fall upon familiar ears. I want students to see the beauty of Christ’s character.”
MASTERPIECE
Students will break down Ephesians 2 “passage by passage.” The title of the series comes from Ephesians 2:10: For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago (NLT). Students will hear from several visiting pastors and teachers and receive a journal to record their thoughts.
“That is the hinge verse in that passage. It’s our calling for students to see they are God’s masterpiece, saved by grace in spite of their sin,” Ferrier said. “We’re also going to study what the good works we are created for look like.”
REAL TALK
In the second half of the year, chapels will be a continuation of last year’s chapel discussions. According to Ferrier, the chapel segments will be guided by the principles of authentic, real conversations about what students are asking.
“It kind of covers a gamut of ideas,” Ferrier said. “One of the areas we want to explore is ‘How can we trust the validity of the Bible?’ and ‘How do we know that Christianity is true compared to all the other world religions?’ and ‘What do I do when I am experiencing spiritual burnout?’
“We also plan to talk about God’s design for sexuality. We want to look at why God is so exclusive about sexuality and how that is for our good. Students are asking authentic and deep questions, and we want to be willing to answer them in a Christ-centered, informative fashion.”
STEP IN
Taken from a student suggestion, Step In explores practical ways to put their faith into action.
“We talk about spiritual practices, but we often don’t get to hear what they would look like to be practically lived out,” Ferrier said. “We’re going to focus on what practical time with God looks like. We have a pastor coming in to share about the beauty of silence and solitude, but then they will get a chance to put that into practice.”
Students will receive the opportunity in chapel to spend time with God and His word. The final session deals with evangelism.
“We’re going to challenge students to have spiritual conversations with friends in their lives who don’t know Christ,” he said. “We’re going to kind of take them through the importance of (sharing the Gospel) as they head off into their summer.”
Chapel themes for the Lower School will be divided into two separate headings – The Search for God in the first half of the school year and Finding Me in the second. Ferrier said the topics came out of discussions he had with parents and Lower School teachers.
Ferrier discovered that the needs for the Lower School were much different from the Upper School.
“Our kindergarten through second graders don’t have a problem with worshipping and being too familiar with God,” he said, adding with a laugh. “They just get after it.”
Parents and teachers were asked, “What do your children need spiritually?”
“One response I got a lot was, ‘We want our kids to know about the character of God,’ and the second most common response was, ‘We want our children to know who they are in Jesus.’”
THE SEARCH FOR GOD
Ferrier hopes the series of chapels will help answer some of the questions. In the Search for God, Lower School students will discuss the attributes of God: God is the Creator, God is Holy, God is Powerful, God is Merciful, God is Savior, and finally God is King.
Ferrier compared the Search for God to the I Spy books, where you have to find items inside a picture.
“My kids love those Seek and Find books,” he said. “We’re looking to discover who God is.”
FINDING ME
In the second half of the year, kindergartners through fifth graders will focus on finding themselves in the larger spiritual picture.
“There’s this constant call in our culture for people to discover themselves – ‘You have to find yourself’ or ‘You need to discover yourself,’” Ferrier said. “Self-discovery is not necessarily antithetical to Scripture, but it’s more a self-discovery of who God has designed you to be. The second semester is all based on who you are if you are in Christ. We will explore ideas like ‘I Am Loved,’ ‘I Am God’s Child,’ ‘I Am Set Apart,’ ‘I Am Called,’ and finally, ‘I Am A Part of God’s Global Family.’
“The more you search for God, the more He leads you in discovering who He is. The more you learn about God, the more God will help you find who you are called to be.”