By: Hillary Hughes Photo by: Hillary Hughes
Last Sunday night students gathered in lower Seeger for the weekly Vespers service. Senior Sarah Myers gave a brief message introducing the spiritual discipline of self-limitation. Students worshiped together and took the Lord’s Supper together. But next week, instead of discussing something new, students will actually get to practice the discipline of self-limitation together.
In past years, Vespers, a student-led worship service that meets Sunday nights, usually entailed a speaker, communion and singing together, but this year will be different.
At the end of last year, Vespers Committee, a group of students who plan the services, began brainstorming for this upcoming year. They sat down and discussed what they wanted to do for the new school year.
The discussion revolved around “What are we trying to accomplish?” said Ryan Evans, chair of the Vespers Committee. Past Vespers services have been shaped around themes, faculty speakers, student speakers, and/or general topics that are attached to no theme.
But this year Vespers Committee decided to do something different, to focus on spiritual disciplines. The purpose was “to get students what they really needed,” said Evans.
It took four weeks during spring semester to “hammer out” what exactly focusing on spiritual disciplines would look like, Evans said. The committee was intentional with deciding what disciplines to practice and what time of the year they should be addressed.
“I supported (the change) right off the bat,” said committee member Oscar Sarmiento.
Instead of just having a service with a speaker talking to the crowd, Vespers will now have a speaker introduce a spiritual discipline every few weeks. The Vespers community will then practice those disciplines the next week or two.
The purpose is getting the students to grow in practicing spiritual disciplines as a body and then to be able to keep up with these disciplines on their own.
“We want to stretch our community,” said Evans, “The biggest hurdle has been trusting.”
The first discipline this year was prayer. The week it came time to practice prayer was a little scary for the committee.
“Odd how God has commanded us to do this thing,” said Evans. “But we were scared it wasn’t going to work.” The service did however turn out great and people came away encouraged. “This thing has been blessed by Him … People went away blessed,” said Evans.
Sarmiento said the change has been “refreshing.” Other regular attendees would agree. Sophomore Keara Palpant said, “It was time for a change.” Even though this change is still in the beginning process, the community of Vespers has been open to the new focus.
“Vespers is still my favorite part of the week,” said Shelby Esterle, a sophomore who attends Vespers regularly.
During this school year, Vespers will dive into the spiritual disciplines of prayer, self-limitation, service, stewardship, discipleship, fellowship, evangelism and Scripture reading.
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