Starting in the fall 2017 semester, the days and times for chapel services will change for all California Baptist University undergraduate students.
Instead of being held in the Van Dyne Gym, chapel will occur in the new Events Center, which is set to open this summer for the chapel services.
Brett Vowell, director of Chapel, said the services will move from Mondays, Wednesdays and some Fridays to all Tuesdays and some Thursdays.
The services offered will be at 9 – 10 a.m. and 10:45 – 11:45 a.m. There will also be some select Sunday evening services later on in the upcoming semesters.
“Students can look forward to an exciting roster of chapel speakers and dynamic worship experience enhanced by an amazing audio-visual system,” Vowell said. “Beginning in the fall 2017 semester, a student will have 20 opportunities to attend Chapel in order to meet the 15-credit requirement.”
Vowell also said the online make-up chapel option will no longer be offered because of the increased number of services made available to students for the fall semester.
The changes being made to chapel in regards to times, days, locations and tracking are all planned to be permanent for the prospective future of CBU chapel.
Ashley Church, sophomore music education major, said the first time she heard about the changes to chapel next semester was when Dr. Hector Jimenez, dean of the Collinsworth School of Music and assistant professor of music, sang and lead worship in chapel this past semester.
She also said she is excited to see what the worship specifically will look like when the changes are enacted next semester, but the changes are not affecting her significantly.
“(Chapel) doesn’t look like its going to complicate my schedule that much because my schedule from this semester to next is very different,” Church said. “It looks like it’s going to work out perfectly; I’m really excited to see what’s going to be happening.”
On the other hand, some students said they are not happy with the changes being made to chapel.
Kiani Margolis, freshman film studies major, said she dislikes the changes because her class schedule conflicted with both days and times.
“The classes for my major are on Tuesdays and Thursdays during chapel times,” Margolis said. “For film, the classes are very specific and hard to get so I had to sign up for them even if they conflicted with chapel.”
