Early on in the semester during one of our weekly ministry team meetings, Brother Larry led a meditative reflection of what each of us envisions the chapel to be in the near–or distant–future. It was an awesome exercise, but as school and work and other activities encroached on what’s really present in my consciousness, I kind of forgot about it.
Last night in our meeting, Larry brought us back to that exercise. He reminded us all of the words that we had used to describe our vision of the chapel, and asked us to take a few of these words and develop a programming idea for next semester that would help fulfill our vision. The three Marsh Associates–Abigail, Robby, and myself–worked with Soren to come up with an idea, and within thirty minutes we had a solid idea of what this event would look like. Brother Larry then surprised us a little bit by asking for each group to spend the week developing a blurb for each of our programs which will go into the termbook for next semester.
As undergraduates, I think that the three of us are acutely aware of how Marsh could continue to work on ways to reach out to and integrate the undergraduate population into our midst. So the words around which we constructed this new idea included open doors, open table, accessibility, breaking down barriers, and demography, among others. We put tother an idea to take the ministry of Marsh Chapel outside of the chapel itself, in an effort to engage undergrads in discussion with the ministry team. I won’t go into details about the idea for the program, since it’s not even a day old. But my point is that I felt very alive and active brainstorming this idea with my two amazing co-interns. It reminded me of how very amazing Marsh is, but also where it can still be even better. And I’m excited about the prospect of taking real action to fulfill our vision of Marsh Chapel’s future.