On Aug. 29, 2025, students at Indiana Wesleyan University received news about the structural changes to this semester’s chapel services.
Andrea Summers, IWU campus pastor and Dean of Spiritual Formation, spoke to the student body about the changes during the Friday chapel service.
She said Monday chapel services will seem different to students because of the prayer focus.
“It’s this chance for you to bring your Bible, to bring your journal to chapel with you on Mondays,” Summers said. “It’s an opportunity for you to meet with God through prayer, through reading scripture, through worship.”
Summers said that Friday family chapel services pull staff, faculty and students in one place to worship together, to hear solid preaching and to celebrate what God is doing in the IWU community.
“There is this reality that we’re still Christian community,” she said. “And so how do we celebrate the unique kind of academic learning community that we’re a part of? And one of the ways I think we can do that is to be more intentional about celebrating that in chapel on Friday.”
Summers said that Monday chapels in the previous semesters centered around a sermon series about one book of the Bible and Fridays had more of a topical focus.
“I think that we were noticing this growing desire that students had to have a corporate worship experience that was more engaging and participatory, and we were trying to kind of respond to that,” Summers said.
Summers said Monday chapels formed out of a growing number of students’ interest in prayer.
“I really felt like the Lord said in a really clear, palpable way, ‘Andrea, it’s time to make prayer accessible to every student on our campus,’” Summers said.
Junior Katie Morrison said she supports the change to Monday chapels.
“I’m kind of all for that because prayer’s been one of the things I’ve been trying to be more intentional about this school year,” Morrison said. “So I’m really excited about that and the little possibilities that could come with it.”
Freshman Audra Flanary said she thinks focusing on prayer one day out of the week is important because people often neglect prayer and some Christians do not know how to pray.
“I think having like a way to set that up and having some guidance, I think that sets you up for the rest of the week,” Flanary said. “You can say, ‘Oh, we learned about this on Chapel Monday and we focus on praying like this on Monday. So I’m going to use that for the rest of my week and see how that works for me.’”
Summers said the chapel office will provide Bibles and journals for students without them. The chapel office will also begin hosting house parties this semester.
“House parties are these monthly worship services that have an evangelistic impulse,” Summers said.
Students can invite friends from outside of IWU to join in the services and the parties afterward.
“It’ll be really great worship,” Summers said. “And then we’re going to have a party afterwards. So every single house party, the worship service ends and we go straight into food and fun. And it’s going to look different every single time.”
