Our school should be a time where students can look forward to going to the chapel and growing closer to God, but multiple students believe it can be a better, more enjoyable experience.

Students like Jason Zau, Destin Romero, Robert Pettijohn, Jacob Baker, and others who wanted to remain anonymous but still speak their opinions have wished for better singers on stage, and pointed out how the message being spoken is dull and not an easy topic to relate to. After doing some interviews with students, many had suggestions on how it could be better.

One such suggestion from Angel Abdullah was to have interactive messages; instead of just listening to someone speak, students can be engaged in discussion sessions or physically engaging in discussions. He quotes, “I agree the messages have meaningful information, but the way they give that information isn’t great, as I see people around me trying to stay awake and talking over the message. We definitely need physical sermons that have you physically engaged if possible.”

People like Gavin Park, Samuel Martinez, and Emmanuel Gonzales also recommended having different Christian music. Samuel believes, “If they picked better songs, more people would want to join in and worship instead of just having the same 20-40 students come up to worship—a DJ would sound pretty good.” While most think that student-led worship is a great idea, students have been leaning more towards professional guest musicians. Most students have claimed they wanted more upbeat and acoustic music to have in chapel, or Christian music that doesn’t get played enough in the chapel. Some recommendations were:

• Altar by Forrest Frank
• Phenomena (DA DA) by Young and Free
• I Surrender by Hillsong Worship
• Your Ways Better by Forrest Frank
• Broken Vessels by Hillsong Worship
• Everything We Need by Kanye West
• Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) by Hillsong Worship
• Goodness of God by CeCE Winans
• Always by Forrest Frank
• God Is by Kanye West
• Holy Forever by CeCe Winans
• Reckless Love by Cory Asbury
• NOTHING ELSE by Forrest Frank & Thomas Rhett
• The Blessing by Elevation Worship
• Follow God by Kanye West
• Transform by Daniel Caesar

The second recommendation from Aiden Carlos was to make chapel have more skits or visual presentations, something that will be more visually memorable. He states, “Chapels with presentations for the most part stuck out more to me.”

The last thing was suggested by Andrew Arroyo was to add student testimonies to make it more relatable and effective to students. He stated, “I’ve never thought about it, but having student testimonies would actually be an interesting idea since they can probably be a lot more relatable to.” The Weekly Warrior reached out to Mr. Cracium, Heritage’s Campus Pastor and director of school chapels, for his insight into these suggestions, but have not received a response at the time of publishing this article. In the end, these combined suggestions suggest that students want chapel to be more than just a place to hear a message, but a physical experience that motivates them to look forward to going to the chapel.