As Dame Edna would affectionately say, "Hello, possums!" (The good opossums in my prestigious Diamond Bar neighborhood wanted me to give a shout-out to them.) I'm coming to you today from the main library at my alma mater, Chapman University. The Leatherby Libraries, built in 2007, is a most proper university library and has an impressive collection of specialty collections organized by field of study, a Holocaust museum and library on the top floor, and a study commons where I am typing this blog using the free wi-fi network.
On Monday the students at Chapman start fall classes, as well as those at Mt. San Antonio College, the community college where I am currently studying Web Design. It's always an exciting mass of confusion, anxiety and fun when the entire student body descends on campus all at once finding their classes, meeting their professors and classmates, and frantically adding or dropping courses after the last minute. At Chapman that's about 6,400 students, at Mt. SAC about 40,000. Either way, it's insane the first week of classes.
Yesterday I visited the Fish Interfaith Center, the non-denominational chapel used by Chapman's religious community across nine different faiths, among them Christians, Muslims, Jews, Wiccans, Buddhists, Bahai's, and a New Age campus group called G.O.A.T. (Society for the Global Observation and Appreciation of the Transcendent). Ramadan, the holiest month in Islam, is winding down and the smaller chapel in the center has been set aside for devout Muslims to pray and meditate while they are fasting from dawn to dusk. Like many other university "religious centers", it is truly a multi-purpose building, but in a serene and inspirational setting.
Back around 1997 I was living in the neighborhood not far off from campus, and at the time Chapman announced its plans to build a new "All Faiths Chapel" that would be used by the entire campus community, Christian and non-Christian alike. There was a lot of controversy over the plans. Many orthodox Christians (including myself) opposed it because the school seemed to be deliberately casting off the conservative theology of its namesake, Charles C. Chapman. On the other side, the theologically liberal Disciples of Christ (Chapman's founding denomination) and students of other faiths blasted the school for discriminating in favor of "the Religious Right" and betraying its commitment to spiritual diversity by having a second "Founders Chapel" alongside the main All Faiths Chapel specifically for Christian meditation and worship. In trying to please everybody, Chapman infuriated everybody.
When the Fish Interfaith Center opened in 2001, however, all the controversy didn't matter anymore, at least to me it didn't. While still committed to biblical, orthodox Christianity and still believing the Disciples of Christ is a liberal, apostate denomination, I have rejected my initial opposition to the center's construction and purpose.
Now before you accuse me of being ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, hear me out. Don't throw your laptop out the window in anger, especially if it isn't insured. Hear me out on this.
In the intervening four years, I moved from Orange back to the San Gabriel Valley where I grew up. I attended a small nondenominational church that met every Sunday morning and evening in rented hall space at the West Covina Senior Citizens Center. I helped set up the stage, sound system and lighting, then took it down and packed it back into the pastor and worship leader's cars when the services ended. The congregation met at a senior citizens' center because it couldn't afford to buy or rent a proper church property or even office space.
The mobile nature of that small church taught me a practical lesson in the nature of the worldwide church and of worship itself. It doesn't consist of the building, but of the people. And unless the services are centered around the finished work of Jesus Christ as a ransom for our sins and on the faithful preaching of the Bible, then such worship is in vain and actually sinful. I had another mind-altering moment when I learned many small congregations in my current denomination, The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, also meet in rented hall space, portable buildings and even outdoors for the same reasons that little church in West Covina did.
If me back in 1998 could meet me today and learn I changed my mind on the Chapman chapel issue, I would kill myself. Back then I was indeed orthodox and biblical, but also very legalistic and militant about apologetics and purity of doctrine, to the point of being obnoxious. I did a little bit of growing up since then, having had a big dose of humility alongside learning about the grace of God for even a legalistic sinner like me.
That is why when Immanuel First seriously considered selling off its now-closed school property, it didn't hit me as emotionally as it did others who built that campus and whose children went to school there. Today Victory Outreach of West Covina is renting half of the school campus for its services and all is going well for both our fellowships.
At Chapman's interfaith center the Founders Chapel has been opened to all faiths, not just Christians as originally intended, and that is okay with me. It's a private university and can do whatever it wants. However, the evangelical Fellowship of Christian Athletes uses the property for its services and orthodox Christians are well represented here, even though everyone else would rather ignore them. And I am reminded of Jesus' own words in Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them."
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