Wheaton College instituted a liturgical plan for its mandatory school chapels for the 2016-2017 school year, of which on Mondays, students will hear a reading from the Gospel, on Wednesdays a reading from scripture in a chronological attempt to go through the entire narrative, and on Fridays, a Psalm. This may seem like an attempt to leave the Low Church evangelical tradition and drift into High Church, but by no means is it in any way, for at its core, Wheaton College is Evangelical Protestant, and maintains that by not having preachers who preach on the readings, but preach on whatever they want.
Although some of the chapel speakers have heavily alluded to the reading of the day, they use it to craft the message that they had already intended to give. It is more like they are using the Bible passages there to get back up the message instead of preaching the direct message from the Bible passage. A few speakers have not even acknowledged the reading of the day, and just quoted other Scriptures in their sermons an acknowledgement of the absence of a commandment that dictates that they must preach on the readings.
When asked about this, a student said, “We’re Evangelicals after all. Why preach simply what the Bible says when we can instead just preach what we want? Let’s teach the students what we think is right by comparing such and such to Bible characters. We’re Protestants, so we protest.”
When asked about what he made of the liturgy and preaching in chapel, another student said, “Oh, I was doing homework and not paying attention. I’m saving up my skips for the end of the year.”
Another student said, “I was more in the mood for what scripture the speaker wanted to talk about than the scripture that was actually read.”
There are many speculations that this trend will continue, especially when it has been personal testimony and lively story orientated sermons that have made Wheaton College chapel Wheaton College chapel. However, students will either be attending or skipping chapel anyway without any thought of whether or not the sermons align with the liturgy.
