Friday's Administration Chapel

At Pacific Islands University we have chapel services in our large classroom every Tuesday and Friday at 11.00 AM. If you are anywhere near us you are welcome to attend. We try to get full participation in chapel leadership from the administration, faculty, staff, students and church community of PIU. In fact, the last couple weeks of the semester will feature the students from the Preaching Practicum class giving their Senior sermons. This past Friday though, it was the administration's turn to lead the chapel. Michael and Samantha started us off with a half hour of worship music. (Okay, Mike is on the faculty not administration, but Samantha is the Executive Assistant to the President and she needed a good guitar player and backup singer to accompany her.). Then three of our administrators followed with short devotionals on the biblical basis behind the school's mission statement (see picture below) and then showed how those truths effected the daily lives of all in the PIU family.

Mike has been functioning as the coordinator for the chapel service during the Spring semester. In addition to being the MC for the service he also recruits and trains the musicians and singers for the worship music. We have been blessed with several new styles of music and exposed to some "classic" theology and devotional readings in chapels this semester

VP of Finance Tony Beckham used the story of Ruth and Boaz to illustrate the PIU core value of accessibility. He talked about how Boaz "removed the obstacles" from the Moabite Ruth's path so that she could experience the blessings supplied by the God of Israel. Though we often see the main obstacle to Christian higher education as financial, this is not the only obstacle that PIU removes from the students' path to the blessings of higher Christian education. Our goal is to remove obstacles so that we can connect students to God and help them be everything God created them to be.

I got to speak on the core value of excellence. As usual, I went to the creation story to emphasize that God is introduced in the Bible as a Creator of excellence, as everything he did was pronounced to be good. God's actions turn chaos to order, ugliness to beauty, darkness to light and death to life. As God's image, and as his redeemed people empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are to do the same thing in a world that is damaged by sin. The Gospel is as wide as all creation as we bring the message of the cross and resurrection to bear everywhere we go until God fully restores excellence in the new heaven and earth.

VP of Student Life, Rob Watt concluded the chapel with a devotional on the core value of transformation. He emphasized that road to excellence is a journey and that we as a school family are here to help one another to the goal. But, transformation is the one goal that is impossible without the inner transforming power of the Spirit so ultimately transformation is a result of exposure to Jesus through the indwelling Spirit of God. Rob also led us in prayer for Steve Stinnette (our VP of Advancement) who was supposed to present the section of transformation but has been ill.

One of the benefits of working at PIU is the privilege to take a couple hours out of the work week and focus on corporate worship.  It is a blessing.