Place is an important and central part of our lives. We are tied to place—our favorite homework spots, our church our childhood home. Place affects how we grow, how we each live and learn, how we interact with different spaces. Place is a part of us.
Since 1945, the Cathedral has been John Brown University’s central home of worship and communion; its history and legacy are the home and centerpiece of life at JBU and has influenced lives for decades. Over the past several years, however, chapels have become more congested due to a rapidly increasing student body, requiring people to squeeze together in the pews and sit on the floors and aisles. During several chapels last year, JBU’s President Chip Pollard acknowledged the need for more space for students during chapels. To solve this problem, chapel leadership and President Pollard proposed the idea to hold chapel within the Bill George Arena, the university’s primary sports arena. They began testing this possibility near the end of the spring 2025 semester. Though at the time it seemed like a great solution, students and faculty alike begun to find their own problems with worshipping in Bill George as the fall semester began.
While it is important and necessary in life to be flexible, it has been made apparent that different places can have different influences on our worship. Architecture plays a significant role in the foundations of our churches. Everything is placed and ordered to point us towards something. In Bill George Arena, a large piece of that order is lost. For one, gym’s purpose is for sports. Everything faces the center of the court because the games are what we are oriented to focus on. Likewise, in a theatre all the seats are faced towards the stage because the focus is on the performance. In Catholicism, everything in their church points towards the Eucharist (otherwise known as Communion), and in a typical protestant church everything is oriented to the sermon, to the Word of God. Similarly, our cathedral has its own means of orienting us to worship. In the cathedral, everything is facing the stage, our focus directed towards worship and the chapel message. Although chapel is not church, chapels and cathedrals in many Christian universities and colleges are meant to point and orient us towards leaning and growth as humans and as children of God. According to the Society of Architectural Historians, our cathedral at John Brown University was originally built by students and faculty in the early 1940’s. The pews also were handcrafted by students in the 1950’s. There’s intricate stained glass along our cathedral walls telling us the story of John Brown University and on the other side the glorious story of Christ. Everything was built and created so that future generations would find a home and a sanctuary within it. When we worship in the cathedral, all of those things come together creating a space of love, learning, and worship that inspires us to continue our life journey.
In the gym, that important connection to our worship is lost. However, we as Christians are called to worship the Lord wherever we are. While it is hard and distracting to worship in a large open space like the gym, which can feel too big or impersonal, it is still a place where we have the blessed opportunity to worship our wonderful and gracious God. So, while it is hard to worship or find beauty worshipping in the gym for some, it important to remember that God can come into any space and work in any heart anywhere. We don’t have to love worshipping in the gym, but next time you are in Bill George for chapel, search for something beautiful about it. Find something meaningful. For example, a lectern that our founder used for chapel was brought into the gym for our chapel speakers. It brought a sense of place into a new space.
While we can have opinions about architecture and the structure of worship, it is necessary to find the good in everything life throws at us. We aren’t required to like it and if we don’t that’s okay. We can always aim to find something good in whatever place we are at and see where that takes us.
Photo Courtesy of Kelly Saunders
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