Chapel and Authentic Community

Dr. David Fraze: You would think in my 40s I would know how to shake hands. I learned in America
and we dominate on handshakes. It's one of the first things your dad teaches you.
You look people in the eye, firm handshake, and I can still hear my dad
say it tells everyone what they need to know about you as a man. And I even went
to Europe and Europe shake hands sort of like us, but when I was in my 40s was my
first trip to Africa. And I don't know if it's true in all parts of Africa, but
There's a beautiful thing that happens when you step in as an American and you like grab that hand.
These men that I respected had a lighter handshake and they would do this.
And it was just kind of odd to me.
So I asked my friend who was from Botswana, I'm like, why are they doing this?
And he says, Fraze, y'all hold your shoulders high, your head high.
You kind of have this independence about you, and we can always tell when there's an American,
white, black, or tan, you all just all look the same, and you shake hands the same.
But when we shake hands in Africa, it's like we're saying, there's nothing up my sleeve to harm you.
I thought that was pretty awesome.
There's nothing up my sleeve to harm you.
Chapel has always been a very important part of LCU.
And I know you know it because you signed up to come to school here and sometimes you're like,
well, it's chapel. It's the way it's going to be. Get your credits or see you in hell.
That's really not the way that we're like. We don't want to dominate you and say you have to
be here. And if you don't learn about Jesus, it's going to be really bad. Do you want to
have a Bible study today? That's not even appealing to us. But what we're asking you to do
is just to come spend some time with us, whether it's in a small group on Friday or it's three
days a week because we think it's significant. When you ask you and you ask the faculty and staff,
here's what they say chapel is about. One is community. Do you realize this is the only time
we get to see each other? And some of you kind of hanging out in the mall area and there's
really good air conditioning and in the winter it'll be good heating. And so we start playing
music and we open the doors in case you just want to be in here, in case you want to see each other.
People you may not see very much at all that are in your classes.
You may be off campus or on campus, but this is a time for us all to be together.
And it's a wonderful community.
And sometimes we do really weird things in here.
And sometimes we do really spiritual things.
But we love our community.
And you're a part of that.
And it's also a time, as one of our basketball players said last year, he said,
Coach, I come here because this is my time to take a breath and to rest.
It focuses us on what it means to have our lives changed by this God that we worship,
that we say we walk with you.
We're not going to force you, but we walk with you,
and we want you to understand the authenticity that we believe and for you to join us.
Now, a few things.
Time is short, and we take seriously at LCU, if we're going to take your time,
we want to be the very best we can be.
But also the elephant in the room is nobody's going to police your phone.
Nobody's going to police you talking to each other.
Nobody's going to police if you decide, hey, the lights are down.
It's going to be elementary school all over again, and you're going to just start talking.
But I want you to just consider the breadth of time that we have and how fast our world is.
How many of you all have already ran into a tree checking your cell phone?
I have.
I do.
All right.
I think I know this campus.
somebody forgot to cut a limb, but it's my fault. Somebody says, hi, I'll stop and look at you and
say, okay, sorry. I got to, I'm trying to break that habit. I'm a two screen watcher. You know
what that means? I watch the TV and if my phone's near me, I'm watching that at the same time,
pretending like I'm part of the show. What if just for 30 minutes, we took a deep breath,
we honored our community and just put them away. Even if you're like, this stuff is stupid and you
take a nap to some very rhythmic talking and singing, that may do you some good as well.
Those are some things. Now, Dr. Lisa Tatum, before she was a doctor, she's our band director. She was
part of a national bugle course. Anybody ever seen a bugle core warm up? Where's my band nerds? I'm
a trombone player. Where are they at? We warm up with B flat. You play a B flat and then it goes
to concert F. Now, these professional musicians, they don't just hit a B flat in tune and then hit
an F. They purposely mess up and then go back to the B flat. And then they usually have a four
count stop and then hit a concert F perfectly. So I asked Dr. Tate, do you have one of these things?
And you're about to see a picture of her. It's pretty awesome. She's directing somewhere,
I think in Indiana, and this is her bugle core and this was her job. They're incredible. But
warm up, all I did was I put a B-flat constant behind the video, and then you're going to hear
a concert F. I want you to listen to what happens.
♪ ♪
That's pretty incredible.
That's not easy to do if you know what you're listening for.
To be so in tune with the B-flat and try it,
and you see it's just not a constant B-flat until the second or third round,
and they keep going back to the constant, keep going back to the constant,
and then to stop and go straight into a concert-esque lick of music is difficult.
But it's because they've set the tone.
And when I think of an illustration for chapel, that's what we try to do here.
It's complicated out there.
You're going to be coming into this space with failed grades and failed relationships.
You need to hear a tone that's consistent that brings you back to where you need to be.
There's going to be times that people won't treat you nice.
That's life.
Instead of crying, get a little grit and look around for somebody else and say,
you're going to give me a hug today.
Why?
You just, I need a hug.
And if I cry a little bit, it's going to be fine.
Do you understand?
Okay, let's go to chapel.
That can happen.
But you need a place that sets the tone for your life.
Now, I want you to get your phones out.
You're about to take a picture.
This is the part that's different for us.
If you go to different universities, if you go to Pepperdine, this is kind of fun.
They don't give you chapel credits and you don't have to pay money.
They will lower your GPA by 0.5.
Those people are strange over there.
They're like buying Mercedes to get an education.
That's how much they care about the time they set together to set the tone.
And we do as well.
And I want you to see all of those activities.
You're going to see them through student service announcements.
You're going to be seeing them through emails.
That's odd.
Read them.
You have 72 total opportunities and you only need 45.
is that right Josh 45 yeah you have more than enough and we're going to show you our hands
we're not trying to harm you you should not nobody in this auditorium should be in trouble
and we want to honor that but why do we do it because here's what we believe we're wanting
authenticity we want you to feel something from us we want you to feel okay these people actually
believe this. And even if you are marching, we're not going to say, I know all you know the story.
I realize some of you don't, but just give us a chance. Walk with us a little bit. We want that
authenticity, but we are violating that authenticity. I'll go ahead and say it by counting
rope. In a moment, we're going to leave and you're going to get scanned. You're going to like, okay,
hold on a second. It's not a bait or switch. It's our only control. Why do we do that? It's our
mission. That's it. But I'm going to say, yes, we know we're violating what you consider authentic.
So we're going to take that time and attention very seriously.
This is what I told the faculty and staff, and this is what I'll tell you.
You've got to show up and sit with.
We'll be respectful of your time.
There's things that are going to happen in the next year that's going to help with that.
But would you just show up?
Now, before I give you my closing illustration, which I think is pretty fancy, here's what I want you to do.
There may be a real live uncaged staff or faculty sitting next to you and they're terrified because they don't think they're cool.
Just speaking truth, okay?
Would you just, for a second, look around everywhere around you and say hi to everyone around you.
Go ahead.
hello hello now let me tell you something really cool
when our provost goes that's a pretty good sign
when you walk out and the lines are long talk to each other laugh
because we need those places in the world.
There's a few chapels that some of us in this room remember,
and before you were born, 2001,
we had a little problem, didn't we,
with the World Trade Centers
and the beginning of the war on terror.
I remember with a TV cart,
we heard these rumors,
because social media wasn't the way that it is today,
that there was a plane that went into one of the Twin Towers.
We're like, well, that's odd.
So in the Bible department,
we pulled out a TV that we had on one of those old racks,
And we saw the second plane go in, and then everybody automatically knew.
It was like, this is not an accident.
And some of your faculty remember what happened in this chapel.
Community in a moment of silence happened.
We just came in here, and our president's sitting there.
We had nothing else to do.
We just prayed.
We got on our knees because for some of our classmates, they were about to go to war.
And one of those was Lieutenant Brandon McDaniel.
He grew up being one of my camp counselors, going to my sessions, being a camp counselor.
and we sat in the grass in front of the CDC.
My son Braden was just born and he's crying.
He goes, Dave, I got to go.
I said, I know.
And he goes, I really didn't think this would happen.
And I see you and Braden, I just want to be a dad.
And so he gets mustered up and we pray him out.
And when the early days of the war,
and y'all wouldn't know this,
we weren't really ready as much as we thought we were.
And he was a Marine and they put him in charge
of this one bridge with his men.
and it's when the the battle was still in doubt with what was going to happen and
so they put him on this bridge and they said okay you have to hold this bridge it's vital
and he said it was very strange there was a dog that his group made fun of that I mean that made
friends with and they would have fun with that but when the twilight hours started happening
that dog like it knew something was happening would run back across the bridge and then the
prayers would begin over the loudspeakers.
And he said,
Fraze, I knew after those prayers were over,
we were about to take fire
and we're going to be in another battle.
So I sat down where I was
and here's what he told me.
I remembered the singing in chapel at LCU.
It's not always good.
But he went there and he said,
that was my prayers.
And then I knew
and I had the kind of peace to do the job that I had to do.
It's pretty amazing.
You won't even know how valuable this is
until you don't have it anymore in your day.
So make the most of it.
We're about to scan and walk out
and you're going to talk to each other
and you're going to be glad that you're here.
You're dismissed.
Thank you.