Worship is central to community life at CTS. Celebrating the many different gifts we have each been given, we pray in the manner of many different cultural and liturgical traditions and are led in song by musicians who live among us as well by professional artists who visit with us. The central worship event happens each Wednesday at noon in Graham Taylor Hall. Any individual or group can sign up to prepare and lead a service during the year.
While in the second week of each semester the faculty robe and process for our formal Convocation, the following week we may sit around a campfire to tell stories about meeting God on the streets, where we have been about the work of ministry. Another week a class will perform a drama on the global AIDS crisis, while, in the next, we respond to an honored alumnus who now serves as a military chaplain. In Spring, we pause for Holy Week and celebrate Easter when we gather again the following Wednesday. At the end of the year, we honor and bless those who graduate and leave us to pursue their ministries. Many calendars converge—academic, liturgical, the high holy days (or months) of particular cultural traditions, civil and local traditions. One learns to expect the unexpected, to be surprised by God. |
Worship also happens in other ways and places, whether initiated by students, faculty or staff. Recent invitations include a semi-regular Taize service, weekly morning prayer, monthly vespers by (and for) LGBTQ students in Hyde Park, a special Lenten series and daily centering prayer in the pre-dawn hours.
In addition, Thorndike Hilton Chapel, our smaller prayer space, is open 24-hours a day for those who seek a place for individual prayer and meditation or to host small gatherings. The cloisters, a long corridor with one wall of glass doors that look out on a stone-terraced “garth,” is also a favorite place for many to pause and reflect, especially during the afternoon when the hall is flooded with sunlight.
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