Technology-Free Chapel Services 

The Chapel Team hopes to engage the community by making St. Mary’s Chapel a technology-free space. In 2011, Chatham Hall made the switch to become an iPad school. Along with many other areas, students and faculty began using iPads to view their chapel programs. They hoped to use less paper, helping to protect the environment. 

Although this seemed productive at the time, Chaplain Barksdale believes technology has evolved in the past 10 years, and iPads are no longer just used for notes or work. She goes on to say iPads now have many more functions, including texting and social media, than they did a decade ago. With this, she says many people were using their devices for things other than viewing the program during chapel services.

To abide by their commitment to help the community be more present in chapel this year, the chapel team believes going back to not having iPads in the chapel is the best way to accomplish this. Each chapel, chapel attendees are required to leave their technology in their rooms or outside of the chapel. By doing this, students and faculty will have less distraction and be able to fully focus on the service.

They will take every chapel individually to decide what type of program will work best. In some instances, paper programs will be used if there is a specific program that needs to be shared. Or, the program will be shared over email, and iPads will be allowed in the chapel for that specific service. For senior chapel talks, the chapel team will leave it up to each senior to decide how they would like the program shared.

Services without paper or digital programs will follow a general order of service, if possible. “I think what we’ve realized is [a] general order makes sense, and it will probably take our community six months to really become familiar with it, that it becomes second nature.” Although still in the works, Chaplain Barksdale hopes general order of service cards will be available and stored in hymn books. These cards will display the order of service that can be used in most chapels, so everyone can follow along.

Another introduction to chapel services to help attendees follow along with the services is hymn boards. The actual boards have been in the chapel for many years, but this is the first year in which they are being used. Each chapel, the hymn number of the song(s) that will be sung during the service will be shown on the board in white letters. This will allow everyone to clearly see the hymn number and be able to find the song in the hymn underneath the seat in front of them. This allows the community to know the hymn number without needing a program.

Through service cards, hymn boards, and paper programs, the chapel team has committed to being technology-free in chapel. With phones and iPads left in the dorm, the hope is distraction will be left at the door.