Since all classes have been moved online for the duration of the semester, many clubs and extracurriculars on campus have been cancelled until the fall semester. Although some have been cancelled, there are still extracurriculars that have moved online, such as Capital Worship.
Normally, Capital Worship would be held at 10 a.m. Wednesdays in Kerns. Now, Capital Worship will be livestreamed at 10 a.m. Wednesdays on the Embrace at Capital U Facebook page.
“For me, cancellation was never really an option. In such abnormal times, our community—students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the university—all deserved some sense of normalcy in something beyond the classroom. If classes continued, and classes were a part of every week at Capital, so too would worship,” Rev. Drew Tucker said.
The leaders of Capital Worship meet via Zoom and then the service is live streamed to Facebook Live to ensure that anybody who wants to attend a service, university student or not, could do so.
“I’m a perfectionist, and because of our newness to the technology and the incredible demands on all of our time, this is certainly imperfect. So, I’ve had to become ok with the imperfection,” Tucker said. “It’s a revelation of our humanity as we worship divinity. It’s magical, but it is mystical, how we bring our mistakes, our missteps, and God embraces us as beloveds all the same.”
There are many faces working in the background to ensure that Capital Worship continues to run smoothly each week. Karysta Walls, Brooklyn Sizemore, and Jillian Russell are all student workers helping Tucker run things behind the scenes. Graduate Mentores Mariah Mills and Jennie White also help every week. Tucker’s graduate assistant, Samantha DiBiaso, also actively makes sure that worship, one-on-one meetings, small groups, and other programs go as planned.
“We need a place to gather the prayer, concerns, and hopes of our whole community, to let of Capital know that those prayers, those concerns, those hopes, matter to God, matter to me, and matter to one another,” Tucker said.
Candlelight and Meditation and Mindfulness will also be live streamed to the Embrace at Capital U Facebook page. Candlelight will be on Thursdays at 9:09 p.m. and Meditation and Mindfulness will be Tuesdays at 3 p.m.
