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Interview with Sharon Veltema
Unity Christian High School
Interview with Sharon Veltema about her Thanksgiving chapel service at Unity Christian High School
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How did chapel go today?
It went very well. The students were very accepting of what we were trying to do and participating with us when we had the time of confession, we also did something with our hands, holding them up and then placing them down. I think that really got all the students involved in the time of confession. It went very well.
At what point could you sense-or could you-that sort of light bulb going on over people’s heads of the connection between confession and gratitude?
Sometimes that’s not always easy to see right during chapel. This morning, I was walking down the hall after chapel and a student stopped me and said, “Mrs. Veltema, you know, last night I was just feeling so depressed and I just had such a negative attitude, and I took a piece of paper and decided to list all the things that God has blessed me with. And when I got to chapel this morning, it was a further confirmation of what I really needed right now.” So then when I hear something like that, I know that we’re making connections with students.
Tell me a little bit about the background of this, how you got this idea, and how you presented it to your worship team.
Well, about a month and a half ago, I sat down with them and I said, “Thanksgiving is coming, and we need to talk about what we are going to be doing in chapel.” And one student said, “Let’s have an open mike.” And I said, “Well, that’s never really worked well in the past.” You have generally some typically senior boys running up to the front of chapel and saying, “I’m thankful for my car, I’m thankful for my girlfriend, I’m thankful that I’m a senior-go seniors!” And it’s just not very reflective and sometimes doesn’t feel very reverent.
So I said to my spiritual leadership committee, “I’d really rather not do that.” And one of the students said to me, “But, Mrs. Veltema, that’s what we’re thankful for.” And we really didn’t get much further in our discussion that day. And about a week later I attended the two-day seminar at Calvin, and one of the people at my table said, “You know, you really cannot be thankful until you’ve spent time in confession.”
I started thinking about that and so the following week I said to my spiritual leadership committee, “I want to try something with you.” I didn’t tell them what I was going to do. And I said, “Let’s just go around the table and say things that we’re thankful for and you can say anything that you want, even if it’s something small, something big. Anything that you want.” So we went around the table and some of the kids were thankful for their parents, their friends. One girl said, “I’m thankful for heat.” It was a very cold day. Someone said, “I’m thankful for puppies.” I mean, just anything, and I wrote them all down.
Then I said to them, “We’re going to spend time in confession.” And they were very gracious about it. They all participated. They were all very attentive as we went through this prayer of confession. We also spent time in a prayer of confession for our society as a whole, that as a society we have gotten so far away from what the Bible tells us and we spent time praying for that. At the end of this, everybody was very quiet. And I said, “Now I want to go around the table and just tell me something non-tangible that you’re thankful for. Something you can’t touch.” And what they came back with was astounding. One girl said, “I’m thankful that we all have different weaknesses so that we can help each other out.” Another girl said, “I’m thankful that God has a plan for my life but he doesn’t tell me all at once, because it would probably scare me too much.” And some of the things that they were coming back with were so much deeper and more meaningful. I said to them, “What you started with was great. It’s good to be thankful for those little things. But do you see that when you’re God’s child, you have so much more to be thankful for? A deeper level of thankfulness.” Then I just said to them, “Could we do this in chapel and invite everybody to confess with us and to think about the things that they are thankful for?” So that’s how it came about.
Confession is often an underutilized or underrated aspect of worship, an element of worship. Can you say something more about how you see that connection between confession as the impetus for this deeper reflection and expression of gratitude?
I think that anybody can be thankful. Anybody can say, “Oh, I’m so thankful for this or for that," and not really be thankful to anybody. And when you spend time in confession, all of a sudden, you realize that, I have a God who has made me right with Him. I have a God who desires a personal relationship with me, and I have a God who provides for my every need, no matter what I’m going through in my life.
So, when you spend time in confession, I think it really opens your eyes to the fact that, I have a person, I have a God that I’m thankful to. And it’s so much deeper than anybody that can come along and can say, “Yeah, I’m thankful.” But who are you thankful to? So we’ve also stressed it more in chapel in the past year just spending time from time to time in confession as a whole and also for our society.
Interview by Nathan Bierma
