January 20th started out cold and stayed cold, but early in the morning Scots across campus were waking up and braving the cold in order to wind their way down the mountain. While some drove to churches, some to people’s homes, and still others to local businesses in Chattanooga, all had a common purpose: to serve.
For Student Development Associate Dean of Students Nesha Evans, the service projects are an important part of celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This year, projects were split into two categories. The first, she said, focused “on serving intentionally with African American businesses, helping them enhance their business by doing things they haven’t been able to get to. Some service groups were painting or mulching around their yards or filing, just depending on what that business needed.”
The second category of service groups teamed up with Project 52, a non-profit organization that serves those who need assistance cleaning up their yards. All told, over 245 Covenant students, faculty, and staff members volunteered for service projects at 13 different sites.
“It was pretty amazing. I have only heard really good reports [from the people we served]; they were just really thankful for students who volunteered,” Evans said.
By noon, with service projects all wrapped up, carloads of students were packing up and heading back up the mountain for the afternoon event: a chapel service with Reverend Howard Brown, pastor of Christ Central Church in Charlotte, NC, and member of Covenant’s Board of Trustees. His talk, “A Call to Public Spiritual Health Care,” came from Titus 3 and concluded with a Q&A session that encouraged students to further explore the themes of his sermon.
“I was grateful that [Reverend Brown] was refreshing and honest [in his talk and at the Q&A],” said Evans. “I think that sometimes when we’re trying to understand oppressions and systems that don’t work well for everyone, we can attack each other and I don’t think that solves anything. I think that it’s so much more important that we find a way to find out what it means to reconcile with one another—and reconciliation can only be found through the Gospel.”
To cap off the day’s acts of service and learning came a time for celebration with Porter’s Gate, a collaboration of Christian artists including Audrey Assad and Urban Doxology, all of whom work together to produce worship music.
On the whole, Evans considered the day a success. “It’s good to come together in community and to be challenged by hard things that might be painful. My hope was that students were able to learn from the businesses and from the people that they served, learn about their situations and where they came from.”
This, Evans explained, is not only part of what it means to carry on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy, but Christ’s as well.
“As Christians, as people who profess to follow Jesus Christ—who was someone who went after the person, who sat with the people, and who knew the people’s stories—that we too would want to be a people who cares for others,” she said.
This is the reasoning behind the name “MLK Day On”—because Covenant students get a day off of classes in order to be “on” to serve, learn, and celebrate together.
“This is only my first year,” said Evans, “but I pray that one day the whole campus community gets it and that everyone...will see the value of serving and loving and celebrating our neighbor.”
With the bar set high for next year, MLK Day On at Covenant continues, serving students and locals alike.