Starting new traditions – The Alumni Worship Night
Abigail Sarratt, Contributing Writer
It was a chilly night on Oct. 24, 2023, when North Greenville University began one of its newest traditions. The chapel grew quiet as eight worship leaders stepped onto the North Greenville stage once more. Years after their graduation, these NGU alumni were back to lead the chapel congregation in worship for the first of many Alumni Worship Nights to come.
The Alumni Worship Night was created with the intention of bringing a multi-generational community of believers together on the North Greenville Campus for a night of worship. Megan Hollifield, the director of worship studies and guitar coordinator said, “I wanted to create a new tradition where we would bridge the gap between alumni of North Greenville and current students of North Greenville to come together and worship as one community, for one night.”
Hollifield had been extensively planning for months leading up to the event. She said that the easiest part was getting in contact with the alumni. She had kept tabs on most of them since graduation, and many were eager and more than willing to participate. Some alumni had even contacted her on their own, excited for the chance to be involved as well.
The alumni involved in the first event were Megan Hollifield, Malik Burrell, Dillon Hollifield, Mariah Sloan, Ryan Stanley, Kieffer Mendoza, Rachel Loveday and Emmanuel Harrison. All alumni graduated between the years 2015 and 2022.
Putting the team of alumni together was easy, but scheduling a rehearsal time soon became a problem. All the alumni had full-time jobs, and many had family responsibilities as well. Because of everyone’s busy schedules, each alumni needed to be prepared and ready for the limited rehearsal time they had.
Hollifield said, “I made sure to honor their time with one practice prior to the event, and making sure the practice was ready to go and professional.” Originally, Hollifield had planned on incorporating a worship choir made up of current Worship Studies students, but because of the business of homecoming week and scheduling conflicts, she decided to drop the idea.
Even though the worship choir was dismissed, Worship Studies students still had the opportunity to be involved. Two upperclassmen were included as background vocalists, and another was given the chance to take promotional photography to use for future Worship Nights.
Jadyn Ross was one of the students who had the opportunity to participate in the first Alumni Worship Night. Although she had been asked last minute, Ross was excited to have the chance to participate. She said, “I think it was really special to be able to worship with past North Greenville students as a present North Greenville student. Just in seeing their leadership and seeing how they were leading present students as well was very cool.”
Ross shared how encouraged she felt being able to lead with the alumni. She said, “It really doesn’t matter what age you are; you can still lead others in worship.” It showed her that even though they all had the same degree, they were able to do very different things in their occupations. She also said, “It was cool to see all these different people from different stages of life come together – and they may or may not have known each other – and just worship together.”
She said that if given the opportunity, she would love to be a part of the event again. Getting the opportunity to learn and hear the testimonies from people with more experience is a value that the Alumni Worship Night hopes to cultivate more in the future. Ross said, “I think it would be so cool to see up–and–coming worship leaders getting to worship with people who have had years of experience and for them to be able to ask questions.”
Hollifield mentioned that current Worship Studies students can look forward to being involved again when they become North Greenville alumni as well. She plans on continuing to cultivate and establish this tradition at North Greenville for many years to come, and to invite new and old graduates to make it as multigenerational as possible.
She said, “I have all intentions of using recent graduates and rotating alumni of years past, you know, a couple years and mixing. I think it would be cool to see alumni from all different years up there leading.”
In the future, Hollifield said that she would want to have more of a Worship Studies major and minor participation on stage. She included that she would also like to invite more alumni and their churches to be a part of the congregation, and possibly make the event available as a cultural event credit for students.
If scheduling goes as planned, Hollifield would ideally like the event to be around North Greenville’s Homecoming week every year. She said, “If schedule permits with the school calendar, I’d like to schedule it around that week every year because that’s another event that alumni have the honor to be a part of.”
Photo provided by the Media Team.
