Ouachita Stories

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Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Closing Thoughts from the Fall/Winter 2025 Ouachita Circle

February 03, 2026 - Ben Sells

I love Chapel.”

I overheard one student say this to another as we walked into JPAC on a recent Tuesday morning. Those three words stayed with me because I feel exactly the same way. I rarely miss Chapel.

What makes this observation more than just personal preference is the research behind it. Studies show that prioritizing chapel is one of the top seven marks of Christian universities that sustain their sacred, Christ-centered identity over time and successfully resist the drift toward secularization.

This is why Ouachita pauses campus life once a week. For 50 minutes, we gather as a community to sing, pray, listen and respond to God's word and His people. But Chapel is more than what happens inside those walls. It’s the conversations that flow as we walk in and out, the connections made before and after. It’s why Chapel isn’t just a weekly event — it’s a living tradition.

Chapel is spiritual, intellectual and relational. It forms and fosters the tightly knit fabric of our campus. Like other essential features of a Ouachita education, it remains a graduation requirement. And we’re intentional about making it engaging and meaningful.

In recent years, we’ve benefited from significant growth in our worship studies program. Now, three student-led Ouachita Worship groups rotate leadership, and I love every minute of it as I watch our students lead and hear them sing together. I can’t carry a tune to save my life, but I still sing. While worship is the primary purpose, there’s something unique about singing together that builds community and connection.

Our students usually prefer contemporary music, just like I did in college. But they wisely include traditional hymns during the semester. At 63, as a grandparent now in my tenth year as president, I find myself paying closer attention to the lyrics, to the biblical truths they represent and to how they challenge and encourage me.

Take “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” a hymn I’ve sung my entire life. Its words have taken on new meaning at this stage. The opening stanza emphasizes the permanent trustworthiness of God: “There is no shadow of turning with thee.” But the second stanza acknowledges our common experience of changing seasons in life: “Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest ...”

What moves me most in this great hymn is that the changing seasons aren’t contrary to God's character. They testify to it. They “join with all nature in manifold witness” to God’s faithfulness, mercy and love.

As we sing about God’s enduring love, I’m reminded that it’s not only for me as an individual moving through seasons of life. It applies just as much to places like Ouachita that God has given us to steward for the season we are here.

Ouachita has faced high times and low times. Years of strength and years of struggle. This campus community has watched a tornado devastate our city and rallied to help our neighbors. We’ve sent students off to war and watched graduates leave to serve and lead around the world. And we excitedly welcome alumni back to their college home for Tiger victories on the field and performances on the stage.

Through all these seasons — institutional and individual — one certainty remains: God's faithfulness. It is the greatest, most steady tradition of our faith.

This great hymn ends with one of my favorite lines, and it has become my prayer for my family, for all who care deeply about Ouachita Baptist University and for this special place:

“Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”

Dr. Ben Sells became Ouachita's 16th president in June 2016. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo., and two degrees, a Master of Arts and a PhD in higher and adult education, from the University of Missouri in Columbia.