Senior Sunday 2025

The liturgical habits of FBC tend toward the subtle: we choose our preaching topics, we don’t do much kneeling, and only “repeat-after-me” when we get the urge.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have liturgies. Like everyone, our worship is marked by patterns and habits that shape us, form us, and make us into the kinds of worshippers we are. We stand when we sing, we hear the Word preached every week, we receive a benediction, we take the bread and the cup once a month, we mark every year with an Advent Series, and kick off the Fall with a Focus, etc.

One of my favorite elements of our liturgical calendar is that early in June, we give full-throated energy toward cheering for graduating students in Lighthouse, College Life, and some stellar grad students.

It is easy to see how Senior Sunday is for the students – they’re putting on the service, they’re being celebrated, the cake we eat is in their honor, and the messaging is transposed in their native key. But if it were only for them, we’d be doing it over a BBQ on Sunday afternoon. The fact that Senior Sunday happens as an FBC worship service means it is for the church, too.

Just like all liturgies – Senior Sunday isn’t just something we do – Senior Sunday does something to us. It makes us into a kind of church willing to make this crazy investment. We are a church who does the hard work of investing in students, not just so they are a blessing here, but for them to go be a blessing somewhere else. I know from a decade of experience; this investment has a unique mix of joy and pain. It’s not cutting-edge marketplace-efficiency that motivates this investment, it doesn’t help our bottom-line, and there’s not always an obvious ROI. In other words, an institution would only invest in this way if it’s an effective distillation of its mission.

Of course, the investment in these students is done throughout the year and across years, but one Sunday every year, we stop and tell ourselves these stories again. We are reminded of who we are. We celebrate the students who we’ve hoped to form and disciple. We cheer them on (maybe with a tear or two) as they take our investment and leave us for what’s next. We become acutely aware that this matters.

It’s a glorious Sunday. It’s a Sunday many FBCers have claimed is their favorite of the year. And it’s this Sunday. I hope to see you there!

Peter Nittler

College Pastor