President D. Michael Lindsay announced plans to erect a cross on Taylor’s campus in chapel Wednesday, Jan. 26.
The cross will stand outside of Bond Plaza, surrounded by seats to provide opportunities for outside worship, especially during Spiritual Renewal weeks, said Greg Dyson, vice president for spiritual life and intercultural leadership and campus pastor. The cross will be at least 50 feet tall. However, logistics surrounding the project continue to change, he said.
The seating will enable the site to host 2500 people, said Andrea Masvero, director of 1846 Enterprises.
The cross is part of a larger renovation: a multipurpose amphitheater. Day-to-day, the site will function as a lawn for picnics. It will also host worship and concert venues, Masvero said.
“We have this beautiful vision for an outdoor amphitheater that will be anchored by the cross as a kind of bridge and create a beautiful outdoor space to be part of the Student Center experience,” she said. “With the cross at the center of it all … (it works as) a reminder of those symbols of our faith and the centrality of redemption to our faith story.”
The cross wouldn’t function as the focus of worship, rather it would be a backdrop that offers these reminders, Dyson said.
“One of the great things that we get to do is look for ways that we can understand and remember our faith,” he said.
Dyson has been in conversation with Taylor faculty about constructing a tangible reminder to Taylor students of Christ’s great sacrifice through his crucifixion, he said.
Reminders of spiritual truths are important. While he can’t speak for the entire campus, Dyson can speak for himself: he’s a forgetful person, he said. As a forgetful person, he sees the importance for Christians to remind themselves of essential spiritual truths.
The cross is a beautiful symbol of truth for Christians, Masvero said.
“We’re a forgetful people,” she said. “Sometimes we lose sight of the things that really ground us in our faith and bring us back to our need for grace and redemption and those sorts of things.”
Many expansions and renovations, including Taylor’s cross, were funded by generous donors, Dyson said. Donors also allow the university to bring in chapel bands and speakers they couldn’t afford on their own.
The 10 million dollar donation funding the cross supports many Taylor projects, including new parking spaces, chapel renovations, hiring chapel bands, improving the Bond Plaza and shifting the Loop Road, Masvero said.
Not everyone is thrilled about the cross renovation.
Ethan Schmidt, sophomore youth ministry major, thinks it is a poor allocation of Taylor’s funding.
“There's a lot of people here that are in crippling debt,” he said. “Ten million dollars dedicated to construction of a chapel and the addition of a 70 foot cross is a wee bit silly in my mind.”
Many students struggle to pay their tuition, facing financial debt that clashes with both aspiring careers that may pay poorly and hopes of supporting a family, he said.
There is a difference between Taylor’s owned money and Taylor’s donated money, Masvero said. Donors influence where their money goes when it is donated.
“We are not at the whim of donors. We have a plan. We have a careful plan about how growth occurs,” she said. “At the same time, donors will bring us ideas and say, ‘Hey, we'd like to give something that you need,’ and we usually talk through a list of things that are potentially of interest to them and they hone in on something that is important.”
Dyson is grateful for the generous donation making the cross amphitheater possible, he said.
“To worship the Lord,” Dyson said, “To reflect on God and his nature and the beauty of his nature, and at the same time be able to have a cross somewhere in that vicinity … would be a continual reminder about who we are and what we believe and why we believe it.”
