Worship Services
Duke Chapel is a vibrant center of ecumenical Christian worship with a long—and living—tradition of faithful preaching and inspiring sacred music.
Duke Chapel offers more than 150 opportunities for worship services each year, featuring the Chapel’s traditions of compelling preaching and inspiring sacred music. In addition to the rich tradition at the Sunday morning worship service at 11:00 a.m., the Chapel is home to a regular pattern of prayer and worship services throughout the week. There are also worship services organized by campus Religious Life groups held at the Chapel and elsewhere on campus.
Regular Services
Sunday Morning Worship Service
11:00 a.m. Sunday (year-round)
Duke Chapel is an interdenominational Christian church with a tradition of stirring music, preaching, and liturgy. Communion is offered twice a month during the service and on other weeks immediately following the service. Learn more:
Choral Evensong
Choral Evensong is a centuries-old tradition that continues to be prayed every day all over the world. Drawn from the seventeenth century, worshipers are invited to enter into a sacred space of reflection through music, scripture, and prayers that have shaped Christian lives for hundreds of years. Learn more:
Midday Prayer
12:00 p.m. Tuesday (during the academic year)
This simple twenty-minute service held in the Memorial Chapel (just off the main sanctuary) is led by Chapel staff and includes prayer and scripture readings.
Choral Vespers
As daylight fades, Choral Vespers invites students and community members into the darkened Chapel to experience sacred music, scripture readings, and prayer.The Duke Vespers Ensemble leads the choral portion of the service. Learn more:
Jazz Vespers
A collaboration between the Chapel and the Duke Jazz Program, this Jazz Vespers worship service combines the form of the traditional evening vespers service with the musical improvisation of jazz. Chapel Dean Luke Powery and others offer prayers and readings during the service, while Professor John Brown's "Little" Big Band will provide musical leadership. Learn more:
Special Services
Christmas Eve
Each year on Christmas Eve, the Chapel offers four services to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who is the Christ. The first service is a Children’s service in which narrators tell the story of Jesus’ birth as children from the Congregation at Duke Chapel form a living nativity scene in the chancel. This service includes carols and prayers and much joy. The next two services follow the pattern of our weekly worship and include songs, scripture readings, a sermon, and, in one service, communion. The Durham Children’s Choir regularly join to provide choral music for one of the services; a community choir sings in the Lessons and Carols service. The final service of the day is at 11:00 p.m. and is a service of lessons and carols. This service began over fifty years ago at the Chapel and has been a favorite for many over the years. The Chapel invites the community to sing as part of a volunteer choir for this service.
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday occurs forty days before Easter, not including six Sundays (which are considered feast days), and recalls Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, itself mirroring the Israelites’ forty years in the desert. During the two services on this day, ministers mark those who attend with ashes as a reminder that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return.”
Holy Week and Easter
Holy Week at the Chapel is marked by regular services that strive to capture some of the drama of the week leading up to Christ’s death on the cross and his glorious resurrection three days later. Beginning with Palm Sunday, the services include dramatic features that draw worshipers deep into the journey to the cross. Daily services at noon each day and special evening services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday provide the opportunity for deep reflection, prayer, learning, and worship. The Maundy Thursday service includes communion, stripping the altar, and footwashing. On Good Friday, the midday service begins with a procession of the stations of the cross on the Chapel Quad, and continues inside the nave of the Chapel. The Tenebrae Service on Friday night includes a progressive dimming of the lights within the Chapel until the Congregation sits in darkness as we remember Jesus’ death. Out of the darkness of Good Friday, erupts the joy of Easter morning! Easter Sunday begins in the Duke Gardens as the sun rises and the community gathers to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The day continues with worship services at 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. in the Chapel, concluding with an Evensong service at 4:00 p.m. to conclude the celebration of Easter Day.
Pentecost
Fifty days after Easter, the church celebrates the festival of Pentecost. Echoing the ancient Jewish festival of Shavuot, which remembers God’s giving of the law on Mount Sinai, Pentecost celebrates God’s giving of the Holy Spirit, itself a fulfillment of ancient prophecy. In the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit descends upon them in tongues of flame. In our worship on Pentecost, we celebrate and remember the giving of the Spirit that even now empowers and unites the body of Christ around the world.
World Communion Sunday
On the first Sunday of October, the Chapel celebrates World Communion Sunday, as we give thanks for fellowship with Christians of every tribe and tongue around the world. At the Communion table, God's gift of our diversity becomes united in worship of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.
