Spiritual Formation at The King’s Academy!
Equipping students to know God, grow in their faith, and live out the Gospel.
Our Approach
Chapel
Weekly services by division featuring worship, teaching, and student involvement
Biblical Integration
Scripture and Christian worldview woven into every subject
Prayer
School-wide prayer events, classroom prayer, See You at the Pole, and more!
Service & Missions
Opportunities to serve locally and globally
At The King’s Academy, chapel is more than a weekly gathering. It is one of the intentional ways we help students grow spiritually, understand the gospel, and learn what it means to follow Jesus in everyday life.
For the 2026–2027 school year, our chapel theme is Loved.
This theme is rooted in the gospel truth that God’s love is not something we earn, achieve, or perform our way into. God loved us first. His love is most clearly seen in Jesus Christ, who came for sinners, died in our place, rose again, and calls us to follow Him.
A Chapel Year Built with Purpose
The chapel theme for this year is simple, but deeply important:
Loved.
Before students are called to love God, love others, serve, forgive, pray, or live on mission, they must first understand this foundational truth:
God loved us first.
This year, students will be invited to understand, receive, and respond to the love of God. The year will begin by focusing on what it means to be loved by God in Christ, then move toward what it means to live as people who love God and love others.
The goal is not only for students to hear that they are loved. Our prayer is that they would understand the love of God in Christ, receive it by faith, and reflect that love in their homes, classrooms, friendships, teams, churches, and communities.
Students are growing up in a world that often defines love in confusing ways. Love is often presented as approval, emotion, popularity, attraction, self-expression, or acceptance without truth.
Scripture gives us something better.
The Bible teaches that love begins with God. God is love. God loved us first. God showed His love by sending Jesus. Because we are loved by Him, we are called to love Him and love others.
This year, we want students to see that biblical love is not shallow or sentimental. It is gospel-centered, truthful, sacrificial, forgiving, obedient, and active.
“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
Receive God’s Love
Students will begin the year by learning that God’s love comes first. His love is not earned through performance, popularity, achievement, or behavior.
Understand God’s Love
Students will learn what biblical love is and what love is not. God, not culture, defines love.
Reflect God’s Love
Students will be challenged to love others through kindness, truth, prayer, forgiveness, service, and compassion.
Live Sent in God’s Love
Students will be encouraged to carry the love of Christ into their homes, classrooms, friendships, churches, and communities.
The yearlong movement is simple: Receive God’s love. Understand God’s love. Reflect God’s love. Live sent in God’s love.
One Theme, Age-Appropriate Depth
One of the strengths of this year’s chapel plan is that each division will engage the same theme at an age-appropriate level.
All students will be learning under the same yearlong theme, but the teaching will be shaped specifically for their stage of development.
Lower School students will receive the theme in simple, concrete, gospel-centered language.
Middle School students will explore the theme through identity, friendship, belonging, peer pressure, and community.
Upper School students will engage the theme more deeply through identity in Christ, ordered loves, mission, service, and sacrificial discipleship.
This allows the whole school to move in the same spiritual direction while making sure chapel is meaningful and appropriate for each age group.
Lower School: Learning the Language of Love
For Lower School students, the goal is to help them understand the love of God in a clear, simple, and memorable way.
Lower School students will move through the year with this simple progression:
God loved me first. God shows me what love is. I can love others. I can love like Jesus.
Quarter 1: God Loved Us First
Students will understand that God’s love comes before anything we do and that we do not have to earn His love.
Students will learn:
- God loved us before we could love Him back.
- God’s love is a gift.
- God loves us even when we sin.
- God wants a relationship with us because He loves us.
Quarter 2: What Is Love?
Students will learn that love is not just something we feel. Love is shown through kindness, care, obedience, and action.
Students will learn:
- Love is more than a feeling.
- Love is action.
- Love is obedience.
- God is love.
Quarter 3: How Can We Love One Another?
Students will practice simple ways to love others through kindness, sharing, helping, forgiving, and using caring words.
Students will learn:
- Jesus tells us to love one another.
- We love through kind words.
- We love by including those who are left out.
- We love by praying for others.
Quarter 4: Love Like Jesus
Students will be encouraged to follow Jesus by loving God, loving others, forgiving, serving, and helping people in need.
Students will learn:
- Jesus showed God’s love.
- Jesus cared for those who were hurting.
- Jesus died because He loves us.
- We love like Jesus when we love God the Father.
By the end of the year, our prayer is that Lower School students will be able to say:
God loved me first. God shows me what love is. I can love others. I can love like Jesus.
Middle School: Learning the Practice of Love
Middle School is a formative season. Students are navigating identity, belonging, friendships, peer pressure, comparison, and emotional change.
The Middle School chapel plan will help students understand that God’s love is more secure than popularity, more truthful than culture, and deeper than any friend group.
Middle School students will move through the year with this progression:
God’s love is not earned. God defines love. I can love beyond my circle. I can help build a loving community.
Quarter 1: God’s Love Is Received, Not Earned
Students will understand that God’s love is not based on performance, popularity, behavior, appearance, or success.
Students will learn:
- God loved us first.
- Jesus came for sinners, not those who have everything together.
- Guilt and shame should lead us to Christ, not away from Him.
- God’s love gives deeper belonging than any friend group.
Quarter 2: What Love Is and What Love Isn’t
Students will learn that biblical love is more than emotion, popularity, attraction, or approval. Real love is rooted in God’s truth and shown through action.
Students will learn:
- God defines love, not social media, culture, or peer pressure.
- Love is action, not just a feeling.
- Love does not mean approving everything.
- Real love means forgiveness, humility, and patience.
Quarter 3: How to Love Others Outside Your Circle
Students will be challenged to notice, include, and care for people beyond their usual friend group.
Students will learn:
- Jesus expands what a “neighbor” is.
- Love notices the outcast.
- Love prays for the lost.
- Love serves without expectation.
Quarter 4: Love Within the Community
Students will learn how the love of Christ should shape friendships, small groups, classrooms, teams, and the overall school community.
Students will learn:
- The way Christians love one another shows others the love of Jesus.
- Loved people use words that build up instead of tear down.
- Loved people serve one another.
- Loved people reject gossip, drama, cruelty, and careless joking.
By the end of the year, our prayer is that Middle School students will be able to say:
God’s love is not earned. God defines love. I can love beyond my circle. I can help build a loving community.
Upper School: Learning the Cost and Mission of Love
Upper School students are preparing for life beyond TKA. They are asking deeper questions about identity, purpose, relationships, calling, success, faith, and the future.
The Upper School chapel plan will challenge students to see that the love of Christ defines them, reorders their desires, sends them toward the lost, and calls them into sacrificial service.
Upper School students will move through the year with this progression:
Christ’s love defines me. Christ’s love reorders me. Christ’s love sends me. Christ’s love teaches me to sacrifice.
Quarter 1: Identity Found in the Love of Christ
Students will be challenged to find their identity in Christ rather than achievement, approval, relationships, success, reputation, past mistakes, or self-definition.
Students will learn:
- Love is given, not earned.
- We must reject the lies from the enemy.
- We can find rest in the knowledge that God knows us fully and still loves us.
- Our past does not define who we are in Christ.
Quarter 2: The Dangers of Disordered Love
Students will examine how good things can become ultimate things when they take the place of God.
Students will learn:
- Every heart worships something.
- Good things become dangerous when they become ultimate things.
- We must identify what we love most.
- Disordered love affects our choices, relationships, peace, worship, and obedience.
Quarter 3: A Burden for the Lost
Students will be challenged to pray for, care about, and share the gospel with those who do not know Christ.
Students will learn:
- Identify your “one.”
- Explain and share the gospel and your testimony.
- Understand that we are sent.
- We are empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Quarter 4: Service and Sacrificial Love
Students will learn that Christlike love moves toward need and is willing to sacrifice comfort, status, time, and resources for the good of others.
Students will learn:
- Jesus came to serve and not be served.
- Love is shown through action, not words alone.
- Love costs something.
- Love means serving without expectation of recognition.
By the end of the year, our prayer is that Upper School students will be able to say:
Christ’s love defines me. Christ’s love reorders me. Christ’s love sends me. Christ’s love teaches me to sacrifice.
More Than a Weekly Message
Chapel will not stand alone. The theme will also connect to small groups, house time, student leadership, prayer, service opportunities, and the broader spiritual life of the school.
Throughout the year, students will participate in:
- Age-appropriate chapel teaching
- Worship
- Scripture reading
- Prayer
- Small group discussion
- Student testimony
- Spiritual Emphasis Week
- House and community-building opportunities
- Service and mission opportunities
- Reflection and response moments
Our desire is for students not only to hear chapel messages, but to process, practice, and live out what they are learning.
How Parents Can Partner with Us
Parents play a vital role in spiritual formation. Chapel can introduce and reinforce truth, but the home remains one of the most important places where faith is discussed, modeled, and practiced.
Here are a few simple ways parents can partner with us this year:
- Ask your child what they are learning in chapel.
- Use the theme verse, 1 John 4:19, as a family discussion point.
- Talk about the difference between worldly love and biblical love.
- Encourage your child to identify practical ways to love others at home, school, church, and in the community.
- Pray with your child for someone who needs to know Jesus.
- Model forgiveness, humility, service, and sacrificial love in everyday family life.
Here are a few questions parents can ask throughout the year:
- What did you learn about God’s love this week?
- What is one way Jesus shows us what love is?
- Where do you feel pressure to earn love, approval, or belonging?
- What is the difference between worldly love and biblical love?
- Who is someone you can love outside your normal circle?
- How can you use your words to build someone up this week?
- Who is one person you are praying will come to know Jesus?
- What is one way you can serve without needing attention or credit?
- How can our family love more like Jesus this week?
Worship
Student-led music and creative arts
Testimonies
Stories of God’s work shared by students and alumni
Prayer
School-wide prayer times, student panels, and response moments
Reflection
Small group discussions and journaling resources
