Bethel Hosts An­nual Lead­er­ship Week­end

MISHAWAKA- The an­nual Lead­er­ship Week­end con­fer­ence took place on Bethel’s cam­pus Jan. 31-Feb. 1; this year’s guest speaker was Mark Mat­lock, an in­sight leader for Barna Group who trav­els the world spread­ing the Word of God. Mat­lock has worked with var­i­ous groups and in­di­vid­u­als such as: Mer­cyMe, Chris Tom­lin, Crow­der, Amer­i­can Bible So­ci­ety and the Seed Com­pany. 

Lead­er­ship Week­end was started 13 years ago by Vice Pres­i­dent for Stu­dent De­vel­op­ment Shawn Holt­gren; Holt­gren felt that it was a sea­son when Bethel needed more stu­dent lead­ers.  

 “The heart of the Lead­er­ship Week­end is to in­vite stu­dents to in­flu­ence our cam­pus for good and to shape the fu­ture of Bethel,” Holt­gren said. 

Holt­gren over­sees plan­ning the over­all sched­ule for lead­er­ship week­end and many oth­ers have as­sisted with the smaller de­tails to bring the event to­gether.  

Mat­lock came pre­pared to speak, but also al­lowed stu­dents to di­rect the con­ver­sa­tion, us­ing the op­por­tu­nity to share from his ex­pe­ri­ences around the world and the jour­ney God has brought him on so far. Holt­gren says that, in ad­di­tion to great con­tent, Mat­lock also brought ex­pe­ri­ence, knowl­edge, and men­tor­ing wis­dom. 

Mat­lock says that young lead­ers are the fu­ture for the church.  

“We’re liv­ing in very dif­fi­cult times for younger adults to fol­low the faith,” Mat­lock said. “The church is in need of mas­sive reimag­i­na­tion, and from a gen­er­a­tional stand­point, peo­ple in their twen­ties are go­ing to bring just that.”  

Be­yond the church, Holt­gren says that the fu­ture of Bethel is in the hands of its stu­dents, and Bethel’s staff and fac­ulty are pour­ing into in­vest­ing in and en­abling stu­dents through Lead­er­ship Week­end.  

Mat­lock wants to re­mind stu­dents to not get frus­trated, but to stay faith­ful to the Word of God in their roles as stu­dent lead­ers.  

“I just turned 50, and there have been times where I wanted to throw my hands up and walk away,” Mat­lock says. “In these times, God has proven Him­self faith­ful; find these types of sto­ries and cling to them when you’re in the same sit­u­a­tion. Just know that it’ll pass. Psalms talks about time and place for every­thing; the time of doubt will change if you stay on course.”