Belle­feuille Dis­cusses This Year’s Theme and Vi­sion for Bethel

MISHAWAKA—Is Bethel’s In­terim Pres­i­dent Barb Belle­feuille, Ed.D.,  go­ing to get the theme she chal­lenged Bethel with this year tat­tooed on her foot? Only time will tell. 

The theme for this year, He must in­crease—I must de­crease (from John 3:30), was what Belle­feuille spoke on in the first week of chapel, show­ing off her new tat­too of the logo de­signed specif­i­cally for this theme. That got the at­ten­tion of the en­tire stu­dent body, and every­one had a good laugh af­ter she re­vealed it was only henna. How­ever, the mes­sage Belle­feuille spoke was on this topic and fo­cused on putting oth­ers first. 

“If we [Bethel] could be known as peo­ple so self-less, and if our stu­dents in this area in the city of South Bend, in our neigh­bor­hood, and even with each other, could be peo­ple who are not self-in­dul­gent but are fo­cused on be­ing ser­vants to each other, how much would we prompt other peo­ple into good works and be con­tent to seek God—that would be trans­form­ing,” Belle­feuille said.

The theme was in­spired by a book Belle­feuille read on anx­i­ety and her wit­ness­ing all the stress and anx­i­ety go­ing on around her. 

“Con­tin­u­ous self-in­dul­gence ac­tu­ally ends up cre­at­ing self-im­posed anx­i­ety,” Belle­feuille said.

The book said peo­ple think self-in­dul­gence (not talk­ing about tak­ing a nap or tak­ing a break to eat lunch) is heal­ing but it ends up hav­ing the op­po­site ef­fect. It brings empti­ness and is not what peo­ple were cre­ated to do and in that no one can ever be sat­is­fied. Build­ing a bet­ter Bethel starts with putting oth­ers first on a day-to-day ba­sis. It is what will make Bethel stand out. 

Belle­feuille was drawn to the ed­u­ca­tion scene from a young age in life. She grew up in Michi­gan and at­tended col­lege in South Car­olina.

“It was life-chang­ing for me, I was the first one in my fam­ily,” Belle­feuille said. "Get­ting a teach­ing de­gree and mov­ing into teach­ing was a dream.” She was pushed by good friends of hers to get her mas­ter’s de­gree and even­tu­ally her doc­tor­ate at Vir­ginia Tech. Belle­feuille had a pas­sion and vi­sion for train­ing teach­ers how to think bib­li­cally about their stu­dents, cur­ricu­lum, and life in gen­eral. 

Her first teach­ing job was at a col­lege in Geor­gia. In this po­si­tion, she felt that she was liv­ing out her dream. Then op­por­tu­ni­ties to be in lead­er­ship po­si­tions started com­ing up. Belle­feuille felt she needed to move closer to home, but only wanted to work in a Chris­t­ian based school. That was when Bethel came into the pic­ture. Belle­feuille felt drawn to Bethel be­cause of the prox­im­ity to her home, but it kept her at­ten­tion be­cause of its mis­sion. She got the job as Vice Pres­i­dent for Aca­d­e­mic Ser­vices and filled that po­si­tion for nine years be­fore leav­ing it to be­come in­terim pres­i­dent.