Spir­i­tual Em­pha­sis Week Ig­nite Se­ries: In­vi­ta­tion to a Jour­ney

MISHAWAKA—Spir­i­tual Em­pha­sis Week is an op­por­tu­nity each year for Bethel’s cam­pus to re­fo­cus our at­ten­tion to Je­sus and be uni­fied in what is most im­por­tant. The se­ries for Spir­i­tual Em­pha­sis Week changed its of­fi­cial name last year and is now called Ig­nite.

Rev­erend Court­ney Richards, the speaker for this year, was the di­rec­tor of stu­dent life, as­so­ci­ate dean of stu­dents, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­ogy, and coun­selor at Bethel back in the 90’s. He will be speak­ing on a theme he chose and saw fit: In­vi­ta­tion to a Jour­ney: A Rad­i­cal View of Fol­low­ing Je­sus. 

Richards is from Ja­maica and has con­nec­tions here at Bethel. He has a gift for evan­ge­lism and teach­ing. Us­ing those gifts, he em­pha­sizes that our Chris­t­ian walk is not pri­vate, its per­sonal.

“He has that spir­i­tual man­tle,” Shawn Holt­gren, vice pres­i­dent for stu­dent de­vel­op­ment, said. Holt­gren is a friend and for­mer mentee of Richards.

Richards spoke at Bethel a few years ago and con­nected well with stu­dents that year which fu­eled the idea to ask him back. He was asked and sched­uled to come speak last year, but due to con­flicts of be­ing in­ter­na­tional and Covid-19, he was post­poned re­turn­ing to Bethel un­til this year.

The goal of this week is that Je­sus would light a fire on cam­pus. This helps to em­pha­size the fact that Je­sus is pre­sent in every as­pect of Bethel. Faith is per­sonal and cor­po­rate and Spir­i­tual Em­pha­sis Week high­lights just that.

“I think when we get our eyes off of Christ, we can be led toward religion instead of the encounter of God,” said Holtgren. 

This year’s goal was to make it a big­ger ex­pe­ri­ence than just one week. There will be the show­ing of the se­ries The Cho­sen and a prayer walk in ad­di­tion to the sched­uled chapels every morn­ing, three evening chapels and an Af­ter­glow wor­ship night. The morn­ing chapels all count to­ward chapel credit and the evening chapels are vol­un­tary.

“It’s so nice to have it back this year. I look to this week to re­ally set the tone for the en­tire school year,” Holt­gren said.