Deeper Life Se­ries Re­cap 

MISHAWAKA—In the week of March 14, Bethel Uni­ver­sity hosted its yearly Deeper Life Week. The speaker of the con­fer­ence was Nirup Alphonse, the lead pas­tor of Life­gate Church in Den­ver, Col­orado. This, to Alphon­se’s knowl­edge, is his fifth or sixth time speak­ing at Bethel. The fo­cus of the con­fer­ence was on prayer. This fo­cus was found through prayer and con­fer­ring with Shawn Holt­gren on what kind of ser­mon se­ries would be im­por­tant for the con­gre­ga­tion of Bethel Uni­ver­sity. 

For the se­ries it­self, each of the ses­sions were on the pas­sage of Mark 9 wherein a fa­ther whose son was de­mon pos­sessed reached out to Je­sus Christ in faith.  Alphonse homed in on the dif­fer­ence be­tween Je­sus Christ and his dis­ci­ples on how they ap­proached this fa­ther and his son. The dis­ci­ples would rather talk about what to do than pray about it. But Alphonse pri­mar­ily fo­cused on what a Chris­tian’s prayer life should look like. He started his first ses­sion on Mon­day morn­ing, March 14, dur­ing the reg­u­lar chapel time and ended with the fifth ses­sion on Wednes­day morn­ing, March 16, when Mid­week chapels are sched­uled. In the mean­time, be­tween those ses­sions, he had Mon­day evening, Tues­day morn­ing, and Tues­day night ses­sions. 

He is glad he has the op­por­tu­nity to re­turn to Bethel Uni­ver­sity time and time again be­cause he en­joys see­ing the pro­gres­sion of what the Lord is do­ing in the stu­dents’ lives as they travel from Fresh­man year to Se­nior year. Alphonse says, “Every now and then, I’ll hear, ‘Man, you came when I was a fresh­man, and you said this when I was a fresh­man, and…it made an im­pact on my life’ four years later. That’s al­ways re­ally spe­cial to hear about stuff like that.” Alphonse con­tin­ues, “You don’t nor­mally get that when you speak at con­fer­ences. You don’t get to hear how it im­pacted some­one’s life years later.”

Alphonse went to col­lege at Trin­ity in Chicago for his un­der­grad­u­ate, and he says he re­ally en­joys the Chris­t­ian col­lege en­vi­ron­ment. He al­ways looks for­ward to speak­ing in this kind of en­vi­ron­ment. “I lived this,” Alphonse says. “I know what it feels like…to live in this space of ‘what do I re­ally be­lieve? and how do I put this in prac­tice?’ In a world that is con­fus­ing and grow­ing, now the world is even chang­ing rapidly…it’s re­ally dis­tract­ing.”

He wants to find a mes­sage that an­chors some­thing for the rest of a stu­den­t’s life. This mes­sage is prayer for Alphonse. “If you can learn how to be in the scrip­tures, learn how to be a per­son of prayer, com­mu­nally, not just in­di­vid­u­ally, then as you leave this place, and you find a lo­cal gath­er­ing of God’s peo­ple to whom you can be an­chored and con­nected to, then I think you can con­tinue to grow in your faith and prac­tice the way of Je­sus.” 

Alphonse be­lieves that Chris­t­ian col­leges like Bethel Uni­ver­sity are the best and safest places to learn how to prac­tice the way of Je­sus.