Mid­week Small Group Op­tions

Carla Mon­taruli  

Staff writer  

Mishawaka- At Bethel Uni­ver­sity the Mid­week Small Group started on Sept. 20.  

These are small group dis­ci­ple­ship ac­tiv­i­ties that en­able stu­dents to learn to ap­ply the ideas and de­bates from the chapel, class­room, and gen­eral spir­i­tual prac­tices in their lives. As a stu­dent, you can par­tic­i­pate in a small group for many weeks each se­mes­ter. Mid­week small groups are nec­es­sary for most stu­dents as part of their over­all spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment pro­gram­ming. Top­ics and places change each se­mes­ter to pro­vide a di­verse range of growth op­por­tu­ni­ties. These small groups are sub­di­vided into three dif­fer­ent groups, de­pend­ing on the need that the stu­dents have in re­gard to that spir­i­tual life: KNOW JE­SUS, BE LIKE JE­SUS, ON MIS­SON. Also, they are di­vided by what kind of ap­proach stu­dents want to have with Je­sus: Come and See, Come and en­gage, Come and prac­tice. Con­sid­er­ing these sub­di­vi­sions, stu­dents can pick a dif­fer­ent time mainly be­tween Tues­days and Wednes­days.  

Stu­dents con­sider this meet­ing as an op­por­tu­nity to grow.  

“I think mid­weeks are im­pact­ful be­cause they al­low us stu­dents to be in com­mu­nity and en­cour­age one other in their faith, es­pe­cially since a lot of the group are led by stu­dents,” said Saige Rinken­berger, a ju­nior stu­dent at BU. Ac­cord­ing to Shawn Holt­gren, Vice Pres­i­dent for Spir­i­tual Life and Uni­ver­sity Af­fairs, we are in­tended to grow and de­velop as Chris­tians, and we aren't healthy if we aren't de­vel­op­ing in our re­li­gion. In or­der to achieve this, Holt­gren con­sid­ers mid­week es­sen­tial.  

“Mid­week Small Groups at Bethel are in­tended to help stu­dents grow in their faith through per­sonal in­ter­ac­tions with ma­ture be­liev­ers and peers,” Holt­gren said. “While Chapel pro­vides a mean­ing­ful set­ting for the BU com­mu­nity to wor­ship and hear from God’s Word to­gether, Mid­week Small Groups pro­vide a con­text for stu­dents to go “deeper” by in­ter­act­ing with one an­other and fac­ulty and staff lead­ers.”  

 Mid­week Small Groups this year com­ple­ment Bethel's no­tion of dis­ci­ple­ship as well as stu­dents' lev­els of faith and de­sired de­gree of com­mit­ment. This year goal is  that all mem­bers of the com­mu­nity, stu­dents, staff, and teach­ers, will take "next steps" in their re­li­gious jour­ney.