Mid­week Bible Stud­ies

Anne Clouse  

Staff Writer 

Mishawaka - As Bethel starts a new se­mes­ter, a va­ri­ety of new Mid­week Small Groups are avail­able for stu­dents to at­tend. Stu­dents are re­quired to at­tend for five weeks, but each group runs for eight weeks, with new con­tent each time. Ac­cord­ing to Tom Car­pen­ter, Di­rec­tor for Com­mu­nity Life, the pur­pose of small groups is to pro­vide stu­dents with a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence smaller and more per­sonal than tra­di­tional chapel ser­vices. These groups are meant to be in­ten­tional about meet­ing the needs of stu­dents and help­ing them get to know each other bet­ter. The hope is that stu­dents will want to keep com­ing even af­ter get­ting all their re­quired cred­its.  

Ad­di­tion­ally, these are sup­posed to pro­vide a spir­i­tual dis­ci­ple­ship hour. Even though each group has a unique pur­pose, they all fo­cus on one as­pect of be­ing a dis­ci­ple, which are ei­ther to know Je­sus, be like Je­sus, or be on mis­sion with Je­sus. There are also three dif­fer­ent lev­els of en­gage­ment to choose from: come and see, come and en­gage, and come and prac­tice. There are ben­e­fits to each op­tion, and stu­dents can pick the one that best fits them. 

This is the first se­mes­ter stu­dents have been re­quired to sign up for a small group ahead of time, and that is sup­posed to en­cour­age stu­dents to think ahead of time about what they are go­ing to do, and it should help them keep at­tend­ing the same group every week. Also, this will help the lead­ers of each group know how to plan. How­ever, stu­dents do have the free­dom to at­tend stud­ies they did not sign up for, and they can at­tend a study hosted by a res­i­dence hall even if they do not live there. Ideas for fu­ture small group stud­ies can be sent to Stu­dent Life. 

Stud­ies avail­able this se­mes­ter are: 

En­coun­ter­ing the Love of Je­sus by Oak­wood-Slater Hall 

Colos­sians Cam­pus Study by var­i­ous teach­ers and groups 

At­trib­utes of God by Egle Hall 

Para­bles in John by Founder’s Men 

Hear­ing God’s Voice by Michaele LaV­i­gne 

Ves­pers by Spir­i­tual Life Team 

Lead­ing Like Je­sus Led by Ja­son Free­man 

Sim­ple... But Not Easy by Manges Hall 

James Bible Study by Tuckey Hall 

Com­mon Ground by Su­san Ti­tus 

Five Love Lan­guages by Sue Mat­te­son 

Fruit of the Spirit by Jen­nifer Ochstein and Tyler Grant 

Spir­i­tual Prac­tices by Shupe Hall 

God’s Heart for the World by Sheri Campeau 

How to Dis­ci­ple Oth­ers by Je­remy Tice