By Robin Gericke, News Editor
Reveal, the chapel theme for the 2018-19 school year, was motivated by feedback from students. After finishing the three-year-long series of Behold, Become and Be Bold, Assistant Chaplain Jeannie Banter said, “We were sensing that something different needed to happen this next year.”
The spiritual life team “really felt like students wanted to know more about the Biblical narrative of Scripture,” Banter said. “We thought that would be best coming from us, from people students already trust and know.” After spending time in prayer during last spring break, they decided to spend a year going through the metanarrative of Scripture. In May, they met and prayed over the preaching team and what points would be covered.
“Because you don’t have to be a Christian to come to Asbury, not everybody comes from a place of even understanding,” Banter said. “We really wanted to provide handles for our students and not assume that they just knew all these stories.” She explained that chapel speakers often talk as though all students are familiar with the Bible stories and examples they use. “We wanted to start with a clean slate and preach the story of God from beginning to end,” Banter said.
The content of the series will start with creation and end in Acts. The focus is on the major points of the Biblical story that formulate God’s character and nature. “We will end the [fall] semester in Isaiah with the proclamation of the prophets that Jesus is coming, that he’s coming as a baby and that he will be the Comforter,” Banter said. “We will pick up in the spring in John – ‘and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.’”
“We have this semester of sitting in the beauty of how God created us,” Banter said about the first semester. “He created us for intimate relationship with himself and one another. And we hit the fall and all the consequences. Then we come into the spring and the word becoming flesh. We walk through the book of John and the life of Jesus. We will hit Easter early because Easter is so late in our calendar year, and then we will pick up the first chapters of Acts — now that we know who Jesus is, how do we live this out?”
Gather was moved to Monday nights at 9 p.m. in order to align with Reveal. “We are trying to be very intentional. Everything is pointed in the same direction,” Banter said. They heard from students that there wasn’t enough time to process chapel or that students didn’t know where to process the messages they heard. Now, each Reveal chapel speaker will prepare his or her own questions related to the sermon. These are given to the Spiritual Life Assistants (SLA) who then lead discussion on their halls.
Sophomore Hannah Springer is the SLA of First Glide. “I think it is an amazing idea to allow the school to be together in the theme of Gather,” she said. “I am excited to walk through the Bible as a school and combine that with spiritual life on the hall.”
Banded discipleship also came out of student feedback. Banter was hearing from students that “it’s great that we have chapel, and it’s great that we have small groups, but I don’t know how to do life with someone in a real way. I want to be known, but I don’t know how to do that.” With banded discipleship, the focus is on forming deeper friendships and asking “next-level questions.” For this semester, “bands” are replacing the traditional small group Bible studies.
“All of us in leadership have been in a ‘band,’ and it’s changed our lives,” Banter said. “Why wouldn’t we offer this to our students?” There were 190 students at the first informational meeting, and 90 students signed up to receive Scripture. The format of the “bands” is intentionally slow so that students take time to build trust. “We have to build trust, and we have to build safety,” Banter said. “So over time, we’re going to work through these questions.” “Bands” will read Scripture together, pray for one another and work through five questions throughout the semester. All “bands” will read Scripture “not for the purpose of dissecting it as a ‘band’ but letting it inform everything that you do,” she said.
Sophomore Ben Jeffers has recently committed to a “band” group. “I’m most excited about being able to reach a depth of relationship with other guys that will teach me to be vulnerable, keep me accountable and help me to grow in my walk with Christ,” he said.
