For a summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish in this blog series (in the second week of every month of 2018), I recommend reviewing my explanation here.
Student Ministry. As I get further and further into my job as President of Impact Campus Ministries, I find I am spending less and less time with students on campus. This is a natural part of my duty to make the difficult decisions to do my job well and lead the organization with the right amount of focus and dedication. However, working with students is still a part of my job that I get to do, and I really enjoy it.
While I am going to end up on campus one or two times a month to meet with a student or two, most of my student ministry revolves around the discipleship program I started years ago, called BEMA Discipleship. With the exception of some of the pastoral duties that naturally arise from this ministry, it is essentially a teaching ministry that utilizes my spiritual giftedness to lead students and find those special disciples who might work with me on a closer level (more on this in a later post).
So what is BEMA? The ministry is situated around a “flipped classroom.” For those of you who may not be familiar with the term, a flipped classroom takes advantage of the technology at our disposal to put the class content online, allowing us to use our valuable “class time” to focus on application and discussion. It’s more of a lab experience than a lecture. While that may sound really impressive, I still don’t do it as well as I should. I’m a work in progress!
We start by recording the weekly podcast; Brent Billings helps me produce a high-quality, top-notch recording that we publish as a public podcast. Listeners can find it on iTunes or any other podcast player. Students listen to the podcast, take notes, and come to class ready to discuss the questions that arose as they studied the material. It’s a really cool thing to be a part of.
Since the podcast has gone public, we’ve had groups start up all around the country. I’ve had the opportunity to meet groups full of people who I’ve never met before as I go about my travels. It’s an incredible experience to see what God does with this decentralized, flipped classroom idea.
People are able to read about this ministry, find the podcasts, stay up to date on scheduling, and even find/start groups around the country by visiting our website here.
Embedded below is a video diary I made that shows the process of making the podcasts, getting ready for discussion groups, and even being at a discussion group in Moscow or Pullman.
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