The Bethel Experience in Retrospect

              THE BETHEL EXPERIENCE IN RETROSPECT
JOANNE ZERGER JANZEN
My three years in the small Christian fellowship groups at Bethel
College continue to be valuable to me in several ways. While par-ticipating
in these groups which we called seminars, I began to dis-cover
a religion more valid for me than the one I had been prac-ticing.
This is a kind of Christianity which calls me to live in a
loving, forgiving relationship with as many persons as possible and
to help them become their best, potential selves. This involves per-sons
related to me in widely diverse ways-the children in Jordan
who need milk and my home church member, my unpleasant neighbor
lady and my graduate student friends, my parents and the Congolese
student who needs a French teacher. The means to fulfill this call
also are ones of personal contact. The Christian community seeks,
in Christ's spirit, to help its member defi~e what his call means in
particular situations; the community's encouragement and forgiveness
give him enough confidence and security to risk following this call.
This is a contrast to my earlier belief that being Christian was es-sentially
a private project undertaken by oneself with God's help
and that one could establish the right personal relationship with God
independent of other people. The call to commit myself to the task
of reconciling separated people has helped unify my religious beliefs
and the purpose in my life.
The discovery of the social nature of Christianity came to me
largely through a group of Christians, our seminar, who shared their
insights, questions, and past experiences concerning the Christian life.
I learned at least as much from what our group tried to be as from
what we discussed .. We tried to act and make our decisions according
to the truth that emerged from our conversation and the convic-tion
that came out of our worship. One year our fellowship tried to
follow through on our discussion of communion by deciding whether
we should take this sacrament in some form in our own informal
church. Members made an effort to talk out and forgive the grudges
between themselves and others. We tried to assist each other with
practical problems. Several fellow seminar members and I were con-fronted
with the choice of a major were guided by the consequent
seminar sessions on Christian decision-making and vocation. With the
aid of the principles and approaches outlined fa the weekly meeting,
43
several friends and I could talk through the very specific pros and
cons of my choosing an English major. The most personal and the
most important guidance and support that seminar members gave
each other often took place in such discussions between two or three
members.
My enthusiasm for our serious Chr,istian fellowship grew because here
Christianity seemed to be alive. Right action and belief for par-ticular
situations were determined by the group seeking God's will,
rather than from rules for the Christian life. This idea of Christian
discipleship has made me more free to do God's will and to thereby
find myself because the right thing to do must continually be deter-mined
anew; I do not become so restricted by an inflexible com-mitment,
for example, to being a chemistry major or an English
teacher, when I could better do God's will in a different way. I also
credit the fellowship for making me more persistent in my own
Christian searching and discipline. The seminar discussions gave my
efforts added significance; the concern of fellow members who felt
some responsibility for me encouraged and aided me; and the help
and interest they expected from me made me less negligent in giving
the help they needed.
My seminar experience was valuable because here I found out ex-perientially
what my heritage from ·the Anabaptists was. Our seminar
studied the Anabaptist concept of the church and Christian disciple-ship,
and then tried to embody in our own group what we found
helpful from their ideas and experiences. In this way I developed an
appreciation and enthusiasm for my religious ancestry that I would
not have gained through a detached investigation of them.
I value my experience with the Bethel seminars for what they
tried to be, even though we frequently failed to drive discussions
through to decisions or to be as open and honest as we could have
or to deal directly with barriers that developed within our group.
But from our occasional successes I realize what quality of Christian
living; close fellowship groups could make possible, and so I am
grateful to the Bethel seminars for an ideal, which I tried to sketch
in the preceding paragraphs.
Our shortcomings also have taught me some things to watch for
in my future participation in Christian fellowships. Speculative philo-sophic
and theological discussions often left behind those members
lacking a philosophic bent or the right background of reading and
sometimes kept those carrying the discussions from directly confront-ing
more personal and important issues. Sessions on practical prob-
44
lems, such as anger toward those dorm-mates whose noise disturbed
us, were the discussions in which we had the most common experiences
and interests and the least difficulty making ourselves understood.
Our seminar experience underlined the necessity of giving our
fellowship continual attention. For members to develop a Christian
responsibility for each other, we needed to spend more time than
the weekly seminar hour learing to know and trust each other. We
needed a steering committee which met before each seminar session
to plan the next meeting. It was important that the steering com-mittee
define a current version of members' interests, consider the
internal problems and the purpose and direction of the seminar, and
investigate issu~s external to the group with which it should be con-cerned.
All of these can shift quickly for a group of college students;
the question a student places on the discussion agenda at the first
of the year may no longer be his life concern when the seminar is
scheduled to take it up. In order to keep the fellowship effective, the
committee must keep in constant touch with all members to inform
them of the plans for the next meeting, to show concern for their
absences, and to get the feedback of ideas about what the seminar
is and ought to be doing.
One problem to our seminars was the fringe member, who did not
commit himself to regular, active participation, although the group
asks this of its members. It hurt those of us who were enthusiastic
about our small fellowship to know that others could indifferently
take or leave something so important to us. It took extra effort and
often frustrating conversations to continually bring the fringe member
up-to-date on· the seminar developments since he last attended, espe-cially
if he eventually dropped out anyway. As a result I think these
irregular attenders were sometimes wrongly blamed for the hesitancy
of the regular members to share the more important sides of them-selves
or for general lack of enthusiasm and effort in the seminar.
The seminar is responsible for accommodating in some way persons
not yet ready to commit themselves to the fellowship, and I have
observed in our close Christian fellowship at the University of Kansas
that when regular members feel themselves a part of a vital, signifi-cant
fellowship and are able to be open with each other, then
visitors do not interfere or detract from the meeting, but rather
are caught up by its spirit. The value of my Bethel seminar experi-ence
has made me eager to be part of a similar group in the new
communities where I will live.
45