Spiritual Deepening Week on campus

By Antonia Lopez

Staff Writer

Trevecca welcomed Olivia Metcalf as the guest speaker for Spiritual Deepening Week.

“It’s always fun to be on one of our college campuses. There’s a lot of life and energy,” said Metcalf. “I know that entering into [chapel] is such an honor and privilege because the Holy Spirit does really powerful things when we’re engaged and gathered.”

Spiritual Deepening Week occurs every third week of each semester. It is an opportunity for students to slow down and remember that going to college is more than attending class and doing extracurriculars, said Erik Gernand, university chaplain.

The theme for the six sessions throughout the week was based on the word “peripateō,” the Greek word for “to walk’’. It came from a Bible passage in 1 John, where John is telling the readers “if you want to abide in Jesus, you have to peripateō, you have to walk how Jesus walked”, said Metcalf at the Q&A session on Jan. 29.

Metcalf is the Church of the Nazarene District Superintendent for the municipality of Cicero, New York. She was previously co-chaplain with her husband at Northwest Nazarene University for seven years. This was part of the reason why Gernand chose her as speaker for this week, he said.

“Olivia has been on my radar for a while,” said Gernand. “She really knows campus culture and environment and the dynamics that are going on in a person’s development and a life of faith.”

Metcalf discussed ways that walking how Jesus walked could be applied in day to day life, as well as giving students the opportunity to pray in a community with different types of worship in each service.

Services focused on walking with Jesus in different stances of his life. Metcalf focused on Jesus’ journey as he walked and started his ministry at a wedding where he changed water into wine, and ended with a celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

“This has been an amazing week for me. I hope that God has met you exactly where you are,” said ASB chaplain Naomi Akinbade during the last chapel on Feb. 1. “I don’t want that to stop this week, I think that we can continue that into the rest of our lives.”

Trevecca has partnered with other Nashville universities to participate in a 21-day Bible reading challenge for the month of February. Vanderbilt, Tennessee State, Belmont, Fisk and Lipscomb are among the universities participating in the challenge, according to Gernand.

If participating in the challenge, students would read one chapter of the book of John beginning on Feb. 1.