How Meaningful Life Course Connects Students at Jacksonville College

By EMILY SIMPSON
Baptist Progress Editor

​Loving relationships are something that every person on earth needs. Throughout our lives, we feel the weight of their importance at the best and worst of times. For college students it can be tricky. Those relationships must often be rediscovered as a new era of life begins. However, for Jacksonville College students, they don’t have to search hard to find those connections.
 
Meaningful Life Course at Jacksonville College is not your average private school spiritual formation program. MLC combines a mix of not just chapel services, but intentional small groups as well.
 
“It is a focused time where our staff can help spiritually form our students in a community aspect,” alumni and curriculum writer Jordyn Herring explains. Apart from chapel services, groups of 10-15 are gathered week by week in designated small groups.
 
“They get to make deeper relationships where they get to know some of our staff in a more spiritual way and not just as a professor,” dean of students Shawn Moore describes, “some of our administration staff teach and some of our coaches, not just professors so that kinda makes people seem a little more approachable”.
 
Each week chapel is held with different speakers, topics and music. Yet distinguishable from a church service, the speaker and podium are on the ground and students have the opportunity to ask questions from the audience. The goal of the various topics, apart from gospel opportunities, is “to paint a picture of reality of what the world looks like and how you live in that as a Christian and what the Bible says about that,” says Dean Moore. At the end of each service a time is set aside for students to respond and talk with leaders at the front. More times than not, their own small group leaders are the ones they go to first.
 
“I consider it a privilege to be selected to be a small group leader,” administrative coordinator and HR Representative Linda Craig acknowledges, “as you know, age can be a barrier for you, but that doesn't seem to be a problem with the college students that I deal with and it's an experience that I enjoy”. 

Small group leader Linda Craig prays with students

Students receive donated Bibles during MLC chapel service

​Mrs. Linda, as her students call her, believes “it's very important for me to establish relationships with the students and make them feel comfortable, make them feel important and know that they're loved and appreciated”. When students meet for small groups, it often starts as an unknown experience.
 
“When I started my small group I was so nervous!” Jordyn Herring recalls. While attending Jacksonville College, Herring commuted so her interactions were limited from those living on campus. After attending her first small group where introductions and icebreakers opened the door for more conversation, Herring discovered different perspectives from her fellow classmates. “Just the idea that God would move all of these people to this one place to teach me something was just very touching to me,” Herring now understands. As time went on, the group would discuss scripture and how it relates to their lives. Herring appreciated the example and testimony of her leader, Mrs. Linda, and other leaders who she saw live their faith out daily, and for having a place where she and her fellow classmates could ask hard questions and examine them through scripture. 
 
“I knew that I had a leader designated who I could talk to if I needed help and I knew that I had someone in my corner who was praying for me and was looking out for me. So, it was really crucial to help me feel comfortable and feel settled on campus,” Herring affirms.
 
Today, Herring writes the material students utilize in their small groups and complimentary devotions for the leaders. With thorough planning and feedback from the students, the material is tailored to meet their needs by covering the topics they’re concerned about, finding answers in scripture. Questions on sex and sexuality, anxiety and depression, religion and denominations are some of what the students want to know more about.
 
“Our most striking question we got was ‘why does God still love me after everything I've done?’” Herring explained their small groups provide opportunities for students who may not have grown up in the church to be able to say they’ve read and studied an entire book of the Bible. This upcoming semester, students will do an expositional study of Philippians to answer many of those questions.
 
For students attending Jacksonville College, Mrs. Linda encourages them to know they can have an enjoyable experience “if they have an open mind and open heart”. Jordyn Herring concurs that students should take advantage of talking to their small group leaders while they attend college, “It is very rare that you have a school as small as this one with people who care as much as the people at Jacksonville College do,” and that is one more thing that truly makes Jacksonville College a unique place. 

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