The recently formed Bible club, led by seniors Joshua Vandewater, Patrick Beshay and Erion Zaimi, works to help people find themselves and become more immersed in their faith through the Bible.
Vandewater, Behsay and Zaimi held their first club meeting a week before Christmas, which is widely known as Jesus’s birthday, in 2023. Through multiple conversations, the seniors realized they wanted to help people connect more with their faith, and believe the perfect way to do so is to analyze the Bible and the application it has on people’s lives.
Since forming, the club now has 20 to 30 members and meets every Tuesday in H206. The club leaders are glad they have a considerably large number of students interested in discussing the Bible and feel encouraged rather than overwhelmed by this amount.
“If we have a lot of people, we often split them into little groups to have side discussions,” Beshay said. “And when there’s more people, there’s more ideas that are brought up.”
The club leaders encourage members to discuss their different ideas and interpretations of the Bible.
“Something from last year that I learned is although disagreements are generally not good, we can talk through stuff and find a common ground,” Beshay said. “It helps me grow and helps me think about things more critically.”
According to Zaimi, having each other can be helpful because in Bible club everyone is at different parts of their journey. When people combine their different levels of knowledge it can often clear the pathway to deeper understanding.
“Having Patrick and Joshua really helps since we can all put our heads together and if we have a gap in our knowledge then the others can fill it out,” Zaimi said.
Although there has been an influx of new members, Vandewater doesn’t think the recent rise has been because of posters or promotions. He believes it’s because people are discovering more about themselves.
“I think people are starting to realize that things in this world are truly empty and will never actually bring you true fulfillment,” Vandewater said. “I’ve seen complete atheists and really smart people come and see what it truly means to be fulfilled, and you can only truly be fulfilled through the love of God.”
The leaders work hard to plan not only what the club is doing that week, but also by having an end goal for what they should accomplish by the end of the year.
“One of the main goals we have is to get through the life of Jesus and cover bits and parts of the Old Testament, which is before Jesus came,” Vandewater said.
Sometimes their plans become even better than expected.
“Two weeks ago, we had a guest speaker come in, who was a Coptic nun, and she told her story about how she adopted the Christian faith from being a Buddhist,” Zaimi said. “We all had a fun time listening and asking questions, which made it a very good environment to be in.”
The leaders say the Bible club is a great experience for those who would like to extend their knowledge of Christianity according to the Bible while having a pleasant time doing it.
