An update from Kelly, Campus Staff at Dickinson College:
At the end of last semester, we (the student Soularium team & I) had decided to try another run of Soularium early in the spring semester with a follow-up discussion group meeting. One of my favorite moments was at one point when this one girl was taking the survey while her friend watched. “I’m just watching,” the friend said at first when I asked if she wanted to do it at the same time. After the girl was done, her friend, intrigued after having observed, said “Can I do it!?” “Of course!” I replied.
A couple of days later, during the second round of Soularium, I was particularly struck/amused by this pair of friends, two sophomore guys, who did it together. I had stepped out and went through my usual plea, “Hi I’m with Dickinson Christian Fellowship, and we’re doing this survey to find out more about the spiritual lives of students on campus, do you have a few minutes to do it? It’s sort of connected to the pictures.” They looked at each other. One said, “Do we want to do it?” The other replied, “Sure, let’s do it!” They went on to absolutely love it. They said multiple times, “This is the best survey I’ve ever done!” They gave extremely long in-depth answers to each question. They loved the whole idea of it- answering using the photographs, as well as the spiritual nature of the questions.
These ended up being the two students who showed up to our follow-up discussion group this past Tuesday. The theme of the meeting was peace & serenity, since it was a big common theme from our Soularium surveying- students feel that they are lacking it in their crazy college schedules but really want it in their lives. Our outline for the meeting looked something like this:
- Intro: What does peace mean to you?
- Where do you find that peace? Can you find it on campus?
- Philippians 4:4-7 Do you pray? Do you see any purpose or value in prayer?
- For you, is there a connection between peace & prayer?
- John 14:27, 16:33 The world is not a peaceful place. However, Jesus claims to bring peace/be a source of peace.
- What do you think about Jesus?
We all participated in the discussion. The two friends really liked sharing their personal ideas and experiences, but also hearing ours. We had a lot of interesting discussion on peace, prayer, the Bible and Jesus. One of the guys is an atheist, and the other Quaker. So they had varying ideas and experiences but both really liked to talk about them with us. They were interested in what I had to say and share.
Something particularly intriguing was the atheist student. He had attended one or two of a secular students organization’s meetings. He (and his friend agreed with him) said that they are very anti-Christian in their atheism. They don’t even talk about other deist religions (theoretically they would disagree with them as well) but tended to just be against Christianity. It caused this student to lose respect for them- even though he is an atheist. He doesn’t even like to be associated with them. He specifically said that even though he technically identified with them belief-wise, he preferred talking with us- the Christian Fellowship- about spiritual things. Both friends said they really enjoyed our discussion and would like to come to more of them.
Interested in hearing what people are saying in response to Soularium? Read here.
Interested in conducting your own Soularium surveys? Order here.
