Rebooting the Journey

For those of you who have been following our “Story of BEMA” series, we want to say thank you. Learning how to reflect on our story and how to tell it — considering how we got here and what it means to steward our current reality — has been a great exercise for our team here at BEMA and Impact Campus Ministries. If you’d ever like to go back and review that story in full, the entire series can be found here.

But to keep this conversation going, part of considering how we got here meant realizing that when we started the podcast, we did not know what it would become. The content is making all sorts of assumptions that confuse the average listener. Here are some examples:

• We were assuming college students. We weren’t casting vision about why the work of college ministry is important or how we do what we do with students.
• We were assuming that a particular approach to active discipleship accompanied the listener. This was true for the original programming with the college students who formed our original audience. It is not true for most of our listeners today.
• We also grew in our understanding of what we believe God was asking us to do with college students. In our earliest material, these thoughts were just seeds that hadn’t yet sprouted.

So for the average listener who begins their journey with BEMA Session 1, they jump into a journey on a college campus in 2016. They hear invitations to “join us for discussion groups on the Palouse” and have very little idea what we’re talking about or what our true intentions and desires are.

So…

[drumroll]

In 2025, we will be rebooting Session 1 of the BEMA Podcast. The new episodes will simply replace the original ones in the podcast feed. We’re very excited about this refresh and what it will allow us to do. We’ll be able to clean up all the things mentioned above and hopefully we will cause less confusion. We’ll be able to fix some details and content that we simply got wrong; mistakes are real! We’ll also be able to work the larger BEMA teaching team into the earliest episodes.

This should be a great chapter of production and vision for BEMA and we really hope that you’ll join us if you’re interested. For all those new listeners, they will never know the difference, but for those of you who have been with us for so long, we think you’ll enjoy revisiting some of our earliest lessons with an updated feel.

This is Jack.

Jack was introduced to BEMA from a friend right after he graduated college. Not knowing what he was going to do after graduation, his community continued to disintegrate and he was ready to listen and learn from something new — maybe more ready than he realized. After relearning some things and falling back in love with the complexity of the Bible, Jack was having meaningful conversations with his friends about their spiritual formation.

Jack finished Session 5 as he was completing his 100th mile hiking the Pacific Coast Trail. He heard Marty say, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” This proved to be an apt metaphor for life — it was mile 100 of what would be over 2,650 miles, and that was just the start of the journey God is leading Jack on for the rest of his life.

Jack has since finished his trek of the PCT and appreciates that chapter of his life with more perspective. In his own words:

This new journey I have been on with [my friends], my mom, and all the people around us watching us grow, began simply, not so long ago, with one step. It has brought us so far, so close together, and has changed us so much. I know these people are thriving, ready to love others, and ready to put the world back together.

I thank you guys for the teachings and the tools you have provided. They have shaped me in ways I could not have imagined, and have provided context and perspectives that allow me to ask better questions. Thank you for all that you do, all that you have taught me, and for catalyzing the adventure I needed to take to get here.

Marty, Brent, or Brian may be coming to your neck of the woods. If more information is available, we will include some of that below. Full details on the BEMA website.

SEPTEMBER 1: BEMA Liturgy begins for the 2024–25 season

SEPTEMBER 1–12: BEMA Israel Turkey 2024!

SEPTEMBER 19: Live Q&A at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET (details)

SEPTEMBER 22: Marty preaching at University Christian Church in Cincinnati

SEPTEMBER 27–30: Marty and Brian in Kansas City (no public events)

OCTOBER 1–2: Marty speaking at NW Christian One Day in Eugene and La Pine, OR

OCTOBER 3: Session 9 begins

OCTOBER 10: Group facilitator meeting at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET

OCTOBER 20: Marty preaching at University Christian Church in Cincinnati

OCTOBER 20: Live Q&A at 1 pm PT / 4 pm ET (details)

OCTOBER 27: Marty preaching at University Christian Church in Cincinnati

OCTOBER 29 – NOVEMBER 1: Marty with CCF at Truman State (no public events)

NOVEMBER 8–9: Marty in the Chicago area (details TBD)

NOVEMBER 10: Marty preaching in Janesville, WI (details TBD)

NOVEMBER 14–17: Marty at ICOM in Lexington, KY

NOVEMBER 18: Live Q&A at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET (details)

NOVEMBER 24: Marty preaching at Genesis Church in Bloomington, IN (some details TBD)

Updates and additional details will be posted as they arrive at bemadiscipleship.com/news.

We are sharing links to the latest videos Marty is producing for those of you who don’t subscribe to his YouTube channel. (But please subscribe!)

• HALL OF FAITH: Warning of Things Not Seen

• THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Flower Man

• HALL OF FAITH: Tents Over Towers

We also have a new BEMA YouTube channel with a handful of resources so far. We will continue to use this new channel in the future as we develop more of our ideas.

CONNECT AND SUPPORT