Students take time to examine spiritual walk

The Dean of Students Office held its second annual iTransform event in the Hancock Welcome Center Tuesday, March 19, providing students with the opportunity to examine their spiritual lives.

Brigitte Ritchey, a senior care officer in the Dean of Students Office, organized the event.

“The idea was to have some kind of event to help students in a positive way, to build resilience and to kind of work ourselves out of a job,” Ritchey said. “We would rather do something positive for the bigger population of the school than the smaller population that we see in our offices.”

The walk-through event featured seven different stations targeting various areas of the Christian life.

“The whole idea is to get them to self-evaluate. Where are you with the Lord? What’s going on in your life right now? Do you want to change? Is it where you want to be?” Ritchey said.

At the beginning of the walk-through, students evaluated their spiritual life by writing words that described themselves.

“I really enjoyed the questions that were brought up during the event,” Liberty student Kimi Dahl said. “The questions were meant to get us thinking about our own spiritual walk, both where we are and where we want to be.”

In another portion of the walk-through, students took note of all of the clutter in the world that can be a distraction to a relationship with God.

“One of the focuses of the event was about how distracted we can get, whether from our own sinful habits pulling us away from God or through distractions such as advertisements, social media, etc., that can create bad habits,” Dahl said.

At the end of the walk-through, students were offered a 31-day challenge to read through a free electronic book featuring Andrew Murray’s “Waiting on God.”

During a time of worship, students had the opportunity to decide if they would commit to the challenge and ponder the question, “How transformed are you?”

After a time of reflection, students wrote words describing where they want to be in the future and took a second picture.

According to Ritchey, more than 300 students took the 31-day-challenge last year, and a Facebook post about the event received nearly 90 likes in a matter of minutes. This year, a follow-up event will be held to see the progress of students who took the challenge.