Spiritual Life

Beth Guckenberger said she was ill-prepared for her life in missional work and found herself in over her head many times. But she shows up, with her pink Bible, her heart and her mind and knows that God will show up for her, too. “Do you know how many times I’ve been in over my head? Every day,” she told students at Chapel. ” … But here’s what happens. When you get into God’s business, and you get in over your head and you cry out to him, he’ll say, ‘Hey, whatever it is you’re asking of me, I’m already in agreement of it.” Her talk came just before Monday night’s mission fair at GCU Arena and tonight’s The Gathering, where several mission groups will conduct break-out sessions. Her talk also came at a time when the Worship Team was celebrating something of their own — the release of the new Canyon Worship album.

GCU President Brian Mueller’s Chapel message Monday morning centered on the University’s mission, both on campus and in the community. “If you could a pick a word that says, ‘What are we here for?’, I would say to you we are here about restoration. We are here to be restorers,” he said.

They sang. Oh, how they sang. They worshiped. Oh, how they worshiped. The annual Ignite ceremony, a staple of Welcome Week, turned everyone in GCU Arena on Thursday night into a participant and challenged the emotions of everyone who was there. It was that powerful.

The Chapel schedule for the fall semester features a lot of speakers who have brought strong messages to campus before. From Beth Guckenberger to Ron Merrell to Riccardo Stewart and many more, here’s a look at who’s speaking when and what they’ve said before.

GCU and GCE volunteers fanned out to two homes in the neighborhood on Friday, digging into painting and landscaping projects and defying the July heat. Homeowner Mira Nava recalled the first time Habitat visited her home eight years ago to fix the roof. Her mother was battling cancer at the time and told Nava: “This is a reminder that God is still here.” Andrea Northup, Habitat for Humanity Faith Relations Manager, told Nava: “That’s what GCU lives by — faith.”

It has been about three years since Michael Kary self-published what he once thought to be journals, and now his book, “Acting in Faith: A Christian’s Guide,” is being published by Kendall Hunt Publishing and distributed to other Christian institutions across the country. In it, Kary teaches students that they can still be proud Christians while also excelling in the acting profession. Kary believes that differences between the entertainment industry and Christianity have led to both sides holding misunderstood views about each other and hopes his book will help clear up some of the misconceptions that exist.

Adriana Quintanares moved to the United States when she was 4 years old, not speaking a word of English. She remembers her immigrant parents buying her a dictionary and looking up every word — every single word — to help her understand her homework. “My family, of course — and God — have kept me going,” said the GCU biology junior. Juan Colorado-Alvarez spoke about those school lunches no one seemed to like very much. He looked forward to them; sometimes those school lunches were the only meals he would eat. His immigrant parents, who worked two jobs each, constantly struggled to make it paycheck to paycheck. Quintanares and Colorado-Alvarez, a junior accounting major, reached deep and shared their hardships and how the Students Inspiring Students scholarship changed their lives at Tuesday’s SIS scholarship reception.

The Class of 2019 got to GCU at a time when the campus was starting to really grow. The soon-to-be graduates have a lot of thoughts about what they’ve seen.

The idea for the April issue of GCU Magazine actually was hatched in 2015, when we told the stories of some of the incoming students in the Class of 2019. Now they’re graduating, and it was time to see what their four years were like. The answer: It was a head-spinning time of growth, both on campus and for the students themselves. This issue also features the University’s first graduates from its engineering program and its Students Inspiring Students initiative, a look at how GCU teaches computer programming differently, the heartwarming story of Jesse Dalla Riva‘s transformation from drug addict to graduate, and a My LopeLife piece by another 2019 grad. There’s more: what’s ahead for the GCU men’s basketball program, the increasingly important communication tool utilized by online instructors and students, and yet another heartwarming story — this one on recent GCU Hall of Fame inductee Sharky Baker. To read the digital version, click here.  

A mission trip designed to connect the people in Cape Town, South Africa, to their local churches instead transformed the faith of 15 GCU students. By spending their spring break in the township of Khayelitsha, they were able to gain a new perspective on how God’s love is found in faith rather than worldly things. Students participated in prayer walks and home visits and assisted with the Vacation Bible School program. “We encountered people who literally had nothing and had some of the strongest faith in God that I’ve ever seen in my life,” said one of the leaders on the trip, Sydney Wastradowski.