Mennonite Weekly Review

NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — Among the reasons John McCabe-Juhnke gives for why he looks forward to going to his job at Bethel College: lunch.

Omar Hasan, left, and Ben Santos became friends as football teammates, and both are majoring in the sciences, chemistry and biology, at Bethel. — Photo by Vada Snider/Bethel College

It isn’t the food he craves, but the company.

“We work with people who are our good friends,” said the professor of communication arts. “What characterizes that for me is how much we enjoy getting together over the lunch table” in the cafeteria.

He has been surprised to hear from colleagues who have gone from Bethel to other colleges or those who have come to visit from other institutions that the same thing doesn’t happen there.

“This is a Bethel distinctive, and one thing that illustrates the Bethel community,” McCabe-Juhnke said.

This effect, sometimes affectionately called “the Bethel bubble,” may very well have to do with the college’s size. It’s both the oldest and smallest — at around 500 students currently — of the Mennonite four-year colleges.

Josh Chittum just completed the requirements for his degree in elementary education (he will go through graduation in May) and moved to Kansas City to take a new job. Reflecting on his years at Bethel, he recalls convocation — Mondays and Fridays from 11 to 11:50 a.m., with all Bethel students attending a prescribed number per semester.

“When we had a convo where I felt like it reached everyone in the audience — those were really powerful moments for me,” he said. “And then everyone would leave and go to lunch. It was like you were going to class with the whole campus, and then eating together.”

Aaron Chappell-Deckert, vice president for student life, who was a residence hall director for several years before taking his current position, notes that Bethel’s small size has allowed him “to watch students’ evolution” through their years at the college.

“I go to senior seminars, concerts, recitals — and I know I’m not the only one who does that,” he said.