Here are the questions and answers from the SGA Election Forum held on February 21. Audience questions are not included. Questions were prepared by Darvence Chery.

Catelynn Frantz, Director of Spiritual Life candidate

Question 1: How would you encourage students to attend chapel or other events put on by spiritual life without having the incentive of receiving chapel credit?

I feel like with chapel it’s something that is either you want to do it or you don’t want to do it, and I mean, I know we’re a Christian school and there are so many people here that aren’t Christians though. Just because we are a Christian school doesn’t mean that’s what our demographic is made up of, and to incentivize people with things other than chapel credits is something that, I feel like, the more we push it on it’s not going to help anybody. I think it should be opened up – well I think we should have chapel credit, but I think it should be opened up to if you want to grow, then this is an opportunity for you to grow, but if this isn’t where you are at during this time in your life the pushing on it isn’t going to do anybody any good.

Question 2: In what areas do you think students on campus need to grow the most spiritually, and how do you plan on meeting that need if you are elected?

The first thing that came to mind for my prepared question was communication. If you want the opportunity to talk about your faith or dive deeper into scripture or anything, I feel like that’s one way that ENC needs to grow a little more spiritually is having that availability; and one way I would hopefully change that is adding more small groups. I know we have a select few but maybe finding more times for different small groups to happen or just making it more accessible and a little bit more of them.

Joanna Mohnkern, Director of Spiritual Life candidate

Question 1: What do you feel like is working currently in spiritual life as far as engaging students spiritually? What isn’t working and how do you plan on fixing that?

I think we’re starting to understand that we need to bridge the gap. A couple of weeks ago we did that chapel in the gym, which is a really cool way of meeting the athletes where they are comfortable and in their home. It was cool to see how someone that maybe is a part of the theater department spends time in the gym for the chapel because we all are on this journey together of building the kingdom of God, whether it’s through sports or through theater or through chapel worship. We all have different ways and different places. [Second part of the question – what isn’t working] Communication. I think that a lot of the time we have this vision of, “I have to live this way in my faith,” and we are going for it, but it’s kind of what I was saying before of this as a community, and I think that we are not great at communicating when we are going through things. One of the biggest things that has been on my heart is people who deal with mental illnesses or they have depression or anxiety. That is something that has been huge on this campus and something that I have experienced in my own life that was very hard, and I would never wish that upon anyone, but I know that so many people, especially college students go through that. And helping them understand that they are not alone and they have people who are also going through the same thing and being able to seek that spiritual guidance is huge.

Question 2: In what areas do you think students on campus need to grow the most spiritually, and how do you plan on meeting that need if you are elected?

This position is something that I am super, super excited for, and I believe that it can be used in many different ways. I think one of the biggest needs right now that I see is knowing that we are a community and knowing that the things that we go through, we need people there and we need people to understand what we are going through and to help be that spiritual guidance with us. Also, I think there’s a lot of diversity on this campus, but I think that we can do a lot better of a job at bridging the gap of that. Some of my ideas with that is first off, with a committee. I love my faith, but my faith is not just for myself. It’s for building the kingdom of God, and it’s meant to be shared with the community; it’s meant to go along with people. My vision for it is I want—with this position I know that you can have a committee under you—and I want a committee that’s going to represent all these different spots on campus; so someone who is passionate about theater or someone who is passionate about basketball. Having these different ideas to come together and talk about how we can be best ministering to the people on campus and having different ideas because it’s not about me, this is not about my ideas and everything that I can do, it’s about being in community and our ideas that we can have together to build the kingdom of God.