[Skip to Content]

Bethel College Invites End-Of-Year Donations

While you’re in the holiday-giving mood, give a gift to Bethel as 2013 -- also the end of the tax year -- comes to a close.

Any dollar amount will be appreciated.

You may give online at https://www.bethelks.edu/gift to donate or mail your donation to Development Office, Bethel College, 300 E. 27th St., North Newton, KS 67117. A tax-deductible receipt will be sent to you.

After Summer Flooding, Thresher Gym To Get New Floor

When basketball season goes into full swing after Christmas, Bethel College will have the newest gym floor in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference.

More than 4 inches of rain fell in fewer than three hours on the night of July 29. The Kidron-Martin Canal on the north side of campus, meant to drain runoff water from the campus and nearby residential areas into Sand Creek, ran over the adjacent access road and flowed into the Memorial Hall basement and Thresher Gym.

A team of campus and community volunteers worked late into the night July 29-30 to clear the water from the gym floor, but there were still 1-2 inches trapped underneath.

College employees and professionals worked to dry out and rehabilitate the floor, which the volleyball team used for its practices and home games this fall, but in the end, the decision was the floor had to be replaced.

“I am excited to announce that our insurance company has agreed to cover the cost of a new floor for Thresher Gym,” Allen Wedel ’69, vice president for business affairs, announced Nov. 11. “We have been negotiating this over the last couple of months.”

The project has begun, with Acme Floor Co., Lenexa, removing the old floor. It is set to be completed by Christmas.

The Bethel College Women’s Association (BCWA) and Kauffman Museum will participate in the Five Places of Christmas. They are two of five arts and culture organizations that have joined together for this holiday open house.

Five Places of Christmas is from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Dec. 7. Admission is free.

This year, the BCWA will host “Nativities Through the Years” in the Fine Arts Center. The annual bake sale will include homemade candy by the pound, as well as holiday specialties, peppernuts and zwieback. Visitors will enjoy free coffee with the purchase of a fresh, homemade cinnamon roll.

In addition to Bethel-themed merchandise, the BCWA holiday gift shop will feature “A BC ABC Book--Bethel College of Kansas in Art and Rhyme that debuted at Fall Festival. Also for sale will be a two-CD set, “Nights of Wonder: Music of the Christmas Fests at Bethel College.” The CD set includes music from nine of the most recent 20 Christmas Fests.

The open house at Kauffman Museum will highlight the special exhibition “Art That Worked: WPA Art in Newton, 1935-1943.” In the spirit of WPA prints, visitors will make and take 1930s-style block print gift tags (ages 8 and older, young children with supervision).

The museum store is stocked with gifts including hand-crafted items by Bethel alumni: knitting needles by Larry Friesen ’67; pens by Vernon Pauls ’56; wood sculpture by John Gaeddert ’50; wheat weaving by Felice Goering ’59; quilling by Karen Andres ’79; jewelry by Cindy Beth ’80, Margret Gaeddert ’68, Cornelia Krahn ’72 and Marti Tuck ’85; and notecards by Rachel Epp Buller ’96, Lavonne Dyck ’70, Eldine Harder ’59, Shirley Harms ’56, Ruthann Hiebert ’64 and Bob Regier ’52.

The other locations taking part in Five Places of Christmas are the Carriage Factory Art Gallery, Harvey County Historical Museum and Warkentin House.

For more information, e-mail Rachel Pannabecker at Kauffman Museum, rpann@bethelks.edu.

Kauffman Museum Receives State Award Of Excellence

Bethel College’s Kauffman Museum received the Kansas Museums Association’s Award for Excellence at the group’s annual meeting Oct. 18 in Lawrence.

The award is given to institutions that develop creative and engaging projects. Kauffman Museum received it for the project “Threshing Stone: Mennonite Artifact & Icon.”

The exhibit was developed, designed, fabricated and installed by Kauffman Museum staff and employees of Flint Hills Design of North Newton for display Oct. 6, 2012-Jan. 20, 2013, in connection with Bethel College’s 125th anniversary.

It brought together stories of wheat threshing technology and German-Russian Mennonite immigration, and explored how the threshing stone became a symbol of Kansas wheat heritage (and of Bethel College).

“Threshing Stone” represented a “significant partnership between academic and amateur historians,” said Rachel Pannabecker ’80, museum director.

Industrial designer Glen Ediger ’75, North Newton, was guest curator for the exhibit, which also drew extensively on the staff expertise and collections of the Mennonite Library and Archives at Bethel.

The exhibit attracted more than 1,700 visitors who came to view the display or attend one of four special programs planned in conjunction with it, or both. Ediger gave the first program, “Leave No Threshing Stone Unturned,” which was so popular it had to be repeated to accommodate audiences.

For more information, visit our website.

Chemistry Students Present Posters On Research

On Oct. 17 and 18, five chemistry students and two chemistry faculty attended the American Chemical Society Midwest Regional meeting in Springfield, Mo. Three students presented posters about their research work in the department, and one faculty member gave an oral

presentation. All of the Bethel presentations were on Oct. 17.

Poster presentations were:

  • “Characterization of Differences in Norepinephrine: Rural Versus Urban Emergency Responders” with authors senior Rachel Evans, associate professor of chemistry/physics Kathryn Layman and professor of psychology Dwight Krehbiel ’69
  • “Effects of Reducing Sugars and Metal Ions on pbr322 Strain of E. Coli Bacterium” with authors seniors Jared Regehr and Michelle Kaufman, and professor of chemistry Gary Histand

Oral presentation was:

  • “Investigation of P-Cresol Oxidation on Alumina-Supported Metal Oxide Catalysts” with authors Kathryn Layman, Jordan Esely-Kohlman ’13, senior Casey Budd and Trey Ronnebaum ’12

Goerz House On Holiday Home Tour

Goerz House is one of four homes featured during the 45th Annual Olson Holiday Home Tour in Newton and North Newton.

The tours, which benefit the Charles Olson Scholarship Fund, are at two separate times -- 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 8. The tours combine holiday décor and hospitality with music played by local musicians.

Goerz House is the home of Bethel College President Perry and Dalene White.

Musicians at Goerz House, both playing the historic pump organ, will be Karen Bauman Schlabaugh in the afternoon and Joan Wulf in the evening.

Advance reservations are required and may be made at Prairie Harvest, 601 N. Main in Newton, for a suggested donation of $12.50 per person. All proceeds go toward scholarships for Newton High School instrumental students.

Symposium Presenters Call For A Return To Power

As he welcomed participants to Bethel College, Dale Schrag ’69 admitted there had been some puzzled looks about a symposium on death, dying and the Christian funeral.

Let me hasten to add, he said, that pastors never looked puzzled -- lay persons sometimes seemed confused. I had phone calls from Washington to Ohio expressing appreciation for this (topic).

The seeds of Bethel’s second Worship and the Arts Symposium began sprouting soon after the first one, in 2011. At the inaugural event, presenters Thomas Long of Candler School of Theology and John Ferguson of St. Olaf College were so universally well received we decided they should come back one more time, said Schrag, chair of the planning committee.

Long’s latest book at the time was Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral. Ferguson’s enthusiastic affirmation for making that the topic sealed the decision.

Long opened the symposium with a plenary address he titled Re-claiming the Christian Funeral.

I’m absolutely convinced it’s not a dark or down topic, he said. Hope in the gospel reverberates in our death practices. In an incarnational faith, those who learn how to care tenderly for the dying and dead can do so for the living.

He began writing Accompany Them with Singing almost 20 years ago when he taught a basic class on preaching and discovered there was lots of good material for everything except funerals. So I decided to take a sabbatical and write the book I needed for my syllabus. It took me 15 years.

For more information, visit our website.

Concert Choir To Tour Europe In January

The Bethel College Concert Choir, under the direction of William Eash, will tour and perform Jan. 3-24 in several countries in Eastern and Western Europe during January interterm.

A total of 45 choir members will be on the trip; joining them is Merle Schlabaugh, professor of German.

The choir will give 11 concerts, in Warsaw and Gdansk, Poland; Berlin, Leipzig, Schwandorf, Weimar, Bielefeld, Hamburg, Solingen, Neuweid and Emden, Germany; and Groningen, The Netherlands.

Special activities include a tour of the Malbork Fortress in Gdansk; sightseeing in Berlin; a tour of the Horsch Factory in Schwandorf; a visit to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Weimar; a tour of Wartburg Castle in Eisenbach, Germany; and visits to Wuppertal and Köln, Germany.

Back To Top.

Thresher Football Has Reasons To Celebrate

After a winless 2012 season, the Bethel College football program showed significant improvement in 2013 under the direction of new head coach Marty Mathis.

The Threshers earned their second win of the season on Senior Day, Nov. 16, beating Bethany 26-14.

A multitude of players ended the season with high praise after the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference (KCAC) meeting Nov. 17.

Garrett Garcia, senior from Newton, and Terrance Toney, freshman from Cape May Courthouse, N.J., both earned KCAC Player of the Week honors for their performances against Bethany.

Garcia was named Defensive Player of the Week following a game that included six total tackles, 2.5 tackles for a loss, a blocked field goal, an interception and a fumble recovery.

Toney was awarded Special Teams Player of the Week, thanks in large part to his game-changing 100-yard touchdown return off of a blocked field goal.

In the annual conference meeting, seven Thresher players received league honors for their play this season.

Thresher wide receiver Tommy Alexander, junior from San Diego, was a unanimous pick for First Team All-Conference Offensive Team. This award came after Alexander exploded onto the KCAC scene this year with 62 receptions, 1,048 receiving yards and 10 receiving touchdowns on the year.

College Community Spends 24 Hours Praying

Bethel College student Alli Rudeen had always wondered what it might look like to pray without ceasing.

“That verse, I Thessalonians 5:17, always stuck out to me,” the junior from Osage City said. “I’m not good at sticking with one thing for a long time. I’m easily distracted.

“‘Pray without ceasing’ is a tough concept for me. What does it look like? What does it mean? But in these past couple of years, I’ve seen the power of prayer.”

Rudeen and her roommate, Katelyn Melgren, junior from Olathe, “discuss all things, at all hours,” Melgren said. So they talked about prayer.

Rudeen recounted some of the experiences she had this past summer as a counselor at Covenant Heights, a Christian camp between Estes Park and Allen’s Park, Colo. One of Rudeen’s fellow counselors described having 48 hours of prayer on his campus.

As two of Bethel’s six student chaplains, Melgren and Rudeen didn’t think there had been a similar opportunity at Bethel in recent memory. “What if we started with 24 hours?” Melgren wondered.

They took the idea to their weekly chaplains’ meeting with Dale Schrag, campus pastor.

“I thought it was an awesome idea,” said Leland Brown, junior from Galveston, Texas, “but I was trying to figure out how we would do this for 24 hours.”

“I wasn’t sure what the campus reaction would be,” said Ben Kreider, junior from North Newton. “Prayer can be uncomfortable to talk about. People think you have to be some kind of ‘prayer master.’ But once Katelyn and Alli described their vision, I was on board.”

“We talked about the logistics, and would this be possible, and we all got excited,” Melgren said. “We could actually do this!

For more information, visit our website.

A Christmas Greeting From Bethel College

President Perry White, Dalene White and the campus community wish a Merry Christmas to all Bethel alumni and supporters of the college. Their online greeting can be found at http://www.bethelks.edu/christmas/. The electronic card features a recent photo of Goerz House, a place where many students and faculty have lived, gathered and learned together throughout Bethel’s history.

Accompanying the image is the award-winning Bethel College Concert Choir performing “O Nata Lux,” arranged by Andrew Steffen.

May God fill grant you peace, joy and thanksgiving this season and throughout the coming year.