A group of ministry students found an opportunity to bring SPU’s spiritual life to Queen Anne Rodger Park’s assisted living facility Aegis Living during the fall quarter of 2024.
On a weekly basis, the students would visit Aegis Living to connect with the residents by hosting a Bible study group focused on the book of Hebrews. The sessions were led by the School of Theology and largely managed by passionate students hoping to bring the two communities together.
One of the leaders of the study group was Cadence Moore, a second-year master’s theology student and dean assistant for special projects. When recounting how the sessions came to be, she described the process of finding a way to bring the two communities together by communicating with Aegis about their intended sessions.
“The sessions we held on the book of Hebrews got started when we discussed how to connect with Aegis Living,” Moore said. “We spoke with the activities director, and they said that they’d love to have us and any engagement would be great. A lot of the residents prefer a sort of academic engagement, so we held our sessions as a class and the engagement was held through that in that kind of structure.”
The experience was unique for many of the student participants, as holding a Bible study for non-students, let alone residents at Aegis, was uncharted territory. According to Moore, once some of the students got used to leading a study for residents, the end result was a fruitful endeavour for those leading the study.
“One student for each week would be the discussion leader. I felt like some of the students had never really had one of these kinds of interactions with the elderly in this way before, so it was really interesting to watch things unfold,” Moore said. “Everything worked out fine, though. A big theme of the sessions was rest. We talked a lot about rest, both everyday rest and eternal rest. A lot of the Old Testament talks about a system of offerings, so we talked a lot about that as well. Those kind[s] of themes were the main topics.”
Despite Aegis and SPU being less than a quarter of a mile apart, interaction between the two communities before was scarce. With the Bible study group, Moore hopes that things may change and students can have the same experience that the study group did.
“Aegis also doesn’t have much of an SPU connection other than nursing, so it was great to get more engagement over there,” Moore said. “Unless you’re working in specific fields, there are a lot of SPU students who don’t interact with the elderly all that much outside of relatives, so doing that was important. Many of the residents also like to get very deep, which is something that we didn’t really expect at all. It was overwhelming, but a good experience.”
Not only was the experience a seminal one for SPU’s relationship with Aegis, but an important evolution for SPU’s Bible studies. As Moore explained, though not every student began the journey with a wealth of knowledge on how to lead a study, the experience proved the most important tools are dedication and humility.
“I think that if someone wanted to, anyone can lead a conversation about the Bible,” Moore said. “You don’t necessarily have to be a professor. Just spending some time reading to a group of people and learning about Hebrews as we did. I think there’s beauty in the humility of such an act. I was sort of the TA of the course, and so seeing these students release their expectations about what answers to expect and learning it could be anything really changed the way we looked at things. We said that quite a bit to the residents.”
