Students all over campus are thinking critically about their faith in the context of community.

Small Groups, formerly known as H.Y.P.E. or “Heightening Your Personal Experience,” have been re-vamped this year with the name change being the most significant adjustment.

Each dorm has small groups that meet every Thursday at 10 p.m. on every floor, except in the apartment style dorms where students gather collectively as a dorm.

The Small Group ministry is a Poiema Project sponsored ministry which gives scholarships to residence hall chaplains. One chaplain is assigned per dorm and they oversee the Small Group floor leaders.

Jason Steffenhagen, Discipleship Ministries Coordinator, said those involved in planning for the small groups “didn’t feel the word ‘Hype’ was an adequate description” of the ministry because it suggests “a lot of talk [and] not a lot of substance.”

Steffenhagen also said that although developing students’ personal experiences with God is an important aspect of ministry, they wanted to put the emphasis on communal spiritual growth in the small groups instead.

Now, students in every dorm get to take part in choosing a name for their Small Group ministry.

Some of this year’s names include “Unscripted” in Tharp, “Real Life 101″ in Nora Chambers and “Common Sense” in Hughes.

The selection process for floor leaders has also changed.

Instead of choosing a leader before the start of the semester, RAs lead small groups during the first few weeks.

Tthe chaplains and RAs then convene to pick a student from each floor who had been attending his or her Small Group to become the leader.

Steffenhagen said picking leaders this way makes it “easier [for them] to connect” with the students on their floors because they were part of the group from the beginning.

According to Steffenhagen, the goal of the small groups is to give students the opportunity to “critically think about faith in the context of community.”

His dream has always been for Small Groups to be “a vehicle for students to process their faith” where they can “discuss, question and wrestle with the concerns and struggles” they have about following Jesus.

“The sign of a good Small Group is when the discussion takes on a life of its own and is able to go deeper than the original topic,” said Steffenhagen.

Small groups routinely last until midnight due to intense discussions on issues like faith and politics or simply because students decide to spend extra time together in prayer.

“Whether it is [through] Small Group, Bible study with a choir or Greek club, Sunday school or a house church, my hope is that as Christians we are giving ourselves the opportunity to prcoess our faith,” said Steffenhagen.

• See photos of Lee University Small Group meetings.