Community
DEVELOP MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS
PLNU’s community is rich and vibrant, offering you the space to develop meaningful relationships with others committed to similar values; engage in countless opportunities for intellectual, cultural, and personal enrichment; and foster and express your faith through worship, friendships, and service.
A Vital Christian Community
PLNU believes the journey of growing closer to God and discovering and pursuing your vocation is not done in a vacuum: it’s done in the presence of others — faculty, mentors, friends, and peers — where your gifts, passions, and hopes are revealed, affirmed, and fostered. This means an education at PLNU is contingent upon the level of depth and intentionality of the relationships you have with members of your community. Such active involvement in our community allows us to become who we are fully called to be.
These relationships are encouraged from the very beginning of your PLNU experience. They form during The Way Wilderness Orientation for incoming freshmen and transfer students, where students embark on a week-long wilderness excursion off campus to help form new relationships, consider the role God has for them in their community, and gain a new and widened perspective on life as they begin their journey at PLNU.
For our graduate and accelerated undergraduate students, community comes in the form of our cohort model, where students move through their program with the same group of peers and have the opportunity to form meaningful and lasting professional and personal relationships.
Spiritual, personal, and professional mentoring is also deeply valued in PLNU’s community. By mentor, we mean an advocate, guide, and friend — someone who is willing to share his or her own experience and story to help you discover and pursue your calling. This commitment to mentorship not only encourages and supports you in the many areas of your life at PLNU, but also prepares you for what comes after graduation, in your career, life, and calling.
There are plenty of opportunities for you to be mentored by and mentor fellow students and peers. Organized and dedicated professional and spiritual mentoring programs, small classroom sizes that allow faculty to take an interest in students, and an environment made up of students committed to fostering deep and lasting friendships are just some of the ways mentoring takes place at PLNU.
A Foundational Faith
PLNU’s Christian foundation is an integral aspect of community life, resulting in countless opportunities for you to deepen your faith through spiritual mentoring, chapel, Discipleship Groups, service, and more.
You can express your faith in worship with peers on campus through chapel, where guest speakers like Donald Miller and Rick Warren have spoken.
An enriched faith at PLNU is also expressed through service with and for others. You can serve others in their own communities through local ministries like Community Classroom and homeless, tutoring, and visiting ministries. You also have the option to serve abroad through Ministries with Mexico programs like Spring Break Build and Border Pilgrimage, and through the LoveWorks short-term mission program, which has sent more than 2,000 people to over 60 world areas since its start.
You can dive deeper in your faith through off-campus women's and men's retreats or discipleship groups, which offer a space to form friendships and share stories, encourage one another, and unite with others in prayer. As previously mentioned, PLNU also offers spiritual mentoring, where you are paired up with another PLNU student, faculty, or staff member, or friend of the university who serves as a mentor to assist you on your faith journey.
"I feel deeply called to accompany others on their journeys. As a spiritual director, I’m captivated by the metaphor of a midwife, and the sacred space that exists in helping others come to realize their spiritual gifts and bearing witness.”
A Place of Exploration and Encouragement
There are a number of clubs, academic societies, and opportunities for intellectual, cultural, and spiritual enrichment on campus. From joining the Associated Student Body (ASB), which provides student-sponsored educational, social, cultural, religious, and service opportunities for students interested in leadership, to the dozens of intramurals and sports clubs on campus that let students compete with friends and stay active, there are many ways for you to become a part of the community at PLNU while still pursuing your own unique interests and passions.
In addition to offering a place of exploration and opportunity, a community should also be a place of encouragement, safety, and home. PLNU offers financial, academic, and career support for undergraduate, graduate, and accelerated undergraduate students to provide a holistic support system that focuses on your unique experiences; needs; obstacles; and personal, professional, and spiritual goals. This takes the form of spiritual counseling; wellness services; career services; and specialized support for international, adult learner, veteran, and current military students.
