Relational Communications Major Embraces Call to Ministry

Some individuals run from what scares them. Others, like Brynn Lee ’23, run right towards it.

“It's really weird because public speaking is my favorite thing to do, but it's also something that really scares me,” Lee says. “The Lord is so kind. When he calls us to do things, he doesn't throw us on this big stage at first.” Lee has felt a call to public speaking since middle school, and as she prepares to graduate from Bethel this spring, she has taken advantage of several “main stage” public speaking opportunities on campus and beyond.

The relational communications major has gradually become comfortable speaking in front of large audiences. Outside of various class presentations, she has talked for five minutes or so at Sunday night Vespers services. She has also served on the spiritual committee for Welcome Week, where she frequently talked in front of five to 10 people before speaking to an audience of one hundred. Most recently, she spoke in Benson Great Hall for Koinonia—a service that culminates Welcome Week with worship, communion, and brief messages from campus leaders. She spoke to hundreds of Bethel community members during one of the most meaningful nights of the year.

Last summer, Lee worked as a preaching and church relations intern with Pulse—an evangelistic ministry founded by Bethel Seminary Alumnus of the Year Nick Hall S'11. She was asked to give four sermons during her internship, building from a one-minute impromptu speech to a 20-minute final sermon. She also traveled with the ministry for their Together ’22 event at the Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas, where they hosted a two-day evangelistic training for young adults all over the country. “[Interning at Pulse] was honestly one of the most transformative experiences that I've been a part of,” Lee says. “I just grew so much in preaching and understanding how to effectively give a sermon, think about my audience that I'm speaking to, and get some really awesome feedback from people that do speak for a profession.”

This internship experience helped Lee learn more about her unique gifts and calling. Her internship supervisors helped her see that she unifies the spaces she comes into by relating to the people in those spaces and creating peace where there might be conflict. She realized this firsthand as she aided to unify her intern team at the Together ’22 event, where they worked long days in intense heat. She has also found this pattern in her preaching, as she deliberately chooses words or phrases that connect with her audiences, and she presents information in a way that helps everyone feel like they’re learning together. “Besides sharing the truth of God’s word in preaching, my sermons are about how can I relate to you and then how can we walk through the rest of what I’m going say together,” Lee says.

In addition to the care and intentionally she uses to craft her sermons, Lee relates to her audiences by being appropriately vulnerable with them, especially about her mental health struggles. She knows she sometimes comes across as a bubbly, happy, and involved student, but when she spoke at Koinonia, she was open about her journey this last year. “It was just so cool for me to speak to that at Koinonia this fall because I know that there are so many people that are battling things like that, but we're not talking about it,” Lee says. “I just wanted to be like, actually, sometimes life is hard, and sometimes there's suffering, but this is how I met the Lord in my valley.” All semester, fellow Bethel students have been reaching out to talk about how they related to her experience. “It’s been really, really sweet to see that I can impact the campus in that way,” Lee says. 

As she does her best to offer support and connect with the community, Lee has been careful to build her own support system—including counseling, her meaningful relationships with her roommates and core friends, and dependence on the Lord. Lee dreams of using her experience to one day direct a women’s ministry, and she’s currently considering attending seminary. She’s already aware of how God can use her skills, passions, and story, and when one bears witness to Lee’s quiet confidence, it’s clear this is only the beginning.

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As a Bethel student, you’ll enter into a genuine community that’s striving to discover what it means to live out Christ’s love in a complex world. You’ll engage your heart, mind, body, and spirit as you challenge your assumptions and wrestle with complicated issues in a community that supports and encourages each other along the way.

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