On Monday, ACU will launch its ninth annual Sacred Relationships Week, focusing on this year’s theme, Love & Respect. Students, faculty and staff, as well as the Abilene community, are invited to participate in the week’s activities.
The Love & Respect theme is guided by the Bible verse, Romans 12:10: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.”
Sacred Relationships Week, sponsored by the ACU Counseling Center and Peer Health Educators, strives to initiate a loving and respectful awareness of every type of relationship people encounter in life.
The week, which runs from Monday to Feb. 12, will offer a variety of events, guest speakers and forums. Peer Health will present students’ artistic expressions, including works of poetry, photography, sculpture and dance, during the Night of Talent & Truth on Monday. Students can stop by the McGlothlin Campus Center for popcorn and relationship-centered discussion Wednesday, and the Counseling Center and Peer Health Education will also be sponsoring a Love & Respect card-creation workshop Feb. 11.
Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, internationally renowned public speaker on the topic of male-female relationships and the developer of the Love and Respect Conference, will be the guest speaker during Chapel on Monday. He will partner with his daughter, Joy Eggerichs, for a Chapel forum later that afternoon in Cullen Auditorium.
Steve Zeller, certified EAP therapist and counselor at ACU, said with SRW running so close to Valentine’s Day, people often think the week’s focus is dating and marriage. Zeller said this is not “romance” week but about building and strengthening healthy, lasting relationships.
Eggerichs, whose ministry primarily provides resources and teaching for couples in marriage, will be shifting his focus toward relationships in general and modifying much of his material to better suit the goal of ACU’s Sacred Relationships Week.
“We feel [Eggerichs’s] ministry can reach anyone striving to live at peace and in harmony with everyone,” Zeller said.
As attention turns to the upcoming week, students are beginning to show interest in how it will benefit them.
Mary Catherine Cook, sophomore elementary education major from Abilene, said she will be interested to see “if I can really learn something from all of this and if this week will change how I interact with different relationships in my life.”
