Church

Things happen fast freshman year. New people and priorities speed by, the girlfriend your parents met over fall break is replaced by Thanksgiving, and you’ve had three different majors in a month. That’s ok. It’s all part of growing up. But you shouldn’t treat your church the same way.

Year one of college is all about breaking you down, reexamining assumptions and cutting through bias to get to truth. A certain amount of that is healthy in a religious context. After all, religion or faith is the umbrella for most truth claims people make. The evangelicals I grew up with needed shaking to realize that not all Christians are Republicans and not all Catholics are evil. It is good to wrestle with God and to climb the mountain of faith (a solid C+ freshman paper topic on Dante). But inquiry is different from flakiness. It’s bad to be noncommittal.  

In my four years here, I’ve seen a pretty clear pattern emerge. A freshman starts by going to College Baptist or the campus Presbyterian church because they’re within walking distance. But Baptists are kind of boring, and Rev. Henes has an annoying voice, so they move on to Free Methodist and make the inevitable joke about why they really like going there. On top of the drugs, of course, Pastor Keith is awesome! He’s so energetic. He really gets you fired up. After a couple weeks, though, someone finally asks the question, “Do you think he yells too much?” Maybe Free Meth isn’t your thing after all.

Cue Country Side and Pine Ridge, but they’re pretty far away. Perhaps the real problem is that you’ve only tried Protestant churches. Maybe, instead of being the Death Star, the Catholic parish is calling you home. But that’s a big jump to make, so people split their time between Holy Trinity and St. Anthony’s, feeling Catholic but too afraid to join up on Easter. Or even that could be too mainstream, and you ought to loosen up a bit and dive in with Dostoevsky, some incense, and the edgy fathers of the East (Dude, did they really just contradict Augustine?)

This might not be such a problem if the church shopping ended by second semester or even the beginning of sophomore year. But the game of ecclesiastical roulette so often continues for juniors and seniors. College grows you unlike anything that precedes it. Every semester is a new challenge, a new heartache, a new intellectual pursuit. Something has to be stable. Someone has to be providing counsel and spiritual support. These four years can be a time of great mentorship, development of faith outside the context of home, and sanctification. Or they can be a tapas spread of dishes you never eat enough of to make you strong.

Sometimes even organizations such as Hillsdale Christian Fellowship, intended to help with community and stability, only aggravate the problem. For many, it’s a great time for encouragement and as a supplement to Sunday worship. For others, it’s an opportunity to get their Jesus for the week without having to give something back. Which is the real root problem here, the mentality that a church service is about God serving you.

Worship is hard work. Worshipping daily requires commitment, not just to the Lord, but to his people. Before asking what’s wrong with your church, ask yourself about the last time you offered to teach Sunday school, babysit those crying kids, or lead the music. Have you grabbed coffee with your pastor? Have you ever tithed? .

Ask hard questions of your faith. Don’t presume you know everything. Reread those controversial passages. But see if a little bit of self-sacrifice helps that lack of connection to Christ’s. And please, commit to a church.