Taking Your Faith Seriously In College
I spent a majority of my time in libraries (my college had 32 of them) but that doesn’t even compare to places like Harvard in Boston which has over 70!
I would say college met most of my expectations: those four years were spent in libraries, professors’ office hours, and around campus grabbing meals with friends and studying with classmates. What I didn’t expect however, was being able to grow in my Christian faith. After I became Christian my junior year, I spent the last two years of my undergrad trying to grow as much as I could in my newfound faith. As I look back, I realize that college in many ways presented itself with the right conditions to allow anyone — seeker or believer — to grow and concretize their faith. In my and many of my friends’ experience, college is an opportune time to maintain or grow in your faith, take personal ownership over it, and equip you to prioritize your faith when life gets busier. Here are some ways that I found college to be the right context to set the trajectory for my life as a Christian.
Making Your Faith Your Own While Away From Home
Whether you grew up going to church or have had little to no experience with religion, faith can be much more than just a familiar concept or abstract jargon, and college is the opportune time to take personal ownership over your faith. When I transferred to a four-year university, I spent a lot of time reflecting on how I came to my beliefs and values. Though I grew up going to Catholic church, faith wasn’t personal to me. So, when I entered college I had questions like: “Is the Bible reliable?” or “What’s the purpose of life?” It was through attending a Christian fellowship that I got my questions answered by my friends and mentors and discovered that many of the questions I had were due to misconceptions I grew up with surrounding Christianity and faith. So by investigating and seeking answers to my questions, I was able to come to a concrete decision about what I believed! Many of my friends who grew up going to Church since their youth had similar experiences of getting their beliefs and values clarified.
My college mentor and I during our church-wide graduation service!
My classmates and I during a prayer retreat in the mountains of Santa Cruz, CA during my junior year.
Investing Today
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
The common college experience is the challenge of juggling school work, studying, extracurriculars, and just life in general. It can be hard for any student to balance these things, especially since time management is a struggle and it can often feel like you have only so much bandwidth in the day to focus on different tasks and responsibilities. That being said, faith can easily fall to the bottom our to-do list. Being aware of how easily faith falls out of our list of priorities, we can counteract that by being intentional about trying to grow our faith while in college, and not let the four years just slip by. Making faith a bigger priority now isn’t just a short-term investment, but can actually help down the road when you graduate. When I asked many people in my church who already graduated what they missed most about the college experience, they would often say the amount of free time that was available. I remember spending my first Thanksgiving break in college reading through The Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen and being particularly blessed by it. It was during those times of simply reading the Bible or books on Christian living that helped me think through my faith and take personal ownership over it.
Reality Of Working Life
Your time in college is precious!
While the time spent in college can be taken up by various obligations and studying, you have much more discretionary time as a student than it might feel like. The typical post-grad life likely consists of a nine-to-five job, five days a week, for about 48 weeks in the year compared to the 36 weeks of a school year with only a few hours of class a week. In college, there are multiple pockets of time that can be used to invest in your spiritual life, whether it be growing in devotion, relating with God, or different spiritual disciplines like prayer or reading through God’s word. The reality of working life is that there is less discretionary time to invest in your spiritual life. So, don’t procrastinate on your faith! There are plenty of ripe opportunities in college to grow in these areas if we make the effort to do so.
Boston Church Plant Interns (new grads who are taking a gap year to help start Boston Church) training at Denby.
Final Thoughts
College is a formative time for any believer or seeker to grow in or investigate their faith. I was thankful for college because I had the space and time to deepen my new faith and I would encourage any college student to put some time aside to invest in their faith. I found one of the most useful things I did in college was joining a Christian fellowship because it provided the right context to ask questions about Christian life. The community there was pivotal in helping me grow in my faith: having a mentor whom I could ask questions on topics of faith, or doing daily devotions with my friends. Whether you are in college right now or are planning on starting soon, I hope that your faith can grow while you are there!
My apartment mates and I at the beginning of the year when we all first moved to Boston!
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