Every parent, grandparent and youth worker knows the gnawing sense of anxiety they feel when someone they know first goes up to university or college. Especially if they’ve had the experience themselves, they know the full-on impact of those first few days and weeks as a fresher.
The bewildering numbers of new faces and names and choices; deciding what clubs to join and sports to pursue; managing the laundry and working out how to survive on a student loan; and, of course, learning to negotiate the campus and the timetable! The freedom and the options that university or college life inevitably offer can be a heady mixture. So many parties and so little time! Life back home, especially life in the church youth group, can seem so tame and restrained and, oh, so far away. For a Christian young person there is the challenge of finding a good church, making new Christian friends, and not abusing their newfound freedoms.
Confused or convinced?
Yet going up to university can be for some people a life-changing and mind-blowing experience. Many of my friends actually became Christians at university, while many others took a path of greater commitment during their time there. On the other hand, exposure to secular thinking in some disciplines can easily throw the untrained or less well taught into confusion. So is there any way to make sure that our young people not only get the most out of their study time at uni, but actually make the time spent there count for God? Is there a way they can emerge from this new experience with a faith that is not only stronger but more thought-out, more confident and more convinced than when they went up?
