What sorts of things help you to call a new place home?
Much of university life that is brand new upon arrival now feels familiar for freshers. Even so, with days becoming colder and shorter and the novelty of Freshers’ Week fading, it’s not unusual for students both new and old to hanker for back home. Dropout rates can be higher at this stage as students experience a kind of delayed homesickness.
No event in the student calendar draws these desires into sharp focus quite like a Christmas Carol Service can. Festive nostalgia is an evident pull – 1,500 students attended York’s annual CU Carol Service in the Minster this year, the majority unchurched guests, and a further 50 students attended an impromptu Carol Service in the church next door when the Minster reached maximum capacity. As the reality of university life begins to dawn on some, so does a season of fresh gospel opportunities for our CUs up and down the country.
Familiar wonder
When dwarfed by the magnificence of a grand Minster filled with haunting sounds of choral harmonies, it can be easier for the outsider to explain away sudden spiritual inspiration as sensory overload. Students, like the rest of us, are drawn to what is undeniably beautiful. Beauty laced with nostalgia is a potent combination. One guest comment card read: ‘As an agnostic, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to share the beautiful aspects of this faith for the evening – thank you.’
However, it is also the first Carol Service I’ve been to where the familiar wonder of the carols hasn’t been quite so familiar for some. Could this be further evidence of students’ inexperience with the Christian tradition? Probably. Could it be that all the hesitant singers just happened to be sitting with me? Possibly. What it does show is that the wonder travels further than the beautiful songs – students are also drawn to what is homely.
Grateful faith
I recently asked a student friend I meet and read Colossians with how he would describe Christianity from the book’s first chapter. He settled for the words ‘grateful faith’. To see the ways in which the Christian Unions in York shaped the Carol Service for their own students with gratitude and celebration in mind was thrilling.
It felt like the universities of York inhabited the Minster not just because its students came, but because its unique causes and concerns came too. Donations were taken for a local mental-health charity, choral and orchestral arrangements were taken up by campus societies, readings were given by university sabbatical officers. One guest posted online in the wake of the event how their favourite thing about the service was ‘when we were asked to pray for Acting (University of York) Vice Chancellor Saul Tensler, the Queen and the Government,’ congruent with readings heard about our common Maker presiding over everything from Genesis 1 and John 1 earlier in the evening.
These combined elements give dignity to a life-affecting faith in Christ and provided moments of gentle spiritual challenge outside our brilliant gospel presentation from Roger Simpson. This allowed the space for unasked questions to linger in those that came and heard – if not credible Christian faith, with what perspective could I best offer something of lasting dignity to the world around me? Without Jesus’ hope, would I even have something significant to say? One guest said: ‘I feel like I need to be thankful for life, I want to be grateful to someone for it all, but what or who should I be thankful to?’
Home before the holidays
Many outsiders came and left with deepened curiosity because of the kind of familial love they saw in the student believers that sang with them, that prayed with sincere gratitude from the platform for them, that welcomed questions, over mince pies, from them. Many first-time guests left enriched with intrigue because of the peace offered here in a term of distractions and deadlines. Many listened intently to the hope and rescue the Light of the World brings in our death and sin, despite never having gone to church before. One such guest even prayed to follow Christ in the Minster, with other commitments to Jesus made in the overflow service held in the Belfrey church next door. Why do irreligious students flock in their droves to services like these at Christmas time?
It would seem many come looking for home before the holidays begin.
