Ready for student life?

STUDENTS & CHURCH:
Making the most of your time
as a student
By Lois Newcombe
Grace Publications. 72 pages. £8.00
ISBN 978 1 912 154 760

For the many thousands of freshers who start university each September, there can be a mix of thrill, anticipation and dread about walking into the unknown.

For Christian students especially, it can be a vulnerable time: will they stick with Jesus, or will the new experiences and ideas they come across lead them down a different path? Lois Newcombe understands these things well and has written this book to help Christian students make wise choices, even before Freshers’ Week begins.

The book is short and easy to read. There is good space dedicated to the importance of being plugged into a local church, which is one of the most important choices any person can make. The author encourages students a ‘good’ church isn’t necessarily the one that offers the most free food or the one that seems the most exciting, but one that’s based upon teaching the Bible. However, it’s not all high ideals or lofty principles, but also practical and realistic: the author encourages students to attend a church that other students also attend, but also encourages them to look to form ‘supernatural’ friendships – the sort you might not find anywhere else but in God’s church: students and old people, families and singles, a whole mix and variety.

Reading this book will leave any new student with a clear recognition that the choices they make with their new-found independence are really important for their walk with Jesus. However, a book like this inevitably contains lots of the author’s own advice shaped by their experience, which could sometimes feel a little rigid and prescriptive. A prospective student might, for example, feel overwhelmed or ill-equipped to think about how a church practices communion, whether a predominantly student-based service is a good thing, or even how to go about dating someone or navigating a breakup. Therefore, I wonder if it could most helpfully be used by a group who can discuss the helpful broader principles, but think more individually about how it will apply in the day-to-day.