Most students at Hope College grew up going to church with their families. Wake up, eat breakfast, Sunday school, church service, eat family lunch afterwards. We lived a weekly spiritual rhythm during the first 18 years of our lives.
Now that we’re away from home, this rhythm changes. We might not go to the same church every Sunday, or go at all. We must decide for ourselves what we believe and where we will spend our time and energy.
Holland is the land of a thousand churches. But many of us college students have begun to ask why church is so important in the first place. Many of us attend Campus Ministries services, like Chapel and the Gathering, but a fewer number of us are involved in a local church.
Maybe we don’t want to leave campus. Maybe we just want to sleep in. Maybe we think our doubts are too many and too great to go to church anymore. But to not go for these reasons is to miss the point.
Church and college are the two of the only places where it’s acceptable to consistently ask the big questions in life. And in the time of our lives in which questions matter most, it would be a shame to miss out on half of the equation.
Maybe we need to make new routines, with new people. Hiking regularly with people you care about, attending a nearby church, or grabbing lunch on a weekly basis can become new spiritual practices in our lives. The church is not confined by its walls, but engaging in a spiritual rhythm like regularly attending church breathes new life into the old, weekly grind.