I can still vividly remember walking round my uni freshers fair. Every step I took gave a new person an opportunity to grab my attention, shove free stuff in my already over-laden hands and give me their well rehearsed pitch about what they can offer me: 'Sign up to our emails and you'll get…', 'Buy this and we'll give you…', 'Come here and you'll experience…'
If we're not careful, we can treat churches in our new uni cities just like every other stand at the freshers fair, and ask ourselves the question "what is it they can offer me?". I hope you do get an awful lot out of being part of a church at uni - I hope they'll teach you the bible well, disciple you, support you in reaching your friends and be family to you while you're away from home. But I hope that's only half the story.
In Matthew 6 Jesus issues a warning about doing the right thing for a wrong reason. Jesus calls out those who give money to the poor (right thing), in order to bolster their reputation as generous people (wrong reason). He has an uncomfortably stern description of such a person: hypocrite. Don't be like them, Jesus warns his followers. Don't be people who calculate what it is we can get, rather than what it is we can give. Consumer culture is all around us, but don't bring it with you to church on Sunday.
How do we do this? How do we resist the temptation to treat church as something we consume at our convenience? How about at the beginning of this new year, or maybe even at the beginning of your university career, we decide that we're going to fully commit ourselves to our local churches. We'll show up on Sundays, even when we've been out late the night before or when we'd rather be elsewhere. We'll be present at our small groups, and organise our uni work so that we don't have last minute essay crises which stop us being in community. We'll invest in relationships with people of all ages, asking God how we can be a blessing and encouragement to other members of the body. We'll serve, not just in the things we like doing but where the family needs us to pitch in. We'll give, even when that means we have less to spend elsewhere because we believe Jesus when he says that our hearts tend to go where our treasure is.
The bible describes church as the bride of Jesus; the one who he loves and has given himself for. We'll commit to the church, we won't consume her.
