When you go home for summer from Uni, do your family, your home church, your mates, know you? As in, the uni-you?

Personally, I found that by turning up to a new church at uni where people didn’t have a clue who I was or what I could “do”, actually meant that my new leaders were able to spot characteristics and gifts in me that no one had ever mentioned before. You see, I’d always helped out in the music group in the church I grew up in. Then I came to uni and have never sung in the band. And that’s been brilliant. Not because I didn’t love it, but because it wasn’t assumed that that was my main way of playing a part in my church community.

What did you do in your home church community if anything? Has that changed since leaving for university?

I also got told I was a leader (which I’d never really thought about before when it came to a church-context) and that I was an evangelist (which no one had ever explained to me as being a specific gifting in my life). As a second year student, being encouraged and affirmed by an older leader sitting me down and speaking into my life what they saw God doing with me, absolutely changed who I am today. To say it was “releasing” feels like an understatement. It’s like my university years taught me to fly with a wing-span I didn’t know I could have.

And yet, when I returned to church during the holidays, I was still the Miriam everyone had seen grow through her teenage years, daughter of Peter and Rachel, the middle one of three. Don’t get me wrong, my home church are fantastic and are the most incredible supportive family I could have had, who laid the groundwork for me still chasing Jesus right now, but it was a weird moment to realise, they didn’t see me as people in my new uni-context saw me.

When Jesus left home and began his three years of ministry, it seems his family sometimes missed the man he had become. Like that time in Mark 3 where his mother and siblings try and call Jesus away from teaching a crowd of followers, and Jesus says:

 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

It was like they hadn’t quite realised the adult leader their boy had become, and the way he was now preaching to crowds and building community not just in his family unit.

If you are reading this and realising you are in that “home church” that sees your young people returning from uni, can I encourage you to take some time to talk to your students and find out the journey they are on away from home? You might discover things you’ve never realised about them that could bless your whole church family.

And if you are in a church that receives new students, please be that person who grabs coffee with the young people who turn up, and takes a moment to see what God is doing in their lives that they themselves might have never realised or felt released into.

Finally, if you are a student heading home for summer, don’t be discouraged if you feel like you’re being missed for who you are becoming during your three years away. God knows, and he also knows when it’s good for us to keep our heads down, and when it’s great to speak up. Bless your home church with what you’re learning, and serve their vision, but also know, it’s ok to realise you are growing up and branching out in ways they may not have realised. Be released.