A Letter of Hope. Pastoring Your Students Who Are Now In College

A Hand Written Letter 

A few months ago I walked to my box in the church office to discover a letter addressed to me by a student in her first year of college. As I grabbed the letter, I saw a drawing of “Sonic, the uni-pony,” a beloved mystical creature she drew constantly. Automatically, I smiled because I knew who sent it.

This student is a teen who I was close to while she was in high school and who grew a lot spiritually over her last few years of high school. She was on our student leadership team, involved at the Christian club on her high school campus, and cared greatly for everyone in the youth ministry. In other words, she is one of those students you wish you could duplicate and have in every class of students. Now away at college, I had not talked to her for a while. While I thought about calling her or texting her for a “life-update,” the situations in front of me somehow always drowned out my opportunities to catch up with her. 

As I read the letter I could not help but smile; the words of her letter where like talking to her in person. Her personality leaped off the paper and I could hear her joy for this new phase of life, but also feel her struggle to find time for God in her new schedule or even find a church with no car in a big city.

When I got to the bottom of the page I saw the invitation, “write back soon!” Those three words started a speeding train of thoughts in my brain. What will I write? How will I respond? How do I say thank you for her service to our group while she was in high school?

Soon my thoughts turned to wondering, Did I do enough to help this college student on her journey as a first semester freshman? Did our long conversations about faith life after school over her last year of high school helped her at all?  I started to ask the “Sticky-Faith” question of what would this girl’s faith life look like two, three, or even four years into college. Is there anything I could write to help and encourage her spiritual journey? Then the curse of my responsibility hit me like a board in the face as I thought to myself: I would do anything for this college student, for every one of my teens, to never walk away from the faith.

Pastoring From Afar

Over the last few months I have been reading through the letters of Paul. As I was reading, thinking, and praying one night, something in the introduction to Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica jumped out at me. I read, “We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3).

Paul spent weeks, months, and even years with many of the beloved churches he helped to plant or pastor. Then Paul moved on, going to the next group of people who God called him to minister to, but his heart never parted from the ones he was called to minister to. He continued to remember those he cared for in his prayers and continued to be involved in their lives as much as he could considering physical separation.

This reflection made me drastically aware of a reality that I had been feeling since many of my old high school students moved away to college; I did not know how to minister to those who where not physically present with me. I could tell someone else what to do if asked, I knew all the right answers and many cool ideas, but I did not know how to be a pastor to my students when they were far away from me.

As I continued to read 1 and 2 Thessalonians, I saw a group of people who felt stuck in a middle place, as if they were trapped between the now and not yet of the Kingdom. This in-between state caused fear in the hearts of the church body in Thessalonica. They had so much fear that they were scared that Christ had returned and left them and they had somehow missed the Kingdom.

The in-between of college kids

A few months before students went off to college, I was sitting with a few of our students—including the letter writer—at  In ‘N’ Out after church. As conversations bounced around the circles of teens like pinballs, I looked over at this teen that was about to head off to college and saw her staring blankly at the group of teens in front of her. Out of nowhere she posed the question to everyone and no one at the same time, “What am I going to do with out this group?”

In the letter from my college student, I could not help but feel the same question she asked at In ‘N’ Out lingering underneath the words on the page. Even after a year of conversations and a “Senior Transition Class,” the in-between of college life hit and many students felt as though Jesus was absent and as if Christ left when they moved off to college.

During Christmas break, I soon learned that despite all the conversations I had with many of the teens before they left for college, no one had found a church home and few really felt that Jesus was involved in their college experiences. For them, following Jesus looked more like not partying, than an active relationship where God was found in everyday life.

A word of hope.

As I continued to read through 1 Thessalonians, I started to see a different picture of what walking next to my students in college looked like. I began to see that my job was not to play “The Church or Christian Club Price is Right!” or “Let’s Make a Church and/or Christian Club Deal!” My job was and is not to be a moral compass for their actions while in college; my job is to help them dive into the emptiness of their faith life and find a God who brings hope out of nothingness.

As I sat with another student over Winter break, the student told me about the drinking and partying that s/he took up while in the first semester of college. As I sat with the student, I asked one question, “where do you see God?”

The student was put off a little by the question, sat back and asked, “What do you mean?”

I clarified, “Where did you see God during your first semester at college?”

As our conversation continued, the student began to point to places where God helped the student while s/he was drunk. S/he pointed to conversations s/he had with atheist friends. The student replied, “I think I did all this stuff because I wanted to run from and heal from all stuff, you know.”

As I sat there, I did not get on the student for drinking or not going to church, I simply sat and asked what role s/he thought God played in this healing?

My reflection.

Reflecting on my reading of 1 Thessalonians and my time with students during the Winter Break, God showed me that pastoring students during their college years looks like doing one thing: working to encourage students to find God in the in-betweenness of college.

As I sat down to write the letter back to my college student, I could not help but feel a little like Paul. I longed to be in the physical presence of this student and to walk with college students through their daily life as I did when they were in High School. Yet as I wrote the letter, I wrote a little differently than I might have before; I did not answer questions or give direction, I simply encouraged this student and pointed to a God who is found in this time of life and longs to bring wonderful things out of this in-between stage of life.