It is also important for the students to remember that they still have a place back home; a church that remembers and loves them. It is easy to lose track of our college students. In fact, we as Presbyterians have become adept at losing track of them, but simple rituals like these have helped maintain the connection between church and child.
Today technology has advanced to the point that opportunities to minister to our college students abound. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of Facebook. For those of you who do not know, Facebook is the premiere social networking site on the Internet. My congregation has about 15 kids in college right now and ALL of them have profiles on Facebook. At first glance, Facebook seems to be a nice, but limited, means of keeping in touch. Connecting with the kids is easy and the site automatically lets you know when they update their profiles, whether they add a picture, a comment, an application or enter a romantic relationship. These things are nice, but once you spend some time with the site you will see the opportunities it truly affords.
Pastoral care
Kids are very comfortable sharing their feelings and experiences on Facebook and for pastors this is a privilege. My college students have spoken of loneliness at college, poor grades, and other struggles they are experiencing, all on their Facebook pages. This has allowed me, on certain occasions, to contact them and touch base. I am able to maintain my relationship with them and to be present with them in tough times even when they are far away. College students may be “outside the walls” of our congregations, but they still need care. Rather, the young people in my congregation have been very open to conversations and inquiries about their lives.
College, as many of us recall, is a time of tremendous growth but also tremendous challenge. Our young people are on their own for the first time and encountering all sorts of new issues and problems. Facebook, through its unique means of communicating, opens doors for us to remain attached to the day-to-day happenings in the lives of these kids that our congregations have nurtured from birth through high school. An e-mail in the middle of a tough week can mean as much as a box of goodies during finals.
Spiritual Growth
When I headed for college in the fall of 1997 I was headed into a new world. For two years my spiritual life receded and was replaced with all sorts of distractions and new priorities that were not enriching to me. When I did seek to reconnect at the inception of my junior year, I was left with a myriad of unappealing options. The campus ministries I encountered were very different from my home church. While they had committed Christians leading and participating in them, people I respected, I always felt like an outsider. I believed in infant baptism, I did not think evangelism was the sum total of our call as Christians, and my concerns for social justice issues were not within the scope of their ministries. Still, I participated because I had no other real options.
Today we have the ability to continue to contribute to the spiritual growth of our kids even when they are far away. Facebook allows for the creation of group pages. A group page, representing your congregation, allows college students to remain a part of their home church. The page includes a discussion board, useful for online Bible studies, a message board for quick topics and easy communication, a space for links and pictures, and a place for videos. This page would allow the students to participate in virtual spiritual practices and would offer a familiar Christian narrative to find space in their week. While a page like this would not have been a substitute for the campus group I joined in college, it would have offered an alternative narrative and a reminder that there were others who shared my beliefs and ideals in a more particular way.
Connections
As you may have gathered at this point, Facebook is like the Presbyterian Church, it is inherently connectional. If you have a group of kids that were particularly close to one another in high school then they will already be in touch. But if your group was more casual then you can connect the dots for them. When you create a group page for your congregation then you naturally reconnect the kids to one another. As they join the group, they will see the faces of other kids from home and perhaps reestablish communications with them.
This reaffirms our connectional identity in many ways. It allows our kids to expand their social and support system while far away. It also allows for a more natural creation of home groups or gatherings. Some churches like to get their college kids together over the summer or at holidays. This will be much easier if they feel like they are still connected to one another.
Conclusions
These are just a few of the options Facebook offers for connecting with your young people when they are at college and I am sure you can find and develop many more. While I know our congregation will continue to send care packages to our college kids, I am pleased to know that they will feel our love and commitment throughout the year. We have already established our own group page as well as a weekly Bible discussion. It is my hope that they will find this new means of communication meaningful as they continue to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ.
Phil Blackburn is pastor of First Church in Lincoln, Ill.
