When I became a University Chaplain in 2021, it took all of 72 hours for people to start asking me how we could get college students back in church. As I began planning our annual religious life fair (inviting local congregations to come from a variety of traditions), the conversation continued. Clergy, volunteers and staff from our area’s faith communities would look down at the list of “interested” student names at the end of the event and tell me “We’ll be lucky if even two show up.”
As a minister, I sympathize with this disappointment in many ways. Congregational life, at its best, can be both rich and inviting, providing a safe space to wrestle with questions of faith and a valuable community to journey alongside. I believe in the beauty and the necessity of churches. I would have never gone to seminary if I didn’t.
This being said, I wonder if our obsession with incentivizing college students to come and sit in our pews hasn’t become unintentionally misguided.
I initially felt a lot of pressure to create a kind of traditional congregational experience within our own campus environment.
Aware that many of my students were not going to “traditional” church activities, I initially felt a lot of pressure to create a kind of traditional congregational experience within our campus environment. Even though I knew numbers would likely be low, I offered periodic chapel services that were ecumenical. I tried to offer all of the most crucial parts of congregational life to my students: worship, fellowship, study groups. Oddly enough, the interfaith part of the work went well for me as a chaplain. I was much more perplexed about how to serve my Christian students than those from other religious identities.
In my quest to connect, I worked hard to make myself as relatable as possible. I subbed in poems for Scripture. I wrote liturgy that lifted up things I thought were probably happening in their lives. I used spoken word instead of sermons. I thought these ideas were brilliant, but the reality is that I found myself in empty or near-empty rooms time and time again.
Somewhat discouraged, I backed off and focused on other areas of programming. To my surprise, my students started coming to me. I learned that they wouldn’t likely come to weekly worship, but they showed up in droves for Ash Wednesday. It was hard for me to get enough together for a weekly Bible study, but they were thrilled to read Scripture in our annual lessons and carols. They asked me to lead funerals for beloved faculty and said, “Please don’t forget the internment part.” They requested that the Apostle’s Creed be added to the baccalaureate. They asked me to read Psalm 39 at a vigil for Tyre Nichols.
In touchstone moments of their lives, students return to ritual.
Here’s what I now know: In touchstone moments of their lives, students return to ritual. For liturgical holidays, deaths of loved ones, graduations and national crises they’ve never been looking for me to generate anything shiny or new for them. In these moments, they’ve always been asking to go back to basics. In a way, they’ve been asking to go back to church.
I became a better chaplain to my students when I became a better observer and listener. I have learned that this is a generation craving authenticity, so instead of making ourselves what we think they’re looking for, we’re much better off engaging in some solid introspection. I don’t believe college students are disenchanted with church because our liturgy or style is outdated. Rather, I believe they’re disinterested in joining communities that don’t know who they are. They’d rather have honest over polished and even self-aware over versatile. They value ever-evolving and ever-growing communities, ones that don’t hide behind a façade of thinking they’ve already figured everything out.
Maybe, just maybe, the generation we’ve been so worried about calling back home could be the very one to usher us into an era of renewed hope.
Maybe, just maybe, the generation we’ve been so worried about calling back home could be the very one to usher us into an era of renewed hope. Perhaps it’s time we take a page out of their book.
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