Why College Students Need the Church

Jeremy Smith: My name's Jeremy Smith. I'm the college minister at Atlas Campus Fellowship, and I've got a privilege to tell you a little bit about what's going to be going on on Thursday.
So, you've seen a bunch of different college ministers up here, and that's because we are unified in helping you find a church.
And we're going to throw a QR code up on the screen. With a lot of different college ministries in town,
one of the things that we are very passionate about as college ministers here in Lubbock is helping people find a church.
making sure that they're connected. And so you've seen just a handful of the college ministers that
are here today, but on Thursday, there's going to be a bunch of different college ministers,
college ministries coming together to help you find a place. So instead of having chapel on
Thursday, we'll have a little thing out in the foyer or out in the, um, the mall area with a
bunch of different people that you can connect with because we want you to find a church.
And there's a reason for that. There's a couple of different reasons I want to tell you about.
The first one is because college can be hard.
College is this amazing time.
It's an amazing time to really connect.
You're going to make friends that you're going to have for the rest of your life that you're going to connect with.
They're going to be in your wedding.
They're going to be, you're going to have, you're going to grow in ways that you never thought possible over this time.
But it's also going to be really, really difficult.
I remember when I was going to LCU as a freshman, one of the things I was most excited about was the cafe.
I don't hear any cheers so you know that if you've been here for a while
at first the cafe is awesome and I'm not knocking the cafe because I know they work really hard but
I was pumped because I was like I walked in I was like you mean to tell me that every meal
breakfast lunch or dinner I can get cinnamon toast crunch I can get french fries pizza a
hamburger and finish it all off with ice cream and I can do that for every meal I was pumped
And I did that for every meal for about two months straight.
And then all of a sudden I started, you know, craving things like vegetables and stuff like that.
And I started, but I couldn't go home and get a home-cooked meal because I lived, my family was 10 hours away.
So I decided I'm going to start cooking for myself and I'm going to learn how to cook for myself.
And so freshman year, I, well, actually this was sophomore year.
I was already in one of the apartments and I went to the store.
and if you ever go to the store, you know, college students, we don't go to the store in normal times.
So I was there at one o'clock in the morning. And what I discovered is that I hate shopping.
Shopping is like my least favorite thing to do. You go there at one o'clock in the morning.
You have no idea what to make. I'd never cooked anything for myself before. I was learning for
the first time. And so I'm just walking down and I'm like, oh, potatoes. Yeah, that's something we
do. So I put some potatoes in there. Oh, French fries. It's like not even realizing that I'd
had potatoes. And I just kind of grabbed all of this stuff, threw it in my basket, and then came
home at one o'clock in the morning. And the next day I decided, all right, I'm going to cook some
stuff. And so I baked some potatoes and I cooked some stuff and I had this really terrible meal.
And it was about two days later that I walked into my apartment and I was like, man, it still
smells like food in here. What in the world? I guess it just takes forever. And I looked over
at the oven and I saw this little red light on on the oven. And I was at that point, I realized
that I had been baking a potato for two days straight. I mean, I still ate it, but it was
awful. It was hard as a rock. I mean, I couldn't waste food. I didn't have any money. Being an
adult is hard. It's difficult. College is fun and it's exciting, but you're going to be learning
things and having challenges that are a lot deeper than learning how to cook. Some of you
are going to fail classes. Some of you are going to find the love of your life and then that person
is going to break your heart. I know, really inspiring talk. Let's go, right? Some of you are
going to experience loss for the first time, loneliness. And as my friend Kent likes to say,
he was just up here leading singing, that if the only people speaking truth into your life
are the other 20-something-year-olds sitting around you today, you're going to have a really
hard time. You're going to have a really difficult time. We want you to be connected to a church
family because the church is intergenerational. There are people there, there are people all over
Lubbock who want to love you, who want to guide you, who want to cook you free meals in their home.
They want to connect with you. And if you haven't had a chance to find a church yet,
I encourage you to find it because you're going to need it over the next four years.
You're going to need that.
But the other reason we want you to find a church home is because the church needs you.
There are people all over this campus.
I work at one of the oldest, at the oldest Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas.
And we have done some amazing things.
We helped start LCU.
We helped start the Children's Home of Lubbock.
We've helped with the oldest college ministry in town, the original Bible chair of Texas Tech.
Done some amazing things.
And over all of that, we have only been a part of a fraction of the amazing things that have gone on in Lubbock by churches.
Every minister could tell you stories about how their church is impacting the world around them.
How they are impacting Lubbock, Texas today.
And the truth is that we need you.
We need your energy.
We need your passion.
We need your excitement.
We need your drive for justice. We need that in the church. We need your voice.
All of us college ministers, we work with you, college students from Lubbock Christian University.
But the church is much bigger than this campus. We also work with 40,000 Texas Tech students that
don't even, some of them don't even know LCU exists. Some of them did not grow up in the church.
they don't have faith. We need to come together as a church to serve the people in our community.
And the only way we can do that is with your help. We need you. And so on Thursday, we want to invite
you to come back at chapel. You're going to be able, you're not even going to have to come into
this building. We're all going to be on the mall area. You'll be able to scan your card and
everything and get your chapel credit out there. But we want you to find a place to connect.
Because chapel is not church. Jesus didn't die for chapel. Chapel is an amazing thing. It was
one of the most formative things. I love the things that are coming this semester.
Your Bible classes that you're going to have in the CDC are awesome. They're going to be very
formative, but it's not the church. The church is bigger than this campus. And you need to find a
place to connect to it because one day you're going to graduate from this campus. And if you,
if your only relationship to God is here, you're going to have a hard time. So we want to encourage
you. We want to invite you to connect with the church. Scan this QR code and you'll get a list
of all the different college ministries in town. Find a place that is serving you. Find a place
where you can serve and connect. That is our prayer. Thank you.
Thank you.