In 2009 we wanted not just to be a Youth outlet, though that's what we functioned as. But I wanted something more, indeed I felt called to bring in something more to the ministry. So I approached my father, Rev. David Faulkner about writing a series directed at college students.
I didn't know it at the time but when we first came up with The College Commitment, it was going to become one of our more favored articles. It is also the only series that has survived all the changes as we've sought to develop leaders in the upcoming generation. As we've shifted more towards College Ministry and now, with the edition of Angel on staff, back to youth ministry.
In His first article Rev. Faulkner discussed the church we need, this article really helped me to find a church home here in Sterling, and has helped a number of college students to do the same. I believe Rev. Faulkner's message is as relevant today as it was two years ago, so enjoy the first ever College Commitment.
God Bless You
Jon Faulkner
Director, 10:31 Life Ministries
To see the original post Click Here
by Rev. David Faulkner
Few people have observed that the New Testament cannot conceive of being a Christian apart from the Church. To be a believer in Jesus Christ was to be part of the Church–a theological truth to which the early Christians sought to give visible expression in their assemblies. Even Jesus (Matthew 18:15-17) assumed that the Church would exist, and He went on, in vv. 18- 20, to speak of its power. The assembly of believers is referred to as, “the Church at Jerusalem” as early as Acts 8:1. Paul was devoted to founding local branches of the Church wherever he went and then to writing them letters after he left. The writer of Hebrews (10:25) warned, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” (All quotes are from the New International Version, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1983, unless otherwise noted.)
I believe there were two main reasons for this. First, as already noted, the early Christians understood that simply by becoming Christians they became a part of both the invisible and the visible organization of Christians on the earth. Indeed they would not have drawn the distinction between the visible and invisible Church that later theologians devised. It cannot be said strongly enough: for the first believers to be a Christian was to be part of the Church and to be part of the Church was to be a Christian. The Jerusalem Church met constantly for teaching, fellowship, and prayer (Acts 2:42), mutual support (Acts 2:45) and worship (Acts 2:47). The list of verses describing how these practices continued in the Church in New Testament times is too long to put them all here. By doing all these things they came to “enjoy the favor of all the people,” and this resulted in people joining the fellowship (Acts 2:47). They understood that they had been brought by faith not only to personal salvation but to membership in an assembly of believers whose goal was to make visible the love of Christ in the world, and they sought every opportunity to do this (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-35, and many others).
The second reason was that they lived in a hostile environment. Opposition to the Gospel broke out early (Acts 4:1-20), intensified (Acts 5:17-42), grew deadly (Acts 7:57-8:1), forced many Christians out of the city (Acts 8:1-3), and then began to spread beyond the confines of Jerusalem (Acts 9:1, 2). When Paul turned from persecutor to Apostle, opposition followed him wherever he went (II Corinthians 11:24-29). Indeed, though the early Christians sought to live at peace with the culture and keep as many of its rules as they could (Romans 13:1-7), the evidence, though spotty, is that persecution and danger were always lurking somewhere near. By the time Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of Dacia, wrote has famous letter to the Emperor Trajan in 112 A.D., it had evidently become imperial policy to force Christians to return to paganism or to suffer loss of possessions, imprisonment, and other punishments. So the attitude of the early Christians was similar to that of Benjamin Franklin who, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, remarked, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” They would have well understood Sanctus Real’s song, “We Need Each Other.”
So would Christian believers across the ages. When faith and commitment were weak-ened by mass, sometimes forced conversions following the imperial edict making Christianity the official religion of the Empire, groups of devout believers responded by organizing themselves into monastic communities in order to strengthen faith and defend the truth. Even when the whole organized church had grown corrupt and only a few men understood what the Gospel was really all about, still those few found each other and drew on each other for support. Without that community the Reformation would have failed. Even in America today believers continue to seek fellowship with others of like faith and mind, often crossing denominational, cultural, racial or geographical lines to find it.
Many of you who read this will be sitting in your rooms in Christian colleges. But many more of you will be at large secular universities like the one I attended. Both groups of you need the local church, though it may well be that second group, the one at the big state schools, who need it most. While many of you on secular campuses will associate with one of the “para-church” groups such as InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, or The Navigators, many Christian students never make contact with these groups and so find their faith challenged, threatened, and eventually eroded by the general milieu or the outright opposition of their professors and new friends. But no one should assume that being part of a parachurch organization or attending a Christian college will be a sufficient substitute for involvement in a local church, even if you are no more than a regular attender. The local church will offer you the opportunity to fellowship with a wider range of people than you will find on campus, from children to senior citizens. There will be people whose wide range of life experiences have given them mature insights into living the Gospel that go beyond the wisdom of parachurch staff members, many of whom are just out of college themselves. Further, the local church will offer a wider variety of ministries in which to use your own spiritual gifts than do the often evangelistically-focused campus groups.
So, as Yoda might have said, “The Church, you need.” The question before us today is: Just what kind of church should you look for? First, as should be apparent from what we’ve already seen, you need a church that will nurture your faith. In far too many churches today the pastors and teachers are actually proclaiming their own private doubts. So look for a church that proclaims faith in God through Jesus Christ and which therefore holds up the Bible as the central and final authority in all things.
Look for a church that believes in and practices grace. Legalism is a major problem in the church today. So look for a church that will not mince words about the truth, but that is willing to let the Holy Spirit do his job of convicting of sin. What are some of the signs of legalistic churches? First, they focus more on sin than on God’s provision for it. They tell you who you may and may not associate with. They do not leave the matter of how much a person should give between the person and God (II Corinthians 9:6, 7). There is excessive interest among the members in such things as acceptable dress and what which Paul describes in Romans 14:1-15:7 as “doubtful things,” matters on which Christians may legitimately disagree. Further, a church that preaches grace will tend to have members who understand that the proper response to God’s grace to us is to be gracious to others.
Finally, look for a church that wants you there. I live near Ohio University. There are churches within two blocks of that campus that clearly do not want college students in their fellowship, no matter how often they claim that they do. This has nothing to do with worship style, though most of the churches that do not want college students tend to cling to older worship styles and classical forms of music. But the church I came to this area to serve as pastor, though open to modern music, wanted no part of students. We actually only had one come while I was their pastor, a young man sent to us by his pastor because the pastor knew he would receive sound biblical teaching from the pulpit. But the only people in that church who spoke to him were my wife and I. We took him home, befriended him, even fixed him up, then sang at his wedding! So look for a church that offers classes and ministry opportunities for college students.
I could probably list more characteristics, but these seem to me to be the three main ones. I would issue one caution and that is to stay away from fringe groups, regardless of how welcoming they might be. I live within a few miles of a major cult de-programming center and so know what kind of havoc abusive or authoritarian churches can cause in a person’s life. It is, further, completely up to you how active you become in the assembly you choose to attend. The churches of my denomination offer affiliate memberships to college students in their cities, but if you choose only to attend worship and Christian Education classes the church should be happy to have you do no more than that. On the other hand, involvement in ministries with people not your own age, whether it be children or older adults, will stretch you in ways the parachurch groups will not
So find a good church near your campus and take advantage of the opportunities for growth and ministry which it provides. Remember, the danger is not only that you could lose your faith at a secular university. It is that you will not discover the benefits of assembling together (Hebrews 10:25), get out of the habit of regular worship and study with others, then fail to form an attachment to a community of believers after college and so drift away from your Christian commitment after you get back into the “real world.” I watched this happen to many of my Christian friends from college. The New Testament writers could not conceive of a Christian outside of the Church. Remember this, no matter what faults you see in the organized church today.
To See the current College Commitment blog by Rev. David Faulkner Click Here
Also Available from 10:31 Life Ministries
God's Heart for Those: Good Discipline by Jonathan Faulkner
A Chosen Generation (1 Peter 2:9): Called Beyond Societies Standards by Angel Edwards
Confessions of a College Freshmen: That One AM Feeling by Amy Faulkner
To Contact 10:31 Life Ministries email us at: hi1031.ministries@yahoo.com
