OK, I'll admit it, I might have stolen the title for this post from a talk at Soul Survivor last summer, but it's something I've been trying to find an excuse to talk about for a while, and this seemed a good way to introduce it, so here goes I guess:
To give some context here for those who don't already know, Soul Survivor is a sort of Christian youth camp, people from churches all over the country come and spend 5 days in a field somewhere in somerset. Probably sounds rather dull right, yeah... that's what I thought when I headed there the first time... Oh man how wrong I was... I'm just gonna leave this video link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOJCTMDGejA
Yeah... I'm not sure exactly what I can say other than is completely blew me away, and I've honestly not been the same since.
Anyway, I was at Soul Survivor 2016 last summer, and I was looking through the programme for the week, and I came across this talk: "Sink or Swim? - The University Challenge". (It's probably worth mentioning here that I had literally had my uni place confirmed the day before) and I was intrigued. Knowing I was going to university but not really knowing a whole lot about it I had decided to go to as much studenty stuff as possible over the course of the week (because I may be slightly obsessed with information... don't judge me >_> )
The description for this talk was "University can be a challenging environment for us to thrive in with up to 70% of Christians losing their faith during their time at university. Freddie will look at how we can not only keep our heads above the water but actively swim and thrive in our faith at university." and the opening line was "Does anybody know the probability you'd survive an attack by a four metre crocodile?"
I'm gonna guess 30%
Turns out I was right, who'd have thought...
That statistic is really very scary. As a Christian you have as much chance of having your faith survive university as you do of surviving an attack by a four metre crocodile, that's crazy. The problem is that when you look at the facts, it's easy to see why.
When you first go to university, you have an opportunity that is incredibly exciting. You're (usually) in a completely different location, and nobody knows who you are or anybody else is. All the connections you've made suddenly are stripped away and in a very short space of time you're forced to define yourself to make new ones. For the first time in your life, nobody expects anything of you, which means that overnight you can become a completely different person, and in that situation, you have a choice to make: Do you do the difficult thing and try and find a new church in an area you've only just moved to, with people you've never met, or do you go along with the crowd and bury that part of yourself for fear of it making people think less of you?
It's a sad truth that the vast majority of people in that situation would choose the latter, and it's honestly understandable. If Ruth and Adam hadn't come down to visit me during freshers week I probably would have done the same, because it's honestly just easier, but I didn't stand up in front of 9,000 people at Soul Survivor 2015 because I thought being a Christian was going to be easy, I did it because I didn't want to be able to hide it, and it was a combination of that and some amazing people checking up on me from home that inspired me to keep looking, no matter how difficult things seemed at the time. They kept my head above the water.
You don't realise just what it means to be able to completely recreate yourself until you actually live it, it's an amazing opportunity, but it still requires effort. Things won't come naturally, you have to put yourself out there and actually work to see change, and that's incredibly difficult, but 110% worth it.
Until later then...
(You can find the whole talk here, the guy explains it far better than I can if you have time to listen:
http://soulsurvivor.com/talks/16c011-sink-swim-university-challenge/ )
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