Going to university for me has been a massive leap of faith, and there were plenty of things that to be honest I hadn't even considered when I decided to go down that route. Finding a church was not one of those things, but I'd be lieing if I said I'd put all that much thought into it before I got here.
It took an enormous amount of effort, and courage, to try and find somewhere to go, since I've only really gone public with my faith as of just over a year ago, and I still find myself carefully steering around the subject in conversations for fear that people will think less of me for some reason. To find other Christians and a church at university, I not only had to actively go out and find them, I also had to accept that I was going to have to broadcast the fact to everyone I met in the hope of finding people like me in the same situation (being a fresher really REALLY does not come naturally to me).
I ended up settling in the second church I visited, River City. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure at the time if it was the right decision, but bear with me a second while I explain my reasoning:
River City is quite small, which meant that although I wasn't necessarily going to feel at home immediately, it was a place where I could realistically get to know people, and people could get to know me. While I'm not against bigger churches, I've never been good in big groups, and going to one would have meant I actively had to go out and find people within that church to make friends with, and put me in a situation where everything became overwhelming.
Despite it's small size though, River City as a church honestly has more passion than any other church I have been to, and yes, that includes things like Soul Survivor Watford and I'd even go as far as to say it probably out did some of the stuff at New Wine on the passion front. Being part of something like that is incredibly challenging, but in a good way, as it encourages you to focus on what is important rather than singing the same songs every week with the same call and response prayers which it feels like nobody actually means (sorry Peachcroft, you're all amazing people really and I don't mean to offend by saying this). River City as a church, really feels like it is "For" God, rather than just "About" him, and that kind of atmosphere is what brought me to faith in the first place, so I suppose it makes sense that it's what I would go back to (If anyone wants me to clarify what I mean by that please do send me a message or something, I'm not sure I can explain it very well here).
I've also met some absolutely amazing people there, and quite frankly the amount of support I have received from being a part of this church has been incredible, I'm honestly not sure where I'd be right now without it, and it's probably been the single most important thing helping me settle here, so I don't know if you're reading this, but if you are I feel like I should just say an absolutely massive thank you, because you really didn't need to go to any of this trouble for me, but you did anyway, and that means a lot.
I'm bad at endings, I'm sorry guys...
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