Don't Overlook Fellowship Opportunities in College

This is the third post in the series "Your College Years Will Fly By".

I am continuing my series on not wasting your opportunities. Today’s post is on fellowship. Before I exhort you not to waste your opportunity, I should mention what fellowship is.

Fellowship involves Christians seeking to do spiritual good to one another and sharing life’s joys and struggles with one another. It is different than socializing in that it has a spiritual aim and foundation. It aims to spur each believer on to love, good deeds, and faithfulness. Its foundation is our common unity in Christ (which is why a Christian can and should love unbelieving neighbors, but there is no Christian fellowship there). I should point out that socializing works with fellowship in that socializing (talking about general and common life experiences) usually facilitates fellowship. It isn’t a replacement for fellowship (as if talking about who won the game is the same thing as fellowship). However, socializing isn’t unimportant either.

As young, unmarried adults, you have opportunities for a greater breadth of fellowship during this season of life. You will likely have more discretionary time than the “married with kids” demographic. I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t busy or that you don’t have serious work to do which consumes time and energy. You are likely very busy. All I mean is that your “free time” (however much you have) is likely discretionary (will you join this club, will you go to the football game, etc.). Whereas, a person who is married with kids has almost all of his or her free-time allocated. You might indeed stay up late working on papers, but you won’t have young kids waking up the next morning at the first sliver of dawning light to demand your attention. Perhaps you don’t have much discretionary time, but you likely have more energy than you will have in the future.

My point is that you should evaluate your opportunities to fellowship and maximize them for your good as well as that of others. Be broad in those you fellowship with. Try to be intentional at church to speak with older and younger people and to do them spiritual good. Hang out with the young families on the playground after Sunday evening service. Go to a Bible study to learn the Word with fellow believers and to pray with one another. Make time to socialize with fellow Christians so that you can more easily and naturally have spiritual fellowship.

Every stage of life should be marked by Christian fellowship. And in every stage of life there will always appear to be good reasons why you don’t have time for it. The temptation, especially in a Bible-centered church, is to see fellowship as simply a nice add-on. In otherwords, I come and hear the Bible, but I don’t have time to socialize and fellowship. Fight against this way of thinking. Develop the habit (the discipline) of fellowship now while you have a bit more energy and (perhaps) time. And when you grow older, don’t forsake it.