I Have To Go To A New Church?

Going to college forces you to leave a lot of things behind. Some of these things like clothes and pictures you get to choose to leave or not, but other things like friends or even your family you have to leave. Another thing that you can’t bring with you to college is your home church. As college students, if you’re looking for a new church to go to, you can either get lucky and find one quickly, or you have to do what my roommates and I are starting to do: church-hop. Church hopping is when you check out a new church every Sunday until you find one that you like or would want to go back to. In C.S. Lewis’ novel The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, a demon who has been writing letters to his nephew Wormwood, references this act of church hopping as a way to bring down his patient. “The next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that ‘suits’ him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.” (81) He continues on to give reasons why this would be a beneficial thing for the demons, saying that churches become like clubs which could leave people out, and also that the searcher becomes like a critic to new churches until he finds one that is “suitable.” I believe that this tactic is easily applicable to today and can still work on people, simply through my own experience.

This past Sunday my roommates and I finally started checking out churches to go to. We went to a church that one of our old friends had gone to when he was in college. As soon as we got there I started judging the church “Wow this is pretty small.” “There are a lot of old people here, where are all of the younger people like us?” “This worship seems a little off.” “Is this a good sermon, I can’t tell.” These are just a few of the many thoughts that crossed my mind while I was at the service, thoughts that could ultimately lead me away from God. Just like any other church hopper, if I were to get into the habit of judging churches, I might never find the best one for me. I was putting myself in a position where I knew what was the best church for me, where in reality I should have just taken in the experience instead of judging it. No church will be like my home church that I went to for years, I just need to leave it up to God to show me where my right “fit” is for now.

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1943. Print.