Overcoming Loneliness in College a 9-Day Devotional by Cantice Greene and Joshua GreeneSample

Overcome Loneliness by Connecting with a Congregation

Cantice says…

I don’t know what it is about college that makes it like a church repellent. It almost seems automatic: You go to college; you stop going to church. To overcome loneliness, you have to resist that trend, and Josh and I want to help you do that.

I’m a big advocate of researching churches and joining one, and I think you should start the process before you get to campus. On campus recently, a student told me he didn’t like the pressure of church. In trying to see things from his perspective, I can understand that the pressure is real. Still, I would like to rebrand that pressure and call it accountability.

Being accountable means you give someone permission to check on you. It’s one reason I still take roll in my classes. If a student is missing, I want to recognize it. Now, that student may just be blowing me off, but on the other hand, the student could be missing class because of sickness, family, or financial hardship. Being an engaged professor means, either way, I’m going to notice.

Connecting with a congregation means you give them permission to hold you accountable. It may seem like an invasion of privacy—and, in some ways, it is. But do you know what another word for privacy is? Isolation. Aloneness. That’s why, despite the pressure, I urge you to connect with a congregation to overcome loneliness. I’m paraphrasing, but Hebrews 10:24-25 says it this way, “And let us not…give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.”

Josh says…

I love and echo my mom’s advice to research churches BEFORE you get onto campus.

By the time you get on campus, you may spend the first couple of weeks in the semester with so much time getting settled into classes, meeting new people, joining clubs, and getting your schedule situated that Sunday becomes the easiest option for gaining some of that time back by sleeping in or just doing nothing all day long. After that, it becomes extremely difficult to try and make church a habit when you’ve already developed a routine that leaves church out entirely. I suggest instead that you be proactive. Make church membership a priority goal early in your freshman year. When you do, you’re kissing loneliness goodbye.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:25

Meditate on this: Ephesians 2:19, Romans 12:4-5