Ask Ligonier
I Am a New College Student. How Do I Balance My Education and My Ministry in the Church?
Thu, 22 Aug 2024
Christian college students can sometimes find it challenging to balance the responsibilities of academic life and church involvement. Today, Stephen Nichols offers guidance for navigating this unique season of life. Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/ask-ligonier/i-am-a-new-college-student-how-do-i-balance-my-education-and-my-ministry-in-the-church Submit a biblical or theological question of your own by calling 1-800-607-9386 or by emailing an audio recording of your question to [email protected]. You can also receive real-time answers through our online chat service at https://ask.Ligonier.org/. A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Donate: https://ask.ligonier.org/podcast/donate/ Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Full Episode
How can college students balance their education with their service and ministry in the church? Joining me this week for the Ask Ligonier podcast is Dr. Stephen Nichols. He's a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow and also the president of Reformation Bible College.
Dr. Nichols, we have a question from a new college student, and they're wanting to know how can they balance their workload in school with their desire to serve and minister in their local church?
Well, first of all, let me say to you, congratulations on being a college student. I remember talking to Dr. Sproul about just how wonderful it is to teach in colleges. And he said the reason that he loved teaching in college, and actually the reason that he wanted to start a college was, and he was very frank, he said, I want their minds.
Because we learn from sociologists that your sort of mental development and sort of the development of you and your worldview really takes place in two moments in your life when you're in that four to six, two to six for some people, age span, and then college. So these are very important years in your life.
So let me just encourage you to make the most out of your college experience as you develop your worldview and affirm and go deeper on your convictions and set that trajectory for your life. And you're asking a very important question. How do you balance your education with ministry in the church? Well, first, let's just think a little bit about college. First of all, college is an investment.
It's an investment of your time, of your finances. And maybe if your family's assisting you, it's an investment of their finances in you. It's also an investment, especially if you're at a Christian college, of donors who have enabled that college to be there and enable you to be there to study.
And it's an investment of time, of the administration, of the staff, and certainly of the faculty as they are educating you. And again, if it's a Christian college, also seeking to disciple you. So college is an investment. College also is intense investment. a lot is concentrated into a short amount of time in college.
There's a lot of introductory courses, so intro to philosophy or intro to sociology or intro to theology. And so you have professors who are experts in those fields, and they've studied for decades in those fields, and they've got to compress all of that field into one semester. And it may feel like you're sitting in class drinking at a fire hose because you, in fact, So, college is just intense.
Everything about it is intense. And also, if you are a college student, here's one thing we can say for sure. It's your vocation. It's your calling. If you're there, God has put you there. God has called you to that, and it is your post. Calvin loved to talk about vocation, and Calvin would say, whether you are a pot washer or Or you are on sentry duty. This is your calling of God.
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