Freshers’ week has plenty of opportunities for bad behaviour, but there are gospel opportunities too

As the University year starts, Lauren Windle discusses the different options facing teens heading into freshers’ week.

If ever there’s going to be a time when a devoted Christian teen will stop prioritising their faith, it’s at university. The story of a person raised in a Christian home, having a few years away in their late teens/early twenties and then coming back to church around the age of 24 is textbook. Questioning and exploring is a big part of making your faith your own, and many people who followed that well-trodden path would say the time of distance helped them value proximity with God even more. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

As someone who made quite a dramatic exit from my Christian upbringing in my early teens, only to come back at 25 with both desperation and a drug addiction, I’m convinced there was a better route to the firm belief and personal relationship that I now have. Laced in amongst the plentiful stories of Freshers’ week boozing and one-night stands are moments of pure joy, of huge lightness and of Jesus.