One of my favorite parts of working in college ministry for Tenth is that there is no gap between Tenth College Fellowship (TCF) and the church where students are able to encounter and worship the living God. This kind of proximity between campus and worship is essential to the discipleship and growth of the students who are a part of our congregation and who are becoming true worshipers of the Father. According to Bob Kauflin in his book True Worshipers, everyone seeks what is important to them. The Father, according to Jesus in John 4, seeks true worshipers because our worship is important to him. If this is the case, our efforts must reflect this enormous truth.
One of the most common New Testament metaphors that Jesus gives to us is that of food. Everyone has felt and then satiated hunger, and most everyone can remember the kind of thirst that causes an overwhelming desire for a drink. In the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4, Jesus uses this common experience to offer a lonely, searching Samaritan woman a diagnosis and cure for her emptiness. When they meet, Jesus begins the conversation by asking the woman for a drink of water. The discussion twists and turns as Jesus quickly uncovers something fundamental about this woman’s soul. She was thirsty for something she could not seem to find. The only way to quench that thirst and her sense of endless emptiness was to worship the Father in spirit and truth.
When we worship the Father, an untold number of things happen within our hearts and souls. We are inescapably placed before the words of the living God of the universe when the Bible is read and the word is preached. We are dropped into a long, broad stream of Christians who have been singing praises to the Father for millennia. Our thoughts and desires are bent into shape as we confess our sin and pray together. But, in my mind, the main reason that Jesus offers the woman worship as the solution is because, when we worship the Father, we are doing what we were made to do as human beings; glorify and enjoy God for eternity.
This is the reason that TCF places a major emphasis on bringing students to church. It is not so that they are spending Sunday morning in a pew rather than in bed. It is so that they can experience the only way to quench their soul-thirst. Their worship matters to the Father, and is vital for their souls. It is our prayer that the Lord would use TCF to draw many college students to Himself so that they will join the rest of God’s people one day as we worship and enjoy Him for all eternity.