But I did have trouble committing to a church.

For a long time, my church motto was “don’t get too attached.” I was content to be a spiritual bachelor. After heading off for college and leaving my home church behind, it took me almost 10 years to find a new home. Looking back, I realize that this season of discernment was necessary and even good for me.

The Search

At my college’s Christian fellowship, almost every week a student leader would remind us, “This is not a church! You need to be connected to a local church body.”

His pleas had little effect. For most of us, Sunday mornings were spent hopping from church to church, shaking hands with strangers and hoping for a potluck brunch. One week my friends and I would visit the Methodist church; another, we might visit the Catholic church. If we woke up early enough, we could drive an hour to Backwoods Bible Church — they had the best potlucks.

Today, I’m not in contact with anyone I met at those churches. But the bonds I formed with my college buddies are still strong. We’ve all gone in different directions — one who grew up Free Methodist is now a member of a Baptist church; another who grew up United Brethren now attends an Anglican parish. Others are still journeying. Our friendships have long outlived our college denominational preferences.

Though it’s certainly possible for college students to stick with one church community and form lasting relationships with the people there, that rarely happens. Is a lack of commitment to a local church as bad as our fellowship leader made it sound? I’m not so sure. First, college is a time of transition, which makes it difficult to truly join a local church community. But more than this, it’s a time of discernment — an opportunity to critically examine your own beliefs and explore the alternatives.

Swimming

For most Christians, heading off to college means pushing away from the shore of all that you know, including the comforts of your home church. Instead of fearing this, we should see the opportunity for what it is — a chance to deepen our faith. Even those of us who grew up in healthy Christian homes or churches need to have our faith tried and tested, and our limited perspectives broadened.

Like many students, I arrived at college confident in my assumptions. At age 18, I figured I had all of the mysteries of the universe solved. (Well, except women.) College, however, forced me to consider life from other points of view: those of my professors, other students and the authors we read. Such encounters — with people from different times, places, denominations and even religions — have a way of bursting our simplistic notions and deflating our self-assurance.

Some view any challenge to faith as a bad thing. But without questioning, we can’t go deeper. Realizing our own ignorance is the basis of a lifelong search for truth. To those who believe we can know the truth right now, the phrase “lifelong search” might sound like relativism. I don’t mean to say that objective truth doesn’t exist — but our human capacity to discern it is limited.

At age 20, it’s silly to believe that you’ve found The Truth About Everything and will never change your mind. Heck, it’s still silly to think that at age 99. You’ll never learn how to swim if you stay on the shore of your preconceived notions.

Drifting

Once you leave the shore, you can either swim — or drift. I’ve done my share of drifting, and can verify that it only gets you one place: stuck in the shallows, tangled in a mess of weeds.

College is an opportunity for intellectual, as well as moral, exploration. Away from our parents and the folks who know us best, we’re free to “find ourselves.” For example, you might visit a fraternity house, drink two shots of an unidentified green substance, and then find yourself heaving in the dorm parking lot.

The problem with moral drifting is that it impairs our ability to seek truth. Socrates said that the goal of education is learning to love what is beautiful. He would have seconded Jesus’ statement: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.”

Jesus’ words are a challenge to seek nothing less than Beauty. College ought to provide us with a unique opportunity to soak up poetic and intellectual beauty, by immersing us in “the best that has been thought and said.” (If your college doesn’t provide such an opportunity, you should find one that does.) Even more than the classroom, church should be a place where we encounter Beauty. That’s one reason why we should fight the temptation to sleep in on Sunday’s mornings.

That said, there are times when it may be best to stop going to church altogether, albeit only for a time. When church becomes a joyless burden — something we think God demands of us, lest we be struck down by lightning — it may be time to take a break. After burning out in a church where he didn’t sense a real connection with God’s presence, author John Eldredge stopped going to church for a year. “It was one of the most refreshing years of my life,” he says. “I hadn’t abandoned God, and I very much sought out the company of my spiritual companions. What I gave up was the performance of having to show up every Sunday with my happy face on.” After a year of recovery and discernment, Eldredge was better equipped to find a true church home.

Docking

Some people would rather never land, and continue drifting from town to town, job to job, relationship to relationship, church to church. But ultimately, life can only be enjoyed in its fullness by settling down and taking root.

For some, this may mean returning to the church you grew up in. A friend of mine told me, “I grew up Catholic but never really gave it much thought, so I stopped going to church in college. But after a few years of looking around, reading and visiting different churches, I decided that Catholicism made sense after all.” Others will land in a place they never expected, or hadn’t even heard of at the time they embarked on their search.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis speaks of basic Christian faith as a “hall” in which there are doors opening to particular rooms (churches). “If I can bring anyone into that hall,” he writes, “I should have done what I attempted.” But, he stresses, this is not the end of the journey:

The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. … It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is a difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. … But you must regard it as waiting, not camping. You must keep on praying for light.

In choosing a room, Lewis adds, the important question is not whether it fits your personality or taste. “Above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.” In other words, the question is: Beyond which door can I best experience Christ?

Entering a room does entail a loss of independence, just like marriage does. By choosing one, you lose the freedom to choose another. But true freedom is found only in commitment. Both getting married and joining a church are not ends — they’re beginnings.

Who knows — you may even end up doing both at the same time. Because, as every spiritual bachelor knows, the best place to find a good spouse is at church.