As the story goes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was visited by a wealthy family friend at his underground seminary in a lake town called Finkenwalde, where he was training pastors to resist the Third Reich. This family friend intended to talk some sense into Bonhoeffer: abandon your mission, return to your teaching post in Berlin, and live a normal life.
Withholding his response, Bonhoeffer brought his friend onto a small rowboat, crossed the lake, and climbed a small hill to a clearing where they could see what was happening on the other side. From their vantage point, they observed a Nazi training camp systematically forming Hitler Youth. Bonhoeffer pointed back toward Finkenwalde and said, “This,” then pointed at the Nazi camp and added, “must be greater than that.”
I think he meant that good theology alone was not enough to meet the present moment. The Church needed to take seriously the formation of people who could embody a contrast community to the formation machine of Nazism.
As a College Pastor in an age of plummeting mental health, rampant loneliness, screen addiction, and the oscillation between apathy and rage in adolescents, I feel a deep resonance with Bonhoeffer’s conviction. Meeting this cultural moment requires more than good teaching; it requires practicing a different kind of life so that we can become a contrast community—living free from the deforming habits and rhythms plaguing this generation. It requires becoming a community of flourishing in an age of floundering.
With this aim, College Life at the University of California at Davis is in the process of developing a Communal Rule of Life: a set of practices we hope will cultivate the life we crave. Here are a few of those practices:
Hospitality… in an Age of Loneliness
We believe hospitality is both an answer to the deep pangs of loneliness in our world and the best way to evangelize a post-Christian culture, which may be more compelled by the practice of the gospel than by the preaching of it.
To practice hospitality, we have planned four student-hosted potluck dinners per quarter, explicitly designed to be invitational. Our students set the table and invite their friends, roommates, classmates, and neighbors to experience a different kind of life—one of deep connection and generosity.
Pray that these meals yield new faith in those we don’t know and form a foundation for the students we do.
Sabbath and Stillness… in an Age of Distraction
Just as the practice of hospitality is aimed at countering loneliness, the practices of Sabbath and stillness are, in the words of Pete Scazzero,
groundbreaking, countercultural acts against Western culture. They are powerful declarations about God, ourselves, our relationships, our beliefs, and our values. [Scazzero, Pete Emotionally Healthy Spirituality]
Insofar as hurry, hustle, phone addiction, and anxiety are among the deforming aspects of modern life, we seek to practice regular intervals of stopping, resting, delighting, and worshipping. Through Sabbath and stillness, we embody a community of human beings in a culture of human doings. [Warren, Tish Harrison, Liturgy of the Ordinary]
Prayers of the People… in an Age of Consumerism
A formative faith is a participatory faith. Therefore, we have adjusted our Tuesday Night worship service to increase the community’s involvement in the dialogue of Christian worship. Each week, the College Life community at UC Davis joins in one voice to ask God to “hear our prayers” as we intercede for the community, the University, the city, the state, the country, and the world.
In just one quarter, we’ve seen a difference: the number of students filling out prayer cards on Tuesday Nights has nearly tripled since we began practicing the Prayers of the People.
You can find our most recent prayer here.
Finally, I hope you know you have a part to play. Not everyone can attend Tuesday Night or host a Tuesday Night Dinner (message me if you’re interested, though!). However, all of you can help create a contrast college experience. You can learn the names of the students who come on Sunday mornings and add to the network of intergenerational relationships—uncommon in a typical college experience, but integral to a flourishing one.
And all of you can pray that this will be greater than that.
Peter Nittler
College Pastor of First Baptist Church of Davis