When I went to college, Davidson was an all male college, recently integrated, with an excellent basketball team.  It also had mandatory chapel, three days per week and a compulsory Vesper service on Sunday evening, followed by open houses rotating I among the faculty members.

 

We had no option for chapel about which many strange stories can be told.  (We usually picked up our mail first.)  In my freshman year we were given the alternative of attending one of the town church for their Sunday morning service, in place of vespers.

 

Davidson was what was then called a suitcase college.  Students went away during he weekends to visit the various women’s colleges during the weekend.  Vespers was the back to school, get ready for Monday; signal that the fun was over.

    

When I was in town, which was most weekends, I went to the small local Episcopal Church.  Just about all of us who were pre-ministerial students did.  Denominations didn’t matter.  We had coffee hour before the service, which usually included communion, and then back to college for the one reliably good meal of the week, Sunday Dinner.

    

I have fond thoughts of going off campus for church.  We were able to meet professors on neutral ground, were welcomed by townsfolk we would not otherwise have met, and enjoyed the fellowship of other students for ministry.  This was a special and supportive community that helped guide me in the selection of the best place for ME to attends seminary.  While have been a lifelong Congregationalist-UCC member, I went to a Presbyterian college.  At various points in my life the Episcopal Church has provided a warm welcome and spiritual guidance.  My fieldwork at the Divinity School, was at an African /American Baptist Church.

    

Spiritual formation is always the work of the greater, wider church, the whole body of Christ.  As I look back on my spiritual formation, I can only be humbled and amazed by the number of people who took time with me, showed interest in my thoughts and goals, and who guided me often in quiet and simple ways.  May I be blessed to do the same.  May we as a church be led to grow as such a nurturing community, aware of our church as but one member of Christ’s Body.