Make Your Second Year Great: A Word to New Sophomores

If you are a student in an InterVarsity chapter, there’s a very good chance that the transition from freshman to sophomore year will be hard for you. Why? The simple answer is because everything revolved around you your first year of college.

First-Year Amazingness

Freshman year was amazing. You expanded your view of God’s kingdom, realized the campus is a mission field, met tons of cool people, and made more observations from biblical texts in your InterVarsity Bible studies than you ever thought possible.

Even so, freshman year was all about you.

That’s because every summer and fall, InterVarsity chapters plan for, pray for, and prepare to receive freshmen. And once those freshmen arrive on campus, chapters focus their attention on nurturing them, inviting them to appealing and relevant events, and feeding them.

So I hope your freshman year was a blast! I would love to hear you say you had your fill of barbecues, care packages, and small group dinners.

Consider Something Big

But every spring we ask our freshmen to consider something big. We ask them to take a step up from being the recipient and focus of a large part of our ministry efforts to becoming leaders who serve. We ask sophomores to buy the posters and candy that will help us meet freshmen. We ask small group leaders to clear their schedules to have dinner with people they don’t know yet.

I remember standing in the park with plastic gloves on my hands one year, forming hundreds of ground-beef hamburger patties with Diane, our sophomore evangelism coordinator. (At the end of the day I told Diane to splurge and buy premade patties for the next event!) Sophomore year is about big sacrifices of time and energy, and big opportunities.

InterVarsity chapters take this leap seriously. We believe in student leadership and we believe in campus mission, so we are asking you to be missionaries.

We hope that freshman year opened your eyes wide to the mission of Jesus at your campus to the extent that you now want to engage the university, your classmates, and the incoming class of 2013-2014 and beyond. We are trusting God to help you open your heart, your wallet, your time, and your leadership potential to keep your fellowship moving toward the goal of helping more and more students encounter Jesus.

Lament—and Then Lead

I want to forewarn you: it is not uncommon for sophomores to face a slump in the first quarter or semester back at school. Leadership expectations may or may not be met. Relationships may change as friends and former roommates are housed in different dorms and apartments spread out across campus.

Usually, about two months into their sophomore year, someone would say to me, “This year just doesn’t feel like freshman year.” I lament with them for a little while about how hard it is when things change—and then I invite them to step into the great calling of serving others as they have been served.

Of course, that’s not an original idea. That is exactly what Jesus modeled to his disciples in John 13 when he washed their feet and then told them to do the same.

There never will be anything quite like freshman year, and if you had a great first year, it’s okay to be sad it’s over. But there will never be anything quite like sophomore year either. Start thinking now about ways you can serve when the new semester starts. There are exciting opportunities waiting for you—opportunities to lead a small group Bible study on your floor or help with worship for large-group gatherings or include a homesick freshman in your Friday-night plans. Will you choose to make it a great year by embracing them?

Lisa Liou is on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries in Southern California. Prior to her current role, she spent nine years ministering to undergraduates on campuses in Michigan, Illinois, and California. She remembers the ups and downs of her own sophomore year well.