There are few experiences in life like the time you first leave home, most especially if you do so to embark upon what will be for many one of the most formational and transformational seasons of their life – coming up to university. In the next few days, we get ready to welcome a new influx of students at Oxford University, and the new intake at Oxford Brookes already have their feet under the table. For each of these students, the coming days will no doubt be ones punctuated variously by new friends, new routines, new horizons, and perhaps the odd hangover. 

For many, this fresh start is a chance to figure out who they are, away from the gaze of parents and familiar friends, and it can be a time where the big questions come alive in new ways. It can be a time when one learns how to negotiate a life that can seem suddenly increasingly complicated and profound. The way someone engages with those questions at university can have a huge influence on the trajectory of their life beyond their years of study. 

Often I am asked by people whether the University Church mainly caters to students. In reality, it is a place for everybody, and that is vital to its health. As a new cohort of students arrives on our doorstep, we seek to provide a warm and generous welcome – a home from home – and to foster an environment of friendship and learning in which the big questions about life can be asked honestly and faced together.