The "other" churches your classmates attend

One of the biggest questions students face on campus is “Where will I go to church?” TMU requires attending church services twice a week and strongly encourages church membership.  But in a valley full of Bible-teaching, faithful churches, the decision to commit to one church can be intimidating.

Finn Erickson, a biblical studies major, remembers joining a more popular church in the area his freshman year in 2022.

“In my situation, there was a lot of pressure to become a member,” Erickson said. “But it just wasn’t the best fit. And I was like, well I guess I’m stuck here now because I became a member.”

Now, as a senior finishing his degree in biblical studies, Erickson is grateful he moved to join the smaller community of West Hills Church in West Hills near the close of his freshman year. The close-knit family of 80-100 people opened their arms to Erickson and five other students and graduates of TMU.

“Everyone was very welcoming,” Erickson said. “The preaching and teaching was phenomenal, it touched the soul, and I had friends there. It was just the perfect fit.”

While the more popular, larger bodies like Grace Community Church, Grace Baptist Church, Placerita Bible Church and others are commonly associated with TMU, scattered throughout the school are several who attend lesser-known churches for various reasons, having found a home and a place to serve among a smaller group of people.

Lake Hills Community Church is another smaller community, with a congregation of 100-120 people, about 20 of which are TMU students. Audrey Hilgert, a sophomore studying biblical counseling, found out about the church her freshman year and “fell in love.”

Before coming to TMU, Hilgert remembers meeting her pastor a couple of times at her previous church of 2,000 people.

“It was always a big deal,” she said.

When she started going to Lake Hills, one of the first things that stood out to Hilgert was how shepherded and known she felt by the pastor and his wife.

“Definitely being able to connect with elders and pastors was a sweet, sweet benefit of going to a smaller church,” Hilgert said. “And I felt I really could serve in a way that impacted the church, that there was a place for me to serve there.”

Jessy Heinzen, a graduate of TMU and the administrative assistant for the Bible department and IBEX program, found Lake Hills in 2019. Her years working in Israel had given her a taste of a “very community-oriented” culture, but many of the churches she visited in the States, though rich in teaching, were poor in reaching out to strangers.

When she visited Lake Hills on the recommendation of a friend, she noticed the difference immediately.

“People were so warm and welcoming when I came in and I was asked to ‘come sit with me’ because I was sitting by myself. And that hadn’t happened at any of the other churches I had visited,” Heinzen said. “I found that family, community life that I had loved so much in Israel—I found that at Lake Hills.”

Being part of a smaller congregation has allowed Hilgert and Heinzen to serve in a number of ways that might have been hard in a larger, less involved church. Heinzen and her husband serve in different capacities from the nursery to the missions committee—and the cleaning crew.

“We get to clean the church once a month, which is sweet,” Heinzen said. “We just have a bunch of different volunteers from the church who want to clean once a week, and we’re part of that crew.”

For Benjamin Creech, a senior in the Bible department studying Christian education, the decision of which church to go to was less about size and more about his prior involvement. He and four other TMU students attend Faith Community Church in Palmdale, a 45-minute drive from campus with close to 1,000 attenders.

Creech started attending Faith Community Church during COVID-19, a few years before he transferred to TMU in the fall of 2023. During that time, he began serving in the youth group, teaching sixth-grade Sunday school and teaching regularly for the college group.

“I had a lot of responsibility there, just people that I was investing in,” Creech said. “My reason for being at Faith is because that’s where I was and that’s where I have an influence, and that’s where I feel very strongly about my responsibility to those people there.”

Hannah Norman, a first-year music major who grew up at Faith Community, shares Creech’s long-term perspective.

“Once I am done with school, I will most likely be moving back home and I don’t want to neglect my life back home for a time and potentially lose it,” she said.

Norman and Creech see the danger of getting stuck in the TMU “bubble” or staying only with college students their age.

“I think it’s often too easy to just go to church and then hang out with people you know,” Norman said. “But the blessing of discipleship in both directions is something that we shouldn’t take lightly.”

Creech is concerned that many make the church an extension of their life at TMU, as if good teaching and life with fellow believing students is all they need. But, he said, there’s a practical side to the church that involves serving and being part of a family of all ages and stages.

“When you’re at school, you can at least partially do it, but it’s still limited because you’re stuck in this enclave,” Creech observed. “Where the church opens that up is that you’re able to serve within the community more and you have a lot more direct brokenness even within the church that you need to serve and look out for.”

Heinzen, looking back at her time as a student, encourages students to branch out beyond themselves and their concerns at the university.

“When you’re here, your world is TMU, your people are TMU. But it’s so important to invest in the local church with people who aren’t TMU,” Heinzen said. “I think that’s really when you’re going to grow, is when you’re being challenged by older more mature people, or even being challenged to love Christ more when you know that there are younger people watching.”