One of my earliest experiences with a branch church was being told that my application for membership would not meet the requirements. I considered myself an earnest Christian Scientist and greatly desired to be an active church member. But I was a graduate student, and at that time the local church identified students as transitory and therefore too unsettled for sustained church involvement.
I felt this was an unwise practice. Not unlike many graduate students, I ended up attending the university for six years—longer than many of the "established" residents of the community! But, happily, there was clearly spiritual growth in other aspects of the branch church's activities, and I felt that I, too, was growing Spiritward. I knew that sooner or later either the members of this church would outgrow this concept of church membership or I would be shown the wisdom of their ruling. I also knew that my expression of the divine ideal of Church could not be dwarfed in the meantime, because I could never be separated from God or His goodness.
And so it was. I was able to take full advantage of opportunities to be active in a Christian Science college organization at the university. Interestingly, when I was serving as president of the college organization's executive board, this branch church requested that we help them in communicating the relevance of Christian Science to teen-agers in the area. We happily responded by hosting an all-day seminar on this subject, which, according to the reports afterward, blessed many.
