Said And Done

I went to a meeting this morning titled “Will Your Child Have Faith After High School?” I went because I’d like to know how to say “yes” to that question. I left the house at 8:00 AM on a Saturday. On Saturday, I don’t usually start cooking breakfast until 9:00 but I have a daughter I love very much and I really would like to say “yes” to that question.

It was worth the time. The speaker had done an in-depth study of some kids who were active in their church youth group in High School. She talked with each of these kids on their college campuses over the next four years. She was their Facebook friend. She got way too much information about what went right and what went wrong in their lives while they were in school.

She talked a lot at first about what college students experience and what it’s like to be a freshman on campus away from home. She spoke of the sense of suddenly finding yourself away from everyone who knows you and how disorienting that can be. She spoke of the extremely high value peer approval takes on as you have only your peers to relate to. She spoke of the weakness of a young college student’s sense of identity when that student has been completely removed from the context in which they have known themselves. She made it very clear that without the fellowship of believers, freshmen college students will, in the first month, probably from sheer loneliness, seek out the fellowship of unbelievers and gladly pay what ever the group demands whether it is inebriation with drugs or alcohol, physical intimacy without emotional commitment or, more likely, some combination.

The last part of her talk was more about what might be done by those who love those college bound church youth group members both before they go off to school and while they are finding their feet on that slippery unfamiliar landscape. Youth leaders should try to fill the gaps – and there will be gaps – in their kids’ understanding of the Gospel, church history and their own salvation so that when professors attack their faith on intellectual grounds they won’t believe that they must surrender immediately. Parents and other supporting members of the student’s fellowship should stay in contact with that student and alleviate some of the sense of  abandonment the student can’t help but feel. There should ideally be some plan for a quick trip home before the fall break.

Ultimately the faith of each college student is their own. Just like my faith, and the faith of everyone else, each college student’s faith may be shaped and influenced by others, but their response to God is their own. We can’t will our faith to our kids. What we can do is damp down the noise of those who live for the wrong side to a point that kids can hear themselves think – or even that still, small voice of God as He seeks to help each of them understand the height, the width, the depth and the breadth of His love.

In a concluding fit of shameless self promotion that I agreed with and will happily pass on to you, the presenter mentioned a couple books coming out late summer. They are both titled “Sticky Faith” with one being subtitled the youth worker edition. They are from Zondervan.