Santorum's Attack on Higher Education and College Students Abandoning Their Faith

Tim King wrote a brilliant article HERE on the CNN Belief Blog on Santorum's comments on how college students are walking away from their faith due to their experiences at "liberal" colleges.
King states that:

The years young adults spend in college aren’t causing them to leave their faith; those college years are exposing the problems with the faith they grew up with. The exodus has little to do with liberal college professors . . . . Rather, the exodus is about hypocrisy.

 There are those in the faith community who like to point fingers at other people with the failure of their own kids, but the reality is that the church need to stop and take a hard look at itself.  Villainizing education is not a good thing to do, especially when you consider what the Bible says about gaining wisdom and pursuing wisdom at all costs.

 There are many reasons why college-age young adults are leaving the church and to lay all of that blame on the esoteric "liberal college professor" is a lame cop-out.  I left the church for a while for a myriad of reasons.  I could lay it all on my church experience, pointing at hypocrisy and judgmental attitudes (the 80's were just a weird time for evangelicalism).  I could point to my college experience and blame that I suppose.  But the reality is that my own sin and temptation caused me to walk away from my faith for a time.

 The beautiful thing is that I worship a God who still pursued me and loved me even during those dark times.  He never walked away from me or gave up on me.  I am grateful that my God is greater than those hypocrites and finger-pointing people in the church as well as all my "liberal" (and conservative) college professors.  And I personally loved my broad education from the conservative Christian Sociology Professor to my Radical Feminist English Professor to my Liberal "Conspiracy-Theorist" History Professor, to my "Yoda Master" Seminary Professor!  They were all great.  The ones I never liked were the ones whom I felt were trying to indoctrinate me instead of helping me to think for myself.  And, if truth be told, there were a lot of those at the more conservative schools I went to rather than the liberal ones.  A LOT MORE!

Beyond the Yearbook

This is an outline of a talk I gave to my church congregation on December 28, 2008.

I. Introduction:

A. Welcome back all college students
B. Introduce Senior class of 2009: first class I had all the way through
C. Power Point Game

II. Beyond the Yearbook

A. 18 years of nurture in an environment of family, church, school and
community and then off to college!

B. Proverbs 22:6:

1. Various Translations:

a. NIV: Train a child in the way he should go, and when he
is old he will not turn from it

b. New Living Translation: Direct your children onto the
right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.

c. Contemporary English Version: Teach your children right from
wrong, and when they are grown they will still do right.

d. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Version: Teach your children
well . . .

2. Emphasis is on the word “train”: the verb includes the idea of
“dedicate,” and so the training should be with purpose.

3. Proverbs contrast two ways of life: the way of the wicked and foolish
in contrast to the way of the righteous and wise.

4. Cultural context vs. the reality of our day! Agrarian society vs. the
Post-modern, post-industrial information age

B. Recent Trends:

1. 70% OF CHRISTIAN TEENS WILL WALK AWAY FROM THEIR FAITH DURING THEIR FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE
In an August 7, 2007 USA Today article (“Young Adults Aren’t Sticking With Church”), a national survey by LifeWay Research unveiled groundbreaking research that shows that 70% of church-attending Christian teens leave the church. The greatest numbers leave at ages 17, 18 or 19 throughout their senior year of high school and upon entering their freshman year at college. College becomes a spiritual graveyard for many Christian students… a place where their faith wanes. Culture shock, loneliness, peer pressure and an environment of freedom without bounds result in 70% of approximately 1.2 million youth ministry graduates per year leaving the foundations of their faith. For many of them, their God-given needs go unmet for the first time: to be loved, accepted and to fit into a group. When our students leave home alone with no established connection to Christian roommates, college, career or military ministries (on campus or in the church) and godly Christian friends they lose the accountability and balance provided by these vital relationships.

If there is any truth to this at all, this as a youth pastor and a parent is totally unacceptable to me. This means that in my own household I will have only one child continue in their faith into their adult life. Weather forecasters are wrong 50% of the time. We as a church cannot afford to be wrong 70% when we are talking about the souls of our own children!

2. Many ideas out there about whose fault this is: parents, youth ministries,
College professors, Campus life

3. Video of “Laurie’s Story” http://videoroom.youthtransitionnetwork.org/

C. The training of a child

1. What we can do NOW: A Model in Luke 2:52 - "And Jesus grew in wisdom (mental) and stature (physical), and in favor with God (spiritual) and men (social)."

Jesus developed the mental, physical, social and spiritual areas of his life.

Some observations:
- Social and Mental take over during college while physical
and spiritual get neglected
- My life: the crazier life gets, the easier it is to neglect my
spiritual disciplines
- Jesus’ adult life: the crazier it got, the more he made time
to spend with his Father
- Luke 2:52 gives us a model to live by individually as well
as a good parenting model

2. What can we do BETTER to prepare for the next stage?

3. A few ideas:

a. Develop a College Transition Team

b. Campus/College Ministries: Wesley Foundation, Campus
Crusade, InterVarsity, Fellowship of Christian Athletes,
local churches, etc.

c. Develop our own ministry to our college students: be more
intentional in helping with transitioning from high school to
college

d. Empower our students to lead themselves

e. Stay connected through cell phones, e-mails, texting,
Facebook, etc.

f. Pray, pray, pray

g. Add your thoughts and ideas to the blog

h. Make a New Year’s Resolution to “train up yourself and you child” in a life that demonstrates balance and commitment to all areas of life.