Students who take their unquestioned or unsatisfying answers to college, often find their whole basis for faith called into question by the required courses in "humanities," which usually feature at least one course on religion. When students hear Christianity and the Bible taught and discussed in those classes, the subject matter sounds altogether different from what they were taught in church.

The reason is pretty straightforward:
In the classroom, the historical-critical method of analysis takes the place of the church's more "devotional" method. The focus in the classroom is on sources, names, events, places, and dates. The church, especially the youth group, usually focuses on what a person thinks God is saying to them through a passage of Scripture.

The real differences, however, might add up to nothing more than a difference in emphasis. The emphasis in the church is that a glorious and holy God has created the world, revealed his will and way to us in the Bible, and sought to reconcile the sin-stained world to himself through Jesus Christ. The emphasis in the classroom is that god has been a common feature in most civilizations in world history, the Bible is the collection of texts that three particular groups view as sacred (and one of those has that view for only the first part of it), and Jesus was a Jewish preacher who was execute by the Roman for insurrection.

Those two different presentations aren't necessarily at odds with each other - that's why I said there might be nothing more than a difference in emphasis. There's actually nothing wrong with the classroom portrayal of God, the Bible, or Jesus that I just outlined - all of it is true. The church just claims more to be true about them than the college professor does.


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Beyond Pep-Rallies & Pizza Parties

When I went to college, I was asked all sorts of questions about Christianity.

Why is God so hidden?
Why does the Bible contradict itself?
Do you think people go to Hell?
Is homosexuality a sin?
Won't God forgive everyone if they just ask for forgiveness?
What happens to people who never hear about Jesus?
If God is all-good and all-powerful, then why is there evil and suffering?
Why does that guy stand in the middle of campus with a bullhorn and yell at everyone?


I hadn't grown up going to church and I had only been calling myself a Christian for about a year at the time. Ironically, most of the ones asking me all the questions had grown up going to church and had called themselves Christians for as long as they could remember.

So I did as best I could, trying to think through and explore some possible answers with them - just like people had done for me. But I wondered why they hadn't asked their pastor or youth pastor those questions. Maybe they did ask. Maybe they weren't satisfied with the answers.

They might have been like the 16-year old high school student who was talking with me recently about some of his questions. I was struck by how similar they were to the questions I was asked by 21-year old college students just a few years ago. So I asked him what I wondered back then. Why didn't he ask his pastor or youth pastor?

His response confirmed what I had thought all those years ago: he had asked, and he wasn't satisfied with their answers. He felt like they had given him a cliche and expected him to go along on his merry way.

The questions we all had, of course, were swirling around the academic, social, and experiential challenges were were all facing.

All youth pastors should take note at this point:
Students can see that there's more to life than pep-rallies and pizza parties, and they're hoping you can see that too.


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Today's Learning Is Tomorrow's Teaching

Students who profess Christian faith drop out of the church and the faith at an alarming rate when they exit the confines of their youth group and step foot on the college campus.

The statistics are widely available in plenty of formats so I don't need to get into the definitions and details here (see especially Generation Ex-Christian by Drew Dyck, You Lost Me by David Kinnaman, or Almost Christian by Kenda Creasy Dean, or Soul Searching by Christian Smith). Suffice it to say there is a need to help students of faith continue practicing the faith as they grow up.

Why are they abandoning the same faith they once professed?
Every person and situation is different, but there are some common stories.

Some leave because they are trying to figure out who they are and what they really believe on their own terms. Away from their parents, friends, and church for the first time, they are introduced to activities and ideas that hold a special kind of intrigue because they are new and different.

Some leave because they didn't actually believe what the pastor had been saying all along - even if they said or acted like they did in order to appease their parents. In a place of higher learning, they find plenty of help to support what they thought was true (or false) the whole time.

Some leave because, when you get right down to it, they don't see how it really matters for real life in the real world. When the responsibility falls on them to engage with other Christians and practice the basic disciplines of the faith, they hit the snooze button (repeatedly) instead.

Some leave, even though the fully intended not to, because their faith cannot hold up in the face of the academic, social, and experiential challenges they encounter. The questions, the scrutiny, and the doubts are just too much, and something's got to give.

This isn't an exhaustive list and I have no doubt that the reason is often some combination of several reasons, but those are the explanations I hear about the most when talking with students.

What do you think?


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