Blog | Topic: Resources
Nov 20, 2012
Research from the Fuller Youth Institute reveals surprising insights into instilling lasting faith in young people. It is estimated that around 50% of students that grow up in the Christian faith walk away from the church after high school. Many church leaders have known about this growing trend but have not been sure what to do about it. The Fuller Youth Institute, under the direction of Dr. Kara Powell, conducted a ground-breaking, four-year study of this phenomenon. This “Sticky Faith” research followed teenagers from their senior year of high school until their senior year of college, hoping to discover what helped them to make their faith stick. Dr. Powell explains, “As many churches and denominations experience decline, and as anxious parents wonder about their children’s futures, the Sticky Faith research has the power to spark a movement that not only changes youth, but also families and churches.”
Here are three key findings to consider: First, while most U.S. churches focus on building strong youth groups, teenagers also need to build relationships with adults of all ages. Teens need intergenerational community. Second, churches and families overestimate youth group graduates’ readiness for the struggles ahead with dire consequences for the faith. Most teens are not ready for the challenges and temptations of life after high school. Third, while teaching young people the “dos” and “don’ts” of Christian living is important, an overemphasis on behaviors can sabotage faith long-term. Teens desperately need a Gospel of heart transformation, not just behavior modification.
Visit the Sticky Faith website to learn more about the research and to discover helpful resources that equip parents and churches to nurture in young people a faith that lasts.
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Nov 5, 2012
David Kinnaman’s most recent book You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church… And Rethinking Faith (Baker Books) begins with bad news: “Millions of young adults leave active involvement in church as they exit their teen years.” But the good news is that many of the teens who give up on the church, aren’t necessarily walking away from Jesus. Many of them are simply looking for more meaningful ways to follow Jesus in contemporary culture.
The Barna Group has been criticized of late for supposedly being “alarmist” and for using a flawed research methodology. Most of the criticism has come from a few, Christian, social scientists. I think much of the criticism is overstated. What is so refreshing about You Lost Me is that it doesn’t rely solely on Barna statistics. It pulls from a variety of sources and notes the shortcomings of all research. Kinnaman writes: “I want to provide here a nuanced, data-driven assessment of young adults’ faith journeys. In our evidence gathering, interviews, and data analysis, the Barna team’s goal is to construct the most accurate picture we can of cultural reality, because the church is called to be the church in the real world. In this research, we have done our best to uncover the facts and the truth of the dropout problem, and this book is the compilation of our best thinking on the subject thus far—but it is hardly the final answer.”
I have read much of and have benefitted greatly from the recent sociological research on the religious attitudes of late adolescents and emerging adults from leading sociologists such as Jeffrey Arnett, Chap Clark, Tim Clydesdale, Donna Freitas, Christian Smith, and Robert Wuthnow. Kinnaman’s findings affirm and support much of what is found among leading social scientists. My hope is that You Lost Me is received as a welcomed addition to that conversation. It is as good and as thorough as anything else I have read concerning young adult spirituality.
You Lost Me is clear and compelling. It is thoughtful and balanced. It should be read by everyone concerned for the church; pastors, parents, educators, even students will benefit from Kinnaman’s wisdom. He rightly identifies the church “dropout problem” as a “disciple-making” problem, explaining, “The church is not adequately preparing the next generation to follow Christ in a rapidly changing culture.” You Lost Me not only identifies the reasons why many young adults stop attending church but it also provides disciples-making suggestions for how to get them back. The book also features a collection of fifty “ideas for passing on a flourishing, deep-rooted faith.” CPYU president Walt Mueller and I are among the contributors.
Visit www.YouLostMeBook.com to learn more.
Watch a video about You Lost Me here.
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Nov 2, 2012
Last fall I spoke to a group of college bound high school students and their parents at Sayre Woods Bible Church in Old Bridge, NJ. I opened my talk by mentioning an article by an admission’s counselor from the University of Pennsylvania. The article is entitled “Fear of Talking” and in it the author observes that parents and teens are not talking about one of the most important transitions in life. He writes, “[The students] talk to me about their hopes for college, but few have the same conversation with their parents.” Why aren’t parents and teens having meaningful conversations about college? Fear. Here’s a quote worth considering:
“Parents don’t think they put stress on their teens. Teens disagree. There is an implied understanding, an unarticulated perception of expectation between the teen and parent; but with so much at stake, you would think teens and parents would intentionally sit down and actually talk about what the other thinks, hopes for and expects. Too often you’d be wrong. Teens and parents tend not to talk to each other about this crucial matter because they are afraid to talk.”
Afraid to talk? It isn’t easy engaging teens in conversations about future plans. Teens do tend to be under a lot of stress. They do, in fact, have many pressures, real and perceived, about succeeding in life. And, truth be told, our busy schedules and lives can sometimes limit the opportunities we have to talk to them about things that matter most. But here’s what I’ve discovered: creating space to have meaningful and honest conversations about life after high school often lessens the pressure and stress. It’s not easy, to be sure. And we may not always like what we hear teenagers say. But I think it is better to be on the same page, to know where teens are coming from, than to assume we know what they are thinking.
One of the reasons I am passionate about doing the College Transition Seminar is to be a catalyst for conversation between parents and their kids before heading off to college. The most meaningful feedback I receive is when a parent or teen lets me know that something I said sparked a much needed conversation. My prayer is for that to happen at all of the College Transition Seminars!
Related Resources:
Book: Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life and Learning (includes discussion questions)
Article: “Silence is Not Golden: The Why and How of Sticky Faith Conversations at Home” by Kara Powell & Brad Griffin
Seminar: The College Transition: Your Purpose, Your Faith, Your Community
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Nov 1, 2012
C.S. Lewis has been one of the most influential Christian writers in the last century. I was significantly influenced by him as a college student while coming to terms with one of the most important questions students need to ask when transitioning from high school to college: What do I believe? I discovered the writings of the late Oxford professor and Christian apologist (Lewis died in 1963) at an important time in my college career.
My dilemma? I wasn’t sure the Christian faith could survive the scrutiny of the “new knowledge” and ideas that bombard students on college campuses. In fact, I had a philosophy professor who asked to see the hands of all the professing Christians in the class. All semester he tried to make us look like fools. I needed some encouragement (and fire power!) and someone suggested that I read C.S. Lewis. The first Lewis book I read was his autobiography Surprised by Joy. I was hooked. Here was a man who went through the academic “fire” of the “secular” university and came out the other side not only with his faith intact, but with a much stronger faith for going through it.
About two miles from my office sits a small, liberal arts college. A few years ago I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a renowned C.S. Lewis scholar was a professor in the English department. David C. Downing has written many notable books on the life of Lewis including, Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C.S. Lewis, and Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. I was most interested in Dr. Downing’s book that deals with Lewis’ conversion, The Most Reluctant Convert: C.S. Lewis’ Journey to Faith. This book reveals how Lewis navigated and eventually answered many of the same questions I was being forced to ask in my philosophy course.
I asked Dr. Downing if he would talk with me about the book and about issues facing college students, especially as they make the transition from high school to college. He agreed and what follows are some highlights from our conversation.
Click here to download the interview (PDF).
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Oct 26, 2012
Why do you think people go to college? I ask this question during the introduction of the College Transition Seminar. It is always interesting to hear how students and parents respond. “To get a job” is probably the reason I hear the most. And, of course, there are the playful, more peripheral answers: to get married, to party, and to play sports. But then someone will sheepishly raise a hand and suggest: “to learn something.” A few weeks ago at a church in Florida, in fact, I counted eleven answers that were given before someone mentioned, “learning” or “education.”
College is certainly about more than learning. The time between adolescence and adulthood includes a variety of character-forming decisions and activities. But it does surprise me when a room full of college bound students don’t naturally list “learning” as a reason for going to college. In his informative book, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, Columbia University professor Andrew Delbanco challenges readers to think more deeply about the aims of a college education.
Dr. Delbanco explains that historically there have been basically three prevailing answers to the question, what is college for? The most common answer is an economic one. A college education makes an individual more competitive in the job market. The second answer is based on citizenship. An educated society is required for a democracy to flourish. The third answer is rarely considered, however Delbanco thinks it deserves more attention: an educated person enjoys a fulfilling life. “You want the inside of your head to be an interesting place to spend the rest of your life,” Delbanco quotes former college president, Judith Shapiro, to make his point. Delbanco laments:
“In Today’s America, at every kind of institution—from underfunded community colleges to the wealthiest Ivies—this kind of education is at risk. Students are pressured and programmed, trained to live from task to task, relentlessly rehearsed and tested until winners are culled from the rest. They scarcely have time for… contemplation.”
And contemplation about education, and life in general, is desperately needed! According to Delbanco “most students have no clear conception of why or to what end they are in college. Some students have always been aimless, bored, or confused; others self-possessed, with their eyes on the prize. Most are somewhere in between, looking for something to care about.”
Students are craving something to care about. The pressure to perform and achieve is intense and often leaves students feeling empty. I recently had a conversation with a youth pastor who was worried about his students. Many of them were stressed and overwhelmed about their Advanced Placement (AP) courses. What’s more, the students who were not taking AP classes were looked down upon and ridiculed. At one point in our conversation, the youth pastor passionately asked, “Where is Jesus in all of this?”
This summer marked the fifth anniversary of the publication of The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness. My good friend Don Opitz and I published this little book to try to answer the question this youth pastor appropriately asked: does Jesus care about our academic pursuits? Our hope is that our book serves as a guide for students who are perhaps “aimless, bored or confused.” It is also a challenge to students with their “eyes on the (worldly) prize.” We invite students to consider Kingdom-shaped answers to the questions, what is college for and why is learning important? Here are a few answers we suggest:
“We want you to find the deep satisfaction of pursuing your daily labors (for now, primarily attending class and studying) as service to God. We want you to experience the unending challenge of exalting Christ as Lord of your thinking… to imagine the application of your learning—your studies and plans and dreams—as an expression of love, or better yet, as a conduit for the love of God.”
“Christ is the very source of learning, and his disciples are the intended recipients of that wisdom and knowledge. As we learn in faith, not only will our own capacity for wonder and insight and love increase, but others will benefit as well.”
“Being concerned about grades is appropriate, but too often students become obsessive about grades and success and begin to lose the bigger picture. Learning needs to be pursued with the right motives and applied to worthwhile purposes.”
“Two things can happen to a college student, and both of these things are very bad. Unfortunately, both are also very common. You can lose the capacity to dream, and you can lose the gumption to act.”
“The Bible portrays a seamless continuity between our knowing and our doing… Learning isn’t merely for job readiness or self-advancement. Learning ought to be a way to love God and neighbor, a way to care for the creation and develop healthy communities.”
“If your capacity for delight and wonder and curiosity and compassion is being enlarged while you are in college, then that is a very good sign indeed… that is what most of us really want for ourselves. Academic faithfulness is the sure cure for collegiate boredom, apathy, and listlessness.”
When the topic of academic faithfulness or Christian scholarship has been raised, Christian students often see the challenge as beyond them, as a task for the stout and the wise, for the uniquely gifted. We think every Christian student has been called by God to think faithfully about learning. But students shouldn’t have to engage this conversation alone. A study guide has been created to be used in small groups as well. Our prayer is that The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness invites more and more students to ask better, bigger questions about faithfulness and learning.
Professor Delbanco’s new book, College, should help to keep this important conversation in front of many students and parents as they make important college decisions. I am grateful for Delbanco’s wisdom and hope his book is widely read.
(Read an interview from Inside Higher Ed with author Andrew Delbanco.)
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Oct 23, 2012
“More can be done to encourage those teens who do want to examine the purpose or direction of their lives by engaging them at deeper levels before the first year out of high school.”
This was sociologist Timothy Clydesdale’s challenge to clergy in his important book The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School. It is also the perfect way to describe the motivation behind the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding’s (CPYU) College Transition Initiative (CTI). “More can be done…”
Here are the words of CPYU’s President, Dr. Walt Mueller:
“CTI grew out of CPYU’s desire to help students make the most of their college years. Sadly, many of the stories I was hearing supported research indicating that high school students were not transitioning well to college. Many of those students were facing problems and issues that could have been avoided if they and their parents had taken time to be more prepared.”
The mission of CTI is to provide resources for students, parents, church leaders and educators to help students be more spiritually prepared for life after high school. Resources include seminars, books, articles, expert interviews, conferences and events, and a regularly updated blog. All of these resources are an attempt to create opportunities for students and parents to have more meaningful conversations about life after high school.
CTI’s resources cannot prepare students completely for college, of course. They can, however, help to paint a realistic picture of the cultural landscape ahead. They can offer advice to students from people that have gone before them about how to navigate deliberately and faithfully in such a setting. The resources can also start better conversations, enabling parents and students to begin to ask the right questions before setting off on the journey.
In his very influential book The Fabric of Faithfulness, Dr. Steven Garber reminds us what’s at stake:
“For those whose pathway leads them into the world of the university, decisions are made during that time that are determinative for the rest of life. In the modern world, the years between eighteen and twenty-five are a time for the settling of one’s convictions about meaning and morality: why do I get up in the morning? What do I do after I get up in the morning? One then settles into life with those convictions as the shaping presuppositions and principles of one’s entire life.”
I’m convinced that Dr. Garber is correct. The college years are developmentally critical for a healthy and successful adulthood. This is a very important time in a young person’s life and because students are largely unprepared for the increasing tide of pressures they will face, CTI is committed to helping students and parents transition smoothly to the “world of the university.”
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