I just read “Finding Jesus at College,” an article by Edward Dutton in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, Dutton claims that “students are most likely to meet Jesus – and stick with him – at the world’s most elite universities” whereas students who attend private Christian colleges “leave, in many cases, far less ardent in their faith.” This is a controversial and though-provoking assertion, to be sure, so I thought I’d jot out a few thoughts about Jesus, the campus, and our approach to ministry to youth and postmoderns in general.
One of the first points in the article had to do with “moments of distress,” which in my experience provide one of the two most critical pieces of faith formation on campus (the other being faithful input to help navigate that crisis). Dutton is spot on in his premise that the challenges to faith that a collegian may encounter will be absolutely critical to the long-term growth and development of their relationship with Jesus.
In his book If Jesus Were a Sophomore, Bruce Main writes,
These well-meaning ministries can set up a false and ultimately destructive dichotomy – church is home while the campus is a dangerous place to be.
However, the unchallenged, insulated Christian life will inevitably stagnate and wither, which is partly why the great efforts of the church to be “relevant” to young people tend to fail so miserably. It is often a therapeutic effort, attempting to relieve the stress of living in a predominantly unchristian culture and reinforce a sense of Christian identity while side-stepping the difficult questions of honoring Jesus in a complex world.
However, when a believer is encouraged to live in true friendship and community with both non-Christians and Christians alike, he must constantly articulate and re-articulate his faith with increasing clarity and conviction. Active and consistent dialogue with those who believe differently raises questions that, left to our own inclinations, we might never consider; if our God is the great God we believe Him to be, we need not shrink from tough questions, whether they come from our nominally Christian roommate, our “burned-by-the-church” relative, or our militantly atheistic Intro to Philosophy professor. It is significant that Jesus’ prayer for his followers was not that the Father would remove them from the world – rather, that He would strengthen them to carry forth the mission.
Unfortunately, this youth ministry strategy of mitigating contact with the corrupt world (or campus) shows up all over the place in the church, on Christian campuses, and campus ministries at secular institutions. There are plenty of exceptions (thank God!), but it does remain a prevalent orientation for many of us who work with this generation. I wonder if this is because, faced with horrifying statistics on the rate of young people leaving the fold (Barna says that less than 1% of American youth will retain a biblical worldview), we’ve adopted a defensive stance (us vs. them), rather than one that presses with humility, dialogue, and prayer into the opportunity for life-long conversion that the university context can provide.
The campus presents a unique context for growth, not just intellectually, but also spiritually. If we could shed the persistent idea that impressionable young minds ought to be protected from the sinful world of campus, and ensure that there is someone there to help them process the hard questions, we might be surprised at the scale of revival that could sweep the academy and the world in the coming decades. As Charles Malik wrote in The Two Tasks, “The university is arguably the single most significant institution in the Western Civilization. Change the university and you change the world.”
With students experiencing unprecedented freedom to reinvent themselves during their four years, the power of a prophetic call to a life of significance, service, and radical follower-ship of Jesus cannot be overvalued.
That said, we are far from being able to reach the vast majority of students or campuses with the gospel of Jesus. My own ministry, InterVarsity, which has staff on more than twice as many campuses as any other campus ministry, reaches only about 100,000 students annually. I say "only" because it’s just a drop in the bucket of America's 18 million undergraduates.
This requires of the church an unflinching commitment to impact the campus and a radical reexamination of the underlying principles that shape how we do ministry with this generation – if, that is, our aspiration is not just to retain the membership of our youth, but to induce the church to grow in the 21st century.
One of the first points in the article had to do with “moments of distress,” which in my experience provide one of the two most critical pieces of faith formation on campus (the other being faithful input to help navigate that crisis). Dutton is spot on in his premise that the challenges to faith that a collegian may encounter will be absolutely critical to the long-term growth and development of their relationship with Jesus.
In his book If Jesus Were a Sophomore, Bruce Main writes,Unfortunately, in our contemporary Christian culture, we have been seduced to believe that Christian faith is about avoiding crisis… From birth we are raised to think that the sole objective in life is to… live a life that has a minimum of crises. Life is to be lived as safely and securely as possible. Unfortunately, walks down safe and easy roads do not create opportunities to grow as human beings and grow in our faith. I like Erik Erikson’s definition of crisis when he claims,The advice given to college-bound youth by well-meaning parents and pastors is often centered around finding a “safe” place in which to continue the Christian walk by avoiding crisis (what Dutton terms a “fortress of identity). I’ve seen so many students from vibrant, loving, doctrinally sound home churches arrive at college scared to death of losing their faith due to contact with unholy stuff like the proverbial sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Many college-aged church groups share an assumption of the value of bringing students out of their natural campus habitat and into the church, where they can be “preserved” against the influences of their atheistic professors and the debauchery of frat keggers.
... In clinical work (as in economics and politics) crisis has increasingly taken on half of its meaning, the catastrophic half, while in medicine, a crisis once meant a turning point for better or for worse, a crucial period in which a decisive turn one way or another is unavoidable. Such crises occur in man’s total development sometimes more noisily, as it were, when new instinctual needs meet abrupt prohibitions, sometimes more quietly when new capacities yearn to match new opportunities, and when new aspirations make it more obvious how limited one (as yet) is. We would have to talk of all these and more if we wanted to gain an impression of the difficult function – or functional unity.
These well-meaning ministries can set up a false and ultimately destructive dichotomy – church is home while the campus is a dangerous place to be.
However, the unchallenged, insulated Christian life will inevitably stagnate and wither, which is partly why the great efforts of the church to be “relevant” to young people tend to fail so miserably. It is often a therapeutic effort, attempting to relieve the stress of living in a predominantly unchristian culture and reinforce a sense of Christian identity while side-stepping the difficult questions of honoring Jesus in a complex world.
However, when a believer is encouraged to live in true friendship and community with both non-Christians and Christians alike, he must constantly articulate and re-articulate his faith with increasing clarity and conviction. Active and consistent dialogue with those who believe differently raises questions that, left to our own inclinations, we might never consider; if our God is the great God we believe Him to be, we need not shrink from tough questions, whether they come from our nominally Christian roommate, our “burned-by-the-church” relative, or our militantly atheistic Intro to Philosophy professor. It is significant that Jesus’ prayer for his followers was not that the Father would remove them from the world – rather, that He would strengthen them to carry forth the mission.
Unfortunately, this youth ministry strategy of mitigating contact with the corrupt world (or campus) shows up all over the place in the church, on Christian campuses, and campus ministries at secular institutions. There are plenty of exceptions (thank God!), but it does remain a prevalent orientation for many of us who work with this generation. I wonder if this is because, faced with horrifying statistics on the rate of young people leaving the fold (Barna says that less than 1% of American youth will retain a biblical worldview), we’ve adopted a defensive stance (us vs. them), rather than one that presses with humility, dialogue, and prayer into the opportunity for life-long conversion that the university context can provide.
The campus presents a unique context for growth, not just intellectually, but also spiritually. If we could shed the persistent idea that impressionable young minds ought to be protected from the sinful world of campus, and ensure that there is someone there to help them process the hard questions, we might be surprised at the scale of revival that could sweep the academy and the world in the coming decades. As Charles Malik wrote in The Two Tasks, “The university is arguably the single most significant institution in the Western Civilization. Change the university and you change the world.”
With students experiencing unprecedented freedom to reinvent themselves during their four years, the power of a prophetic call to a life of significance, service, and radical follower-ship of Jesus cannot be overvalued.
That said, we are far from being able to reach the vast majority of students or campuses with the gospel of Jesus. My own ministry, InterVarsity, which has staff on more than twice as many campuses as any other campus ministry, reaches only about 100,000 students annually. I say "only" because it’s just a drop in the bucket of America's 18 million undergraduates.
This requires of the church an unflinching commitment to impact the campus and a radical reexamination of the underlying principles that shape how we do ministry with this generation – if, that is, our aspiration is not just to retain the membership of our youth, but to induce the church to grow in the 21st century.
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