From home to hell…

What are the odds that your kids in college will reject your faith?

This happens every year. For families, the summer break ends and “back to school/college” or becomes the critical transition point. Clothes, classroom supplies, shifts of routine and more become a demanding deadline. “First day of school” is on the calendar, and it has no wriggle-room. No one consulted your family regarding that appointment: be there, or be truant…

From preschool through high school – or, “prep school,” for some of the privates – the daily classroom convenes out-of-sight for parents, but becomes – for some – an item on the dinner agenda for the families who still convene the family for a common meal (40% of American families eat dinner together three or more times each week, according to the Food Marketing Institute). Mom and dad have some touch with what their kids are hearing all day from their teachers…

School happens alongside multigenerational family interaction; for a declining number of American families, frequent church attendance is another balancing factor. In families like yours, high school graduates still self-identify with the claims of “born again” and “followers of Jesus.”

Near the end of that intense 18 year period of parent-supervised maturation, the focus shifts toward planning the next steps. My readers – you – are highly likely to send your kids to college. To put it in business terms, the most important product ever created in your family workshop will be shipped to an outsource enterprise for its final assembly. They will forever have your brand attached, but the finishing touches on your labor of love will be provided by someone else. What will that mean?

Allow me to disrupt your fantasies with some reality: the vast majority of young American Christians who leave a home just like yours to live and study at an undergraduate college – public or private – will, during their four year enrollment, reduce or reject their claims of personal faith.

Right now, our culture is in the midst of a faith free-fall. Catholics are appalled at the unrelenting headlines concerning decades – perhaps, generations – of sexual exploitation of children by priests, down the street and around the world. In the Protestant/Evangelical community, the revelations of double-lives by notable leaders have hit both the church and parachurch movements. Confidence in religious structures continues to be shaken, and emerging adults – who are beginning to think for themselves – are not immune to the tsunami of backlash that is sweeping over American society.

Find 100 college freshmen who frequented the high school ministry at their family church and say “yes” to their ownership of personal faith… and, then, reconvene them after graduation, four years later. The statistical probability: less than 35 will claim the same spiritual status. What happened?

Today’s public and private college classrooms in America are hostile to biblical faith, and most Christian students coming in the freshman door are unprepared for the active assault on the beliefs and values that came from their family and church. Read more…

If you still have time – with kids or grandkids – and if your faith legacy within your family matters to you, here are two crucial considerations that warrant your top-priority attention.

First: put Christian colleges that teach what you believe on top of your preferred list. If a biblical worldview does not permeate the college classroom, why put your progeny at risk in a place where the Enemy’s version of “truth” is embedded in the education? You have options.

Second: if your choice is a school without Scripture, invest in an evangelical epipen. Before you deliver your student to the Enemy for their college education, enroll them in a 12-day training camp that will help them handle the attacks that are inevitable. Summit is the signature option.

Confession: both of our daughters attended college at Biola University; both attended Summit. We’ve set the same protocols in play for the next generation – our grandkids – because our legacy depends on it.

So… what’s your plan, to avoid the tragedy of losing your most important battle?