I have noticed a disturbing trend. Granted, this is based on a limited set of data and I have not harnessed the resources of Barna, but I think that an alarming number of people who have attended Christian Colleges have turned away from faith. Again, I am basing this on my own experience, but just a little reflection and reconnection with people tells me that there is some sort of problem causing people who go into college as Christians to come out jaded, cynical, and disinterested in the Christian faith. Some of these same people eventually come back around again, but many do not.
It all leads me to ask, “Why?” Why does Christian education have the exact opposite effect on some people than the mission of the school? Why was my faith, though challenged, also bolstered and strengthened while others were lead down the road of apostasy? I am not just talking about my alma matter, Great Lakes Christian College. I know of various other examples from other colleges that parallel these observations.
So again, I put it out there, “Why?” Do you see the same things that I see? Are you one of those people whose college experience produced the opposite effect? If so, I would be interested in hearing your story. Let me know, because I believe the effectiveness of our Christian Colleges hinge on solving this problem.
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So many students seem to come out disillusioned with the church as an institution (rightly so at times) but not having the skills, knowledge, wisdom, or passion to do anything different. So they just drop out.
Whatever happens they seem to come out having lost their love for the church.
I think we need to create a healthy skepticism of the church while still building an enduring love for it. Something that sends our students into the church as loving, gentle, humble, intelligent reformers instead of abrasive, arrogant, and shallow critics.
I've also noticed schools, in the interest of "teaching them how to think", avoid giving solid answers to anything theological. They treat undergrads like graduate students. But the undergrads don't yet have the tools to handle that kind of open ended education.
So you get saturated in every different idea that's out there without ever hearing an experts view on what a proper biblical view is. Are we that afraid of saying, "I believe the Bible says..." that all we ever teach is "well, some people say this, and some people say that, but you can make up your own mind."? Our students, especially with the poor state of education in most of our churches, don't have the tools to hear all those various ideas and sort it out. So they decide it's just to confusing to bother with and drop out.
Great thoughts Barry. Why do you think students come out "disillusioned"? Are the professors not painting a complete picture? When you say that they don't have the "skills, knowledge, wisdom or passion to do anything different" does the fault lie with the professors, curriculum, or something else?
In regard to "teaching how to think", President Carter (of Great Lakes Christian College for non-alum) likes to use a phrase, "We teach doctrine but we don't indoctrinate." Do you think more indoctrination should take place or more sorting out orthodoxy in the midst of the varying doctrines?
Fun conversation Sam. I think they come out disillusioned because many of the professors are disillusioned. Many of them have been burned in a local church and the experience has slanted them. The profs then affect curriculum.
I appreciate what Pres Carter is trying to say but how do you teach truth without it being on some level indoctrination? I think you teach the different ideas that are out there but then, especially in an undergrad setting, you give a definite point of view and back up why you believe that view is correct. Hopefully students, and parents of students, would know the doctrinal stands a school would take and want them taught to their kids.
I want good people to teach my kids what I'll "our churches" believe. I also want them to understand other viewpoints. Why are our professors so wary of teaching a point of view? I don't believe secular professors feel the same way about their subjects.
I think we have bought way to far into the "cult of open-mindedness". Be proud and public about the views your school holds and profeses and let the "choice of what to believe" come as people decide what school to attend.
I think there are also a large number of these people who were formerly in the ministry. They either burned out over the years, or came out of college fired up with vim and vigor only to run into a wall of "we don't want to change."
Either way, depending on how hard the transition was away from ministry, it's only a couple of more steps to leaving the faith all together. I'm not sure I can count on my two hands the number of examples of this I can think of just from Great Lakes. And not even just from my era, but Barry's as well.
The cynicism is due largely to training young people to be experts while they have no real connection to church while there. I'm not saying they don't go to church (though that happens too.) Many will get hired to churches or volunteer, but this is not the same as serving alongside the people who have brought you up in your faith.
It's judging.
Barry – while I agree that many of the professors have been “burned” I don’t know that they let it affect their presentation aversely. In my experience, I remember an intentional effort to temper those disappointments with a challenge to work at reform and restoration.
In regard to doctrine, while I agree with you that it is important, at times, to come down clearly on some side, they also are holding closely to the Restoration Creed - "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love." In other words, it seems that essential type issues (divinity of Christ, Christ’s atoning work, etc.) are professed pretty clearly while many other, non-essential issues are left up in the air. Otherwise the school will turn into something like Dallas Theological Seminary that requires the professors to sign a statement of faith that includes things like pre-tribulation rapture and other “debatable” theological issues and doctrines.
On a separate, but related issue, I ran into a professor a few years after graduating and after I had been in seminary a while. I asked him why he had not conveyed what I considered to be the “whole truth” about certain issues. He responded, “Would you have been ready to hear it?” I had to confess that, in fact I would not have been ready and perhaps hearing such things may have done irreparable damage to my faith. I don’t know how all that fits into the discussion, but some students are still on milk, while others are on solid food. And even those on solid food aren’t ready to sink their teeth into a steak (if you will extend the metaphor). And the institution and professors have to be cognizant of that.
Any thoughts about all that?
Shannon - so do you recommend more internships, "forced" or "encouraged" involvement in local churches while students are there, or something else?
No, I'm not advocating anything really as much as I am diagnosing. The problem as I see is a lack of love and respect from the students toward the church that makes judging so easy.
In your "home church" the relationships are organic. The students may see the weaknesses, but they are understood within relationship to the people. And they are seen as a part of what is happening and not as the whole. When you take students from those relationships and start teaching ecclesiology and theology, the natural reaction is sit in judgment of those who do not know what they student knows or see how he sees.
Jesus once commented on putting new wine in old wineskins. I think the problem has to do more with that. I will probably be judgmental in Shannon's eyes, but churches are sometimes unchanging, stagnant, and focus on so many other programs and agendas other than making disciples. We teach students what the church is to be like (new wine) and then throw them into the church of yesteryear (not the NT church but more like the 1960s church - old wineskins). The solution is to change the church into what Christ wants it to be, to stop sending young ministers to stagnant and dying churches, and to never lose the zeal we have for the ideal of the church through all of our bad experiences.
That's a big assumption Regan that what is being taught in our colleges is "what the church is to be like" and what is being taught in our churches is not.
"That's a big assumption Regan that what is being taught in our colleges is "what the church is to be like" and what is being taught in our churches is not."
I am just going by my experience. My professors taught me what the church should be like. I see that what I wrote could be read to say that all churches are the church of yesteryear, I did not say that. I did say that the churches that we put most of the students to minister in are the church of yesteryear.
Most churches teach what the church should be like. It is just that in some of the churches they have learned to justify away those teachings and feel that they have arrived at what the church should be like. This results in them being unwilling to change.
It does not do anyone any good to throw a young, zealous Christian into a church that is dying, stagnant, or faithfully unchanging. As the young, zealous Christian matures, he can probably minister in different environments, like an unchanging church. We unfortunately throw most of the young, zealous students into bad churches because they are the one's with the open positions. I propose that we stop encouraging that.
"It does not do anyone any good to throw a young, zealous Christian into a church that is dying, stagnant, or faithfully unchanging."
Tell that to any of the young early Church leaders. Hey, Timothy did you hear what Regan said? :)
It's the young zealous guys that we need in those stagnant churches. We just need to equip them to better lead in them. Instead, we just talk down those "bad" churches and make it sound like the only ministry worth doing is new ministries or mega-ministries. If we have so many bad churches out there shouldn't we be mainly teaching our young leaders how to reinfuse them with a first love?
First, you would have to show me evidence that Ephesus was stagnant. Some of the churches were messed up, but I do not know if we have evidence that they were stagnant. Also, I think Paul was mentoring the young boy, so he was not thrown out to the wolves alone like we do.
"If we have so many bad churches out there shouldn't we be mainly teaching our young leaders how to reinfuse them with a first love?"
I think a church dying can be a good thing. It's better than an unhealthy church remaining. If ministering in a dying church would be the most effective use of the young person's time and is what he is called to do, then that is what he should do. Obviously, God knows where the young man would best be used. But pragmatically speaking, it would always be better to have the young man invest his time in planting a church or working in a healthy church. I do realize that God does not always do what is rational and pragmatic, and I am thankful for that.
If my son decides he wants to be a minister, I will advise him to the best of my ability to not go to an unhealthy church. Go find a healthy church and be a volunteer or go out and plant a church. Only go to an unhealthy church if you know that is where God wants you to be.
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