Can Christian Students Keep Their Faith on a College Campus?

well first that's a great question and it certainly can be a real problem as you stated i went seven years to college and law school i also taught part-time at university of houston and austin community college and even though that was a long time ago it was still very secular very liberal it was the sexual revolution was in full swing to give an example i come as a 17 year old mk from korea back to the u.s and i go to rice university i'm on campus for a week of orientation and for recreation they're a schedule activity was to go to a topless bar of course i opted out and a few of us did something different but that's was just considered the culture and as part of your student fees they provided various services and student activities and one of the things they offered were movies included including x-rated movies you could go for free as a student to an auditorium on campus and watch on our or even in some cases an x-rated movie so that was the culture in the law school uh you'd go to a party well it was characterized by kegs of beer and somewhere by the middle of the party everybody was pretty much drunk so that is a real issue and i had to face that and i will say thankfully we have some great bible colleges we have urchin college which not only provides a bible major and ministry majors but also other majors general studies and communications and human services and they're expanding other organizational leadership other what you might call secular or career or oriented majors so i would certainly say that christian young people should consider those options within the upci but as you rightly say there are many careers and many uh degree programs that you would have to go to a secular college and i think that can be fine here's what i found as a pastor i i studied this carefully we had hundreds of young people go through our church and i found this if a student stayed in the area attended one of the local colleges or universities or within a reasonable driving distance and stayed connected to the local church we had a high retention rate or if a student went to at that time we didn't have urchin college but to one of our bible colleges or urchin graduate school of theology equally high retention rate in fact higher than people who didn't go to college at all so that proves you can go to college and live for god uh and i think maybe it was even a higher retention rate because we were very intentional about offering uh training to our college-aged kids through what we now call hyphen giving them resources and giving them christian apologetics answering some of the questions so i think i would say from a local church standpoint you need a strong hyphen group you need teachers who can engage and of course now we have resources online we have resources through upci my podcast my books i've written as well as many other books you give resources to your college age kids so that they're have answers to all the questions but what i did find is those students who moved away to secular college to another city left our church although i tried to connect them to a church in their area we had a very high rate of loss and so based on my experience i don't really recommend that except in rare cases where you have a very intentional plan and you connect them to the church so the the good news is we've got great upci colleges and options uh also we have a great track record of yes you can be successful in retaining young adults in church even though they go to secular college but now speaking more specifically from the students perspective one thing my parents required first they wanted me to go i didn't have the option of staying in the home area so i did have to move seven thousand miles away they wanted me to go where there was a strong church and they connected me to the pastor and they personally contacted the pastor so i would say if you're moving out of your own local church area you need to be intentional and work with your pastor to get connected to another church and be committed to that church and meet that pastor and make a commitment second thing i would say is prioritize church and spiritual life over college life that's what i did in both houston and austin church activities took priority uh even church social activities the the youth group the college age group those social activities took precedence over secular activities i did lose some you might say by not making as many close college friends my my close friends from college days are church friends that didn't go to my college but they were in the youth group or the singles group but i think that's vitally important because when your main focus becomes the campus and social activities and friends that is going to be maybe even more influential than what you actually learn in class so what you're taught in class you can learn to eat the meat and spit out the bones you can get resources to counteract everything they're telling you you can learn to answer not what you personally believe but a court you can answer well as we were told in class or according to the following professor the evaluation of this matter is as follows and so you can learn to get a good grade and stay clear of the pressure while not caving in in your own belief system but the bigger challenge is the social life and the peer pressure and so i would recommend to go back to what i was saying earlier uh my parents did not want me to live on campus in the dorm but i as an undergraduate i rented a room from a family in the church and as a graduate student i got my own efficiency apartment so the first thing i would say is stay connected to your local church if at all possible even if you have to drive a distance be faithful to your local church number two find a living arrangement preferably that's not a secular dorm but a christian family a church family or christian roommates or whatever you can do that preserves the atmosphere of the home that's what i would recommend and then third of this list is prioritize your church life and your church friends and your church social activities even ministry uh i taught sunday school i was a youth leader i taught home bible studies i did soul winning i was involved in campus ministry so a lot of my discretionary time was not the extracurricular activities given by the college but the extracurricular activities given by the church and that really kept my focus uh on church and sometimes you might think well i'm too busy in college after i get out of college i'll do ministry after i get out of college i'll teach sunny school after i get up college i'll win souls i'll teach bible studies you'll never have more discretionary time than you have right now as a single adult if if you're the typical you know young adult going to college so you have to make time for your priorities you'll never have more than 24 hours a day so it's really a matter of priorities and yes taking hours of studies important but so is taking of hours of of church important and so if you engage in church life not just merely showing up for church i found from the other side as a pastor in a city where there are many students coming in if a student just showed up for service but didn't involve themselves in the other activities we probably wouldn't keep them but if they would come to the scheduled youth activities if they would get involved in at least some outreach activities then we would very likely retain them so i believe yes you can definitely live for god in a college setting but you have to be intentional you have to make church your priority and you have to maintain a strong relationship with god through prayer church attendance study of the word of god studying to know what you believe why you believe it reading some books on a college level which we now have great upci authors