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“Mom, I have pretty much rejected everything you taught me growing up.  You’ve indoctrinated me.”

John Stonestreet of Summit.org told a heart-wrenching story of a young man who grew up in a good, loving, Christian home.  He got accepted to the University of Michigan, fulfilling his and his parents’ dream.  His goal: Get a good education and find a church.  He would have been well on his way to fulfilling that goal had he not, during his first week at school, got involved with the wrong group of friends.  Within weeks of the first day of school, he found himself doing things he thought he would never do.

No One to Turn To

Feeling guilty because he had sinned and compromised his Christian values and commitments, he wanted to talk to someone, only to find that he had no Christian mentors or friends he could seek.  And so he talked to a resident assistant in his dorm, who told him that he was wrong to feel guilty and that his belief in sin and absolute truth are false and antiquated.  He was told that he was lied to growing up and the sooner he accepts the truth that there is no truth the sooner he will be able to liberate himself.  And so he did.  And he called his mom, accusing her of lying to him and announcing that he has decided to leave his faith.

He’s Not the Only One

Chances are that this man is not the only one who has left his faith as he left for college.  And chances are that you know someone who did the same.  Stories like this force Christian parents and leaders to ask ourselves: “What went wrong?”  ”Could anything have been done to prevent this man from leaving the faith?”

The Problem

There’s very little that we can do to change the culture of universities, schools or any setting outside of the church or our homes.  And there is far less that we can do to prevent our children from falling into sin (They will–just as their parents and their leaders before them).  But can’t we do far more in training our children with apologetics and worldview training?  That young man who went to Michigan could not discern the lies, let alone defend himself against them.  And he had no one of faith that he could turn to.  As Christian parents and leaders, we need to do a good job preparing our children for college.  We send them to SAT classes, extra curricular activities, but we do little to prepare them to defend their faith or to stay Christian while they are at school. David Kinnamen, author of unChristian, says “There are certainly effective youth ministries across the country, but the levels of disengagement among twenty-somethings suggest that youth ministry fails too often at discipleship and faith formation. A new standard for viable youth ministry should be – not the number of attenders, the sophistication of the events, or the ‘cool’ factor of the youth group – but whether teens have the commitment, passion and resources to pursue Christ intentionally and whole-heartedly after they leave the youth ministry nest.”

According to recent research, somewhere between 70 and 88 percent of Christian teenagers are leaving the church by their second year in college (Voddie Baucham, Family Driven Faith).

We need to do more.  And we need to start now.