“Make no mistake about it, the university setting will likely be a battlefield populated with people opposed to Christianity.”
(J. Warner Wallace – Cold Case Christianity) Several years ago I had the opportunity to speak to an engaging group of Christians in Elgin, Iowa at the First Baptist Church of Elgin. The congregation was a wonderful combination of young families and older members who understand the challenges facing the younger Christians in their midst. I shared the overwhelming statistics chronicling the growing number of young Christians leaving the church during their college years, but many in the audience had already seen the departure firsthand. …
The dilemma was personal, and they were ready (and eager) to examine the causes (and the possible solutions). Before I shared my T.R.A.I.N. paradigm, I took a minute to describe the causal factors leading to the departure of so many young Christians. This isn’t rocket science; three simple truths combine to create the situation we see today:
Our Christian Teenagers are Inarticulate and Uninformed Unfortunately, most of the young Christians who graduate from our youth programs and enter college are surprisingly inarticulate about their Christian beliefs. Sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Denton did an excellent job of reporting the problem in Soul Searching: The Religious Lives of American Teenagers. They discovered Christian teens have the ability to be articulate about a number of issues, but are seldom articulate when it comes to their Christian beliefs. Most could not describe simple principles and claims of Christianity, and even those who could, struggled to provide simple responses to typical skeptical objections they will surely encounter in college. Our students have not been trained with the university battlefield in view.
Research: