Is Faith Thriving on the College Campus?

As parents, even when it feels like our influence over our kids is beginning to wane, Glenn Stanton says we should never underestimate our significance, especially when it comes to faith formation in our kids. The scholars in particular, the guy from Notre Dame, Christian Smith, he says, kind of tongue in cheek, he says the number one thing, number two thing, third thing, fourth thing, fifth thing, parents. You cannot overemphasize the impact of parents.

And the irony of that is, you know, I have five kids, like they didn't listen to a word I said, but these guys would say, oh, no, you know, they're picking it up. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com.

Our influence as parents over our children's faith is not determinative, but it's not insignificant either. We're going to talk more about that today with our guest, Glenn Stanton. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Have you ever tracked, you've been pastoring a church for 30 plus years now, right? Don't say the plus yet.

It's year 30. Okay. Yeah. Have you ever tracked what happens to the kids who went through your youth group?

Oh, yes. We haven't, I mean, we haven't done it. Like a formal study.

I mean, we don't have graphs and, yeah, but. So it's anecdotal. Anecdotal.

We got together as a team once and just said, let's kind of track our kids and let's track the average of what's going on. And it was true that the parents that are on fire for Jesus, that are really missional. Active in their faith, living it out, that was the key.

Those kids were going on and doing well, but the kids who were showing up from nominal Christian homes, they were shipwrecking later on? That's sort of what we found. And not always. There are exceptions.

Oh, yeah, there's always. But you can have a great youth program, do all the right things, and yet when they go home, if that's not seen, often it's not caught. Okay, so we ought to just say to moms and dads here at the beginning that you don't simply subcontract and outsource faith to the professionals. Right.

If you try to do that, you're not going to be happy with how things turn out. And God has called you. That's right. Called us to be the disciples of our kids. Our job. We have a friend joining us this week on Family Life Today, Glenn Stanton. Glenn, welcome back to Family Life Today. Thank you. Glenn works at Focus on the Family, and yes, it's possible for people who work at Focus on the Family to be on Family Life Today and vice versa. And enjoy it.

That's right. We're friends, we like each other, we support each other. We're on the same team. We are, and are so grateful for how God has been at work through the ministry of Focus on the Family for years. And so many of our listeners would say God's used focus in our lives profoundly over those years.

And you've been there for more than a quarter of a century. Glenn gives leadership to the family formation studies. Basically, Glenn is the trend seeker. I mean, you're out looking and saying, what are the trends telling us?

What's going on with marriage, with family, with faith? You've just written a book called The Myth of the Dying Church about how Christianity is actually thriving in America and in the world. So, this number, we've been hearing for years that 75 to 80 percent of the kids in your youth group are going to shipwreck when they go to college.

Is that true or not? Well, it's interesting that usually that is prefaced with, in the next 10 years, you look at when those things were said, they were said about 12 years ago. You know?

You're right. But they're still repeated and things like that. And again, I mean, it's just like you said, you look at the churches around you. And no, I mean, you don't meet youth pastors who are now selling cell phones because, like, my youth group just dried up, you know? They are in a lot of churches, and I would say most churches, like, you know, maybe not busting at the seams, but they're doing about the way that they've always done. And you have these kids that are just excited about the faith. Aren't Christian kids who head off to universities, private, public universities, aren't they walking into what is a more hostile environment than it's ever been before?

You know what? It's interesting that they are and they aren't. I mean, there have always been, like, these gadfly professors who, Christian kids are going to show up in my class and I'm just going to shut them down.

It's interesting that, and I'll make two points there. One, there is research, and these are good scholars, some of them are Christians, they're friends of mine, but they're teaching at secular universities. One guy, particularly good friend, teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. He did some research and he said, where are kids most likely to walk away from their faith? If they go to college or if they don't attend college? And it's the question of, is college corrosive to faith? He said, I found out, we found out that kids who go to college are less likely to toss their faith than kids who don't go to college. And guess what? Well, what are you doing here? You're blowing our minds. I know, I've never heard this. All these things you hear that you think are actual good research. Right?

And we're petrified to send our kids to college. It's like my hair just went off my head. It's been gone for a while. Oh, okay. It's like, really? We talked yesterday, you know, I used this phrase that we're the people of good news. We don't have to, you know, why are we so attracted to bad news?

And we are the people who are born again. We don't have to act like we were born yesterday in terms of this research, right? But here's the deal.

Here's what they found. And a lot of times the reasons are not the reasons that we think. Christian kids who go off to college are more likely to hang onto their faith than kids who do not go to college.

And it's not the secularizing impact of the university. It's more psychological and sociological in that those kids know where they're going. They're intentional in life. They have control of their life. They have goals. And so like, I want to finish school. I want to hang onto my faith. I want to do this. It's kids who are like, you know, just not going to school.

I don't know what I want to do. They're kind of drifting. They drift in their faith too. I noticed how you said that. You sort of had a tone there. Yeah.

I know what I want to do. Is that what you're doing? Right. Kind of, maybe.

No, no, no. Is it also that if they're at college, there's a chance of community? You know what? That's exactly it. Which is critical, right?

That's the other point. And I make this point in my book in terms of kind of iconic youth groups. Nationally, Young Life and InterVarsity. Young Life deals with high school students.

InterVarsity deals with college students. And I go through a lot of data. I looked at their annual reports for the last 20 years. Young Life is exploding. They are reaching more kids today than they ever have.

Really? They're having more decisions for Christ than they ever have. Both of these organizations started in 1941. This takes us to the college. InterVarsity is a wonderful organization that has its mission on college campuses. They, in the last couple of years, have had more decisions for Christ on campus than they ever have in the 50s, in the 60s, in the 70s.

Their numbers report that. They have more faculty involvement and more diverse faculty involvement in terms of ethnicity and things like that than they've ever had. And one of the sociologists, Christian Smith, he teaches at Notre Dame.

He's like, why is this the case? And one of the things that he comes up and says is because there is more faith support on campuses. The impact of Crew, that is exactly the case.

And I would bet you if you looked at Crew's numbers, they, absolutely, right? And even that there are, there's not a lot, but the faculty on campus that, okay, that guy over in the psychology department, solid Christian. That guy, that woman over in the sociology department, strong Christian. There may be four of them on campus, but the Christians know about them, you know?

And again, that's that thing. Lo and behold, God continues to work in the world. He's got this holy conspiracy, you know, to infiltrate his church into the world. When our kids were looking at colleges, the thing my radar was always up for was what's going on spiritually on this campus. I remember taking our daughter, and we were on one college campus, and I was looking for the signs. I'd always stop at the bulletin boards where everything's posted, and I'm looking and saying, where's the Bible study announcement, right? And on this particular college campus, there was nothing. I was seeing no indication of anything going on spiritually. So, I went home and went on the internet and asked about religious groups on this campus.

I found there were just a handful of them. I called one of the student leaders, and I said, tell me about what's going on. And this student leader said, well, I'm a commuter, and we've got a small group that's getting together. And I'm looking at this, and I'm going, this is a well-regarded academic institution, a degree from this place would help you professionally. And I'm looking, that's not where I want my daughter to be heading off to college. And then we went to another public university, and it was everywhere. Bible study Wednesday night, Bible study Thursday morning. So, the quality of the education in my mind was important, but what's more important is what's the spiritual environment on this college campus.

What do you think we should do as parents? Well, the cool thing— Should we check that out? Oh. Yeah. Yeah. And should we say, you have to go to this student ministry on campus? Have to? That's what I'm saying.

Look how she spun that. Some parents do do that. Here's how I said it to my kids, and Glenn, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. I said, when you go to college, about 35 percent of your education over the next four years is going to happen in the classroom environment. Sixty-five percent of your education is going to happen as you try to figure out life, as you try to adjust to—you're now on your own.

You're calling your own shots. How do you develop community? How do you figure out how to balance a checkbook? They used to use checkbooks back in the day, so I had to explain that.

Right. So, I was explaining, yes, we want to look at this college for what it provides academically, but that's only 35 percent of what the next four years are going to be. We want to make sure we're looking at what does it provide for you spiritually. We want to look at what does it provide for you relationally. How does all of that work together?

We did the same thing. And our kids understood that as a priority, so we could walk away from a campus visit, and I could say, academically, it looks good. What do you think about the spiritual climate?

What can you tell about the relational environment and how all of that works? And they could see it, and they knew what they wanted. When they were juniors and seniors in high school, they wanted to go to places that would be faith-nurturing, not faith-destroying. You know, it's really cool. And just what you're saying, Glenn, I mean, we haven't talked about the sports world, but that's really strong in the sports world. Every major college that I know of has a chaplain on their football team. You know, I was a chaplain in the NFL for 33 seasons. Every NFL team has a chaplain.

It's really interesting. There was a player that came to Detroit as a free agent. He was being recruited from another NFL team, a quarterback, and he told them, I don't want to come to Detroit for my recruiting trip.

They still call it that, even though it's the NFL, unless I can have lunch with the chaplain. And he made his decision after lunch with Ann and I, and I said to the team afterwards. And his wife was there. Yeah, she was there, and I said to the team afterwards, hey, do I get 10 percent of his deal? You know that we had something to do with that.

But anyway, it's so strong. Our son played college football, and the day he was recruited at this one school, the chaplain came out and met him as he walked in the football building, and I'm like, it's over. Because I knew right then that he was going to go, oh, my goodness, they care that much. So what you're saying about the college campus really is true in all areas. And we were talking about parents earlier, and parents need to know, should they be encouraged?

I have a chapter in my book, Chapter 8, a whole chapter on the research. What are the things that are strongest and most empowering and successful in passing faith on to the next generation? And the scholars, one of the scholars in particular, again, the guy from Notre Dame, Christian Smith, he says, kind of tongue in cheek, he says the number one thing, no close competitor is parents. He said the number two thing, third thing, fourth thing, fifth thing, parents.

Really? Sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, parents. He's just saying you cannot overemphasize the impact of parents. And the irony of that is, you know, I have five kids, like they didn't listen to a word I said.

But these guys would say, oh, no, you know, they're picking it up. And it's what the parents do. Again, parents need to know you do not need to be a super Christian. You do not need to be like those people at church, you know, like they can quote scripture, they're always doing it great. Again, if it's, you know what, the Stanton family goes to church, this is our church, we're there, we know the pastor, the pastor knows us, we're involved in groups. Even if we don't go every week, if we miss here and there, again, God is very gracious in this way. But we read the scriptures at home, we talk about the scriptures, there's Bibles around the house that are actually used. We pray about things. In normal everyday life, we're going down the highway, you see an accident. You know what, kids, let's pray for the EMT workers, let's pray that that family would be okay.

Just real quick, kids are soaking that up. The other thing is if kids see God working in their own life, you know what, we prayed for this, it didn't look possible, God did it, those things have a big imprint in their lives. But here's another thing, and I saw this with my kids and parents who have older kids will see this, is parents being strong, parents having a serious faith, again, not perfect faith, not Superman faith, but serious. The other is what they call satellite or scaffolding adults, that is Aunt Susie, Uncle Jim, the youth worker, Mom and Dad's friends, parents at school who like, okay, Mom and Dad believe this stuff, but they're kind of nerdy, they don't really always know.

But Kim, the youth worker, I mean, she surfs, she rides a motorcycle, she knows our music, she's hip, and she's smart, but she believes the same thing that my parents do. That is massive. That's huge, isn't it?

Yes, it is. So kids who have that are nearly guaranteed to carry their faith into adulthood. And again, you said most of these, so I don't need, but I'd say every parent, not only read the book, but read this page, because you list nine things that parents do that help their children as they become adults retain their faith. Here's one you didn't say, which is so critical, right?

You said almost all of these, but number seven was help their children be honest about and resolve their own spiritual doubts and struggles. Yes. So it's okay for your child to struggle, but you're there with them in honesty. Is that what you're saying? It's actually not only okay, it's good. You think about this.

When you go to the gym, it's resistance that builds your muscles. You know, if you're doing weights and there's no weight on that, if there's no resistance, that's the same thing with faith, is encourage your kids to ask tough questions and never say, one, that's a silly question, or, well, here's the answer. You know, a friend of mine, when he was growing up, and we were close buddies, I mean, he had a problem with the issue of evil. How can a good God allow evil? His parents were wonderful and said, you know what, that's a great question, and nearly every Christian philosopher deals with that. So you're right on to ask that question.

Let's go find the answer. And so basically, his parents taught him, rather than give him a fish, taught him how to fish, and it strengthened his faith. I think that dialogue with our kids is so important. And for us, I remember when I started putting my kids in car seats, I thought, every time I'm in the car, I'm just going to pray out loud. And that just became this habit. When we go to school, we're praying for their test, we're praying for their friends that are struggling. And then they'd have friends in the car, and their friends are talking about this hard thing.

I'm like, oh, that is so hard. I'm going to be praying. In fact, let's just pray right now. So we got to the point where all their friends were coming for prayer. Not only our own kids. They weren't running away.

No. They got it. It's like, oh, she's listening.

She's praying for us. I remember, I think it was Cody, one of our sons called us on a mission trip. Remember? Yeah. And he was all excited.

In college. And they were on a mission trip, and they were walking down the sidewalk, and they prayed out loud. And the people that were with him said, wow, that was so cool. We prayed out loud about something. Cody's like, I experienced that my whole life. That was something that happened every time the car seat was on.

He called us. Yeah, he said, thank you. Thank you that that was just a habit. I didn't even realize how special that was. And the other funny thing there, and I've had this, is, wow, you prayed with your eyes open.

You can do that? Like, yeah. But, see, that's, I mean, your story about in the car is like, none of those kids go, oh, wow, that's weird. They may go, that's kind of weird, but that's awesome. You know?

I wish that I had that growing up. They're drawn to that kind of thing. One, because it shows care and concern. The other is, she lives in another reality. And it's about a relationship with God that's ongoing. Absolutely. And they hear that in your prayers, that authenticity.

Yeah. And the interesting thing about it is, as I even think about my wife Ann doing that, she didn't do that, like, oh, I want my kids to stay in the faith. I'm going to pray as I put it.

It was an overflow of where she spent her morning, pretty much. I've been vertically connecting with Jesus. It's what he's doing in me. And the kids, right, they sniff that out. Oh, they can see it. If it's real or not, from the start.

And if it's real, there's a chance it's going to continue with them. This one time I had a bunch of, these are high schoolers in the car, and I said, you guys, I feel like, I feel just led by the Holy Spirit to give some money to this woman that's hurting. By the way, this happens all the time. She says to me all the time, I feel led to give money. And I'm with her. And she was coming to church. She was a recovering addict. She was struggling with alcohol. Her husband, she's trying to get him to come to faith. She had just given her life to Jesus. So, I'm like, you guys, I want to put some money on her front door, but I want to do it anonymously.

Would you like to come? They are all about this. So, I have this money in the bag, and I have one of them go and put it on the door, and the other one rings the doorbell, and then they're running to the car. We're praying. It was amazing, because they thought, this is the best thing we've done all week. And Ann, I mean, you could think, okay, we should have apologetics classes, and that went into their heart. You jammed it down in there.

God jammed it. I mean, that was a huge thing, and not just for that woman who got the money. I mean, it's radical what that did to your kids psychologically and spiritually. And like, you know what? I want to live that way. I want to order my life that way.

What do you think things are going to look like 20 years from now? You know what? It's interesting. The sociologists that have been studying this forward, they say, first of all, worldwide, Christianity is the largest faith. And through the rest of this century, it will continue to be the dominant faith.

Is it growing as fast as Islam is growing? Absolutely. Okay.

Yeah. But it's the way we observe it. Christianity, I mean, one of these scholars said, you know what? If Christians could make news by doing some bad things, like terrorism, and I'm not saying that Muslims are that way.

But we see these things in the news, and we think, oh my goodness, that's where everything's happening. But no, Christianity is just quiet, and it spreads. One of the big things that they talk about is that faith grows and Christianity grows, not so much from going out and sharing the gospel, but by procreation. Christian parents having Christian kids, they go out into the world. I mean, sociologists will tell us that's how faiths grow. And I've been told that if we get to a point in our lifetime where in China, the church can come out of the shadows without fear. Yes. What we will see is there are more Christians in China than there are in the United States.

Oh my goodness. There are more Christians in Africa, on the continent of Africa. In the last 10 years, there have been more seminaries built in Africa than in all the rest of the world combined. There is an absolute revival happening throughout the continent of Africa, and here's the revival.

These pastors are hardcore theological. This is fascinating. I feel like I'm with Mr. Wikipedia. This is amazing.

I want to ask all the questions in the world. Well, the answers to the questions you want to ask, a lot of them are in the book that Glenn's written called The Myth of the Dying Church, how Christianity is actually thriving in America and in the world. And I would think moms and dads and pastors and church leaders would want to know the good news.

Absolutely. This just confirms for us that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said the gates of hell will not prevail, that God is going to be up to something. There may be ebbs and flows in particular regions of the world over time, but God's at work and his kingdom, I think I heard this, his kingdom is forever and ever.

Well, I love what you said at the end of your book. You said, finally, it's the Holy Spirit who runs and drives Christ's church across time and throughout the nations. He is unstoppable, unquenchable, and inherently life-giving.

He is not nodding off, sickly, or on vacation. The word of his heart and very character will not be thwarted. He is God.

To believe the church is dying is to deny these truths and judge God either confused or a liar. That is good. That is good. Glenn, thank you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for writing the book.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for your faithfulness and digging in and helping us see what's going on in our world. And I hope a lot of our listeners will go to our website, familylifetoday.com, to get a copy of your book. The book is called The Myth of the Dying Church, and it's encouraging and it's hopeful and it's something that needs to be shared with others.

That's why we've had you on today. So, again, go to familylifetoday.com to get Glenn's book, The Myth of the Dying Church, or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to order a copy. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com, or call 1-800-358-6329 to order your copy.

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We imagine that a lot of couples have experienced some fresh challenges in loving one another well over the last several months as our rhythms have been interrupted and our stress levels have gone up. Matt and Lisa Jacobson are going to join us to talk about ways we can practice loving one another well. We'll talk about that Monday. Hope you can be with us for that. I want to thank our engineer tonight, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.