When it came time to tour colleges, Samuel Moody visited a Christian University and was repulsed. Growing up with Christian parents and having attended a private Christian school all his educational career, he had battle scars. “In private, faith-based education there is a fine line between mentoring disciples and indoctrinating sheep, and it depends very much on the individual guiding the student. . .The majority of teachers I had [who] taught me my biblical curriculum specifically were the bad kind,” Moody said. “They tried to indoctrinate me. And I had a lot of knowledge of the Bible, but I didn’t understand Jesus on a personal level, and that’s a big problem.” Without his personal conviction to find the truth in Scripture and the strong foundation of beliefs on which his mother raised him, Moody might have become like one of the other many students who leave the faith by graduation. “There’s a reason a lot of people who grew up in the church leave it when they grow up. It’s because of bad leadership,” he claimed.
Nick Blevins, children and student team leader at Community Christian Church in Nottingham, Maryland, provides data on youth involvement in the church in his story “Statistics on Youth Leaving the Church and Why.” According to one of his sources, a 2011 study by BARNA on youth leaving Christianity, approximately 11% of young Christians will leave the Christian faith, 20% disconnect from their church because of “church culture” frustrations, 40% still call themselves Christians but won’t attend church and only 30% will remain involved. These numbers illuminate the harsh reality facing many Christian education institutions. Just because children were born into a Christian household does not guarantee their salvation, especially if they were misguided or hurt by poor leaders, as Moody described.
“A lot of the things [teachers] said when measured with the things they did, it didn’t match up,” Moody said. “They taught being open arms and turn around and expel a student who, you know, had sex out of wedlock and got pregnant. Now why would you expel a student who made a mistake? Why would you give them a bad taste and leave them with rejection instead of discipling them and help them grow into a better person from their experience? Why can’t we do what God does and take a bad thing and make it good? They were more worried about their image than their morals.”
Small, private, grade schools are not the only problem; likewise, some Christian universities feed the problem. Laura Basch, John Brown University ’19 alumna, stated her frustration with “people living really duplicitous lives at JBU.” These lifestyles affected Basch’s perspective of Christianity. “That kind of really turned me off to Christianity at the time,” she said. Basch identified her frustration with the people around her as a source of anger towards God. It could have caused her to lose her faith, but Basch held onto her beliefs. “It’s gotten much better since then. I am more established in the church, in leadership roles,” she said.
If it hadn’t been for factors outside of these Christian institutions, Basch and Moody might have joined those who lose their faith because teachers failed them. When faith is made into a policy rather than a personal belief, it promotes legalism and a culture of “Christianese,” which only stiffens the heart and arouses rebellion. Basch expressed her concern that, when a student spends four years of their young adult life being told what to say, do and love, they are unprepared for graduation. She elaborated, “Something that comes after college that no one expects is building your relationships without people telling you what to do. So many people are so lonely after college. Colleges should empower each individual to build their own community instead of providing community for them.” Basch encourages students to find mentors, leaders, community and relationships outside of the university. She said that many local churches have people eager to disciple and minister to college students. Local community outreach and missions work are other great opportunities to expand beyond a university bubble.
There are several good reasons why people choose to attend schools that offer a faith-based education. However, it should not be assumed that faith will inherently grow through such instruction. In fact, personal accounts and statistical data point to the contrary. Basch’s final advice was twofold, telling students, “Detach [from] your college, and see it for what it is, a place of broken people … Detach the acts of JBU [from] the acts of God and Jesus.”
Photo courtesy of Matt Ragland at Unsplash