For 12 years now, I’ve been teaching at Summit Ministries—an organization dedicated to training young Christians in Christian worldview and preparing them to live out their faith in the world. It’s one of the most fulfilling things I do, and here’s a story that will explain why.
A few years ago a teenager named Chris attended one of Summit’s worldview training programs. And he wrote me a letter afterwards, telling me that he had had a blast, had learned a ton and by the end of the intensive, two-week program, he was completely exhausted—in a good way.
In fact, Chris wrote to me after the conference, “I had never had to think so hard … before in my life!” he explained. “So [after the program] I decided I was just going to veg out for the next few days.”
Well, when some friends invited Chris to a movie, he thought it would be a good way to relax and recover from all that hard thinking. But the film wasn’t the mental vacation Chris expected it to be. As he explained in his letter, “Mr. Stonestreet, I tried to veg out during the movie, but I just couldn’t. As I watched it, I kept thinking, ‘Wait a minute, that’s secular humanism, and wait a minute, that’s not true. And what do they mean by that, and how do they know that’s true!’”
Chris then joked, “I just wanted you to know that you ruined my movie!”
After the film ended, Chris and his friends went out for pizza and talked about the themes in the movie. His friends were astonished at how much Chris had gotten out of the film. As he told me, “They kept asking me, ‘How did you see that? How do you know all this stuff?’ It was a great conversation. And I learned,” he said, “that I just can’t turn this worldview thing off!”
It was that last line that sent me soaring… “I just can’t turn this worldview thing off.” Summit offers the kind of worldview training all Christian students need, but so often don’t receive.
That’s why you ought to consider sending your older teenager or college student to a Summit Ministries worldview conference this summer. Summit gives high school and college students a two-week crash course in worldview analysis and cultural understanding. They’ll learn about the major worldviews battling Christianity for their hearts and minds—worldviews like secular humanism, Marxism, postmodernism, and Islam.
They also learn how Christianity differs from these false philosophies, and how to articulately defend the truth of Christianity when it’s challenged—whether by friends or a college professor. They will also study the big cultural questions of our day—such as God’s design for marriage; what about abortion and human dignity, or biotechnology issues—and how to respond to these issues from a biblical worldview. The idea is to teach kids to place these battles in the larger context of the war of worldviews rather than thinking about them on an issue-by-issue basis.
Before he died, Chuck Colson said that Summit Ministries had set the “gold standard” for training students in Christian worldview. And research backs that up, as the president of Summit, Jeff Myers described to me on this weekend’s BreakPoint this Week. A recent survey of their 30,000 plus graduates over the last five decades revealed the incredible impact Summit is having on these students minds, as well as their hearts and their trajectories for the Lord.
And if kids don’t receive this Christian worldview training? Well, the statistics tell a chillingly different story. Many abandon the faith, and many more embrace harmful ideas that are counter to biblical truth.
And there is a special offer for BreakPoint listeners. If you apply for Summit by April 16, using the coupon code BreakPoint, you’ll receive an instant partial scholarship for a two-week session this summer. Come to BreakPoint.org and we’ll tell you how you can get more information on Summit Ministries—and how you can sign your students up. When they finish, you’ll discover as Chris did that they just can’t turn this worldview thing off.
BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.
John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
Publication date: March 27, 2014