The holidays bring with them so much family time. For many of us, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter and other holidays have become times you look forward to reconnecting with a son or daughter on break from college. As the break draws near, you may be growing both excited and anxious. Excited because you remember your own college experience—the fun, the friends, the fraternizing—and anxious because you’re hoping your child will avoid making the epic mistakes that nearly derailed your post-college goals. If you’ve kept up with the culture wars related to Christians in college, then you’re probably wondering whether your son or daughter will come back home with altered faith or as someone you have nothing in common with anymore. The truth is that Christian students in college tend to take a break from practicing Christianity. Less than 1.5 percent of college students are actively involved in campus ministry, and seven out of ten youths raised in church leave the church during the college-age years between eighteen and twenty-two. So your anxiousness is not unfounded, but you can do something with all that mental energy. Pray. Pray and do a few other things. Consider implementing these four DEEP conversation strategies aimed to keep your family from becoming part of the statistic of college student church drift. While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, I’ll share strategies that helped me feel more confident about our decision to send our Christian child back to a secular campus.
1. Don’t Lose Contact
One of the greatest benefits of the current hyper-connected age is that communication lines are not what they were when we went to college years ago. You can now be connected to your child 24 hours a day by text and social media. I don’t recommend helicoptering this way! I also don’t agree that allowing your child to go off to college has to mean not seeing him for the next several months. Don’t lose contact. You can FaceTime, share videos, share reels, go live on social media, and more. If you’re not already connected to your child in these ways, now is your chance to advance more deeply into their world of interconnectedness.
Here's the bad news: being connected to your child in these ways can be both a blessing and a curse. You’re going to see things you probably don’t want to see—not necessarily because your child is a party animal, but just because your child truly lives in a different dimension from you. If you’re like me, you think you’re pretty cool (for an old person), but you’re light years away from an eighteen or twenty-year-old. They talk differently, they think differently, and choose differently. That’s why being connected to your child means you’re going to see stuff you don’t agree with or like, but you’re going to need to keep those opinions to yourself. This does not include reserving your words when it comes to things that are non-negotiable convictions or truth. Concerning the truths of God, you can follow Moses’ great example of leadership. When he was presenting laws and judgments to the children of Israel in the wilderness, he reminded them in Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 9-10, “Only take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself…and teach them to your children and grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb when the Lord said to me ‘Gather the people to me and I will let them hear my words that they will learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth and that they may teach their children’” (NKJV). If you see your child drifting away from the Lord, you’ll want to ponder, pray about, and ask God for an opportunity to talk with your child about it. Now that you’re connected, you’ll have several ways to initiate that talk. This D.E.E.P. conversation will set you up for what’s coming next.
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2. Experiences Matter
Now, let’s take a step back for honesty’s sake. Your child was either leaning into the Lord, sort of maintaining, or drifting away before they left the comfort of your home. A relationship with God is never stagnant. It will grow, atrophy, or die. That’s good news if your child is a drifter like I was. I was leaning into adolescent freedom and trying new things when I went off to college. That meant leaving old things, like my churchgoing habits and faith, behind. Turning away from God and having periodic lapses in my faith brought me months of hard times, but thankfully, I ended up coming out of undergrad with a resilient faith that is still growing today in this middle stage of my life. The same can be true of your drifter, and I’ll tell you some of the resources college has that make me optimistic. A great book on young adults in our “screening,” Faith for Exiles, notes five practices that help to form resilient faith. They are (1) Experiencing intimacy with Jesus; (2) Developing the muscles of cultural discernment; (3) Forging meaningful, intergenerational relationships; (4) Training for vocational discipleship; and (5) Engaging in countercultural missions (34-35).
These experiences, if they haven’t yet happened for your child, can happen during their college years. In fact, the college years probably make these experiences more likely to happen because sometimes we just need to be put in the right pressure cooker to get the best that’s in us out. While college is not mentioned in the bible, similar environments can be compared to the university climate. Paul’s experience in Athens (Acts chapter 17) is an appropriate comparison to most college environments. Verse 17 says, “For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but to tell or to hear some new thing” (vs. 20, NKJV). In that environment, Paul had a relationship with God that compelled him to stand in the midst of the people and declare to them who God is. Your child could be the next great proclaimer, but even if not, your child can be encouraged to know that other Christ-followers have had that college-like experience and persevered. But experiences alone aren’t enough to sustain your child on a campus full of ideas and people competing for his attention.
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3. Educate Yourself (and Your Child) on Relevant Resources
Another D.E.E.P. conversation you’ll want to have will revolve around the Christian resources on or near campus. One important positive about college that is not broadcast nearly as much as the negatives is the Christian activity that is happening on nearly every campus. Think persecuted underground church. Bible studies, worship sessions, prayer vigils, prayer walks, and all sorts of other Christian activities are present on just about every campus. You just have to know where to look. These Christian resources have the potential to supercharge your child’s faith. The experience of seeing peers in college who are diligently seeking the Lord can be revolutionary. It’s like seeing Proverbs 1:5 in action: “Even the wise could become wiser by listening to these proverbs. They will gain understanding and learn to solve difficult problems” (ERV).
Whether a Baptist collegiate ministry, a Jubilee Christian ministry, Cru, a college-based extension of a local church, a campus chaplain, or something else, I can assure you that Christian activity is happening on that campus. These ministries often have official campus addresses, both physical and virtual, and they have point persons. Campus clubs are funded by the student fees you pay, so your child has access to these organizations or access to the funds to start a Christian group on campus if that’s in their heart.
Let’s now turn to local churches. Educate yourself on the churches within a five or ten-mile radius of the campus. If none of them meet your criteria, search for larger, further-out ministries that can reach out to your child and establish a connection. This is something my husband and I initiated with three of our children who have had college and pre-college on-campus experiences. We could have complained that the schools weren’t doing enough for the new Christian students on campus, or we could be the catalysts to make a Christian connection happen for our child. We chose the latter.
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4. Pray with Your Child
What’s a D.E.E.P. conversation without prayer? You probably began praying the moment your child began applying to colleges, but if you didn’t start then, now is as good a time as any. I encourage you to pray for your child and with your child. When our second child went off to college (in our same state), giving us two children in college at the same time, I felt like part of my heart was on campus, and only part of it was left at home. I needed a way to connect with my children. So, my husband and I established a weekly prayer call with both children. Whether or not you have made it a habit to pray with or for your child prior to their college experience, you can start now. I have never met a student who refused an offer to pray for their upcoming tests and other challenges. That prayer call helped us know what was going on in our students’ lives and helped us feel empowered, knowing that, ultimately, God was in control of everything. One scripture that seems uniquely appropriate to the college experience is Proverbs 10:9, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (NIV). It’s a scripture a student can call to mind when their Christian ideas are ostracized by students and (yes) professors on campus. It’s a scripture you can always declare to your child as an act of encouragement. Another one in Romans chapter ten is another faith booster, “Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame” (vs. 11, NKJV). I needed to hold on to those scriptures when it felt unpopular to be a Christian in college, and your child may need to do the same.
Using Christ as our model, I want to end these considerations with a note about grace. Be resolved that however mature or developing their faith is, young adults transition in many ways in their college age. Be ready to ride the wave of those transitions with grace. You’ll need to forgive your child as they make mistakes and forgive yourself for things you’ll say that you never meant to say. You’ll need to think back to the mistakes you made that God covered with Christ’s sacrifice and apply that same grace to your child. Remind her that God is present, and His love is enduring in every season, in every city, on every campus. With grace, you can gain confidence as you have D.E.E.P. conversations this holiday season that will leave you more deeply connected to your child and to the Lord.
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Originally published Monday, 20 January 2025.