Why Students Walk Away from their Faith

(and what we can do about it…)

1- What Surveys reveal…

- The percentage of students who said they were no longer
“born again” after four years in college is between
27 and 59%.1

- Only 20% of churched teens stay spiritually engaged in

their twenties.2

2- Why Is This Happening?

a. Students Don’t Know Who to ____________.

b. Students Don’t Know How to ______________.

c. Students Don’t Know Who They ________.

d. Students Don’t ________ _______________.

1
Higher Education Research Institute. “College Student Survey.” (www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/css_po.html).
2
George Barna, “Most Twentysomethings Put Christianity on the Shelf Following Spiritually Active Teen
Years.” (www.barna.org)
 What Students Really Believe:3
- Moralistic:
- Therapeutic:
- Deism

What Needs to Be Done…

#1 - A Biblical worldview: they see the world as God sees it…

#2 – Community: they surround themselves with those who also

have a Biblical worldview…

#3 – character: they learn to live out a Biblical worldview through

significant mentoring relationships with others who live out a Biblical
worldview…

“Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital
‘T.’ Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Biblical Christianity is
Truth concerning total reality- and the intellectual holding of that total Truth and then
living in light of that Truth.”
Francis Schaeffer (quoted in Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth)

3
Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford, 2005)