How Should Youth Leaders Prepare Students for College?

CPYU has been interviewing college students as part of their College Transition Initiative.  They've asked students, "As you reflect on your church youth group experience, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done more of to prepare you for college?"

Alysia at the University of Illinois said:

My youth group was fairly useless in preparing me for college. A short course in different religions helped me, but what helped me more was attending Worldview Academy for two summers. The challenging of my faith and teaching me the apologetics, leadership, and evangelism helped the most--especially by helping me determine why I personally believed in Christianity and by giving me the tools to help share that with others...My youth group was a place where the leaders were trying everything from games to parties to entice people to come, but they wouldn't dive deep into any theological or social topic. We were treated as intellectual babies and thus never grew to understand the importance or the relevance of the Christian faith. 

Daniel at Erskine College said:

I wish my youth group had done more to prepare me for the academic challenges to Christianity instead of focusing on high school drama. I was fortunate to make great and knowledgeable friends, but I have known others who have turned away because of professors and students raising tough objections. I wish my youth group had taken things more seriously and done more apologetics and less of worrying about the drama of high school. 

And Gabrielle at Chatham University said:

I was in several youth groups in high school and unfortunately found that youth group was too “soft”—we played a lot of games and had a lot of fun retreats, but rarely learned about the fundamentals of faith, why we believe what we believe, and what it is that we do believe. Now that I am in college, my faith is under constant scrutiny and always being tested by scientific concepts and the secular slant of most universities. I wish I had been equipped with a more solid justification for my faith: knowing how to answer the tough questions, how to respond to arguments, and how to stand firm in what feels like a storm against my spirituality.

Comments

[Phil S]

Great set of links! Thanks!

Every new youth pastor should be forced to go through these interviews.

[Lindsay Brown at California State University, Fullerton]

I agree with Alysia. I knew I was illprepared for college. By the Grace of God, I received a call from a program called Wheatstone Academy. It's similar to Worldview Academy, but I think it's approach to helping students develop long lasting skills to strengthen their faith is superior. Apologetics is absolutely needed, but its not enough. I needed to learn not simply what to think, but how to think. I needed a place to practice thinking as an adult as I took ownership of my faith in my college years and Wheatstone was the place where this began.