The Current System Just Doesn't Work

Dear Parent,

I’m the father of five teenagers, with three in college and one planning to attend in 2006. So SATs, college applications and visits, and lots of homework fill the days at our house. All my life, I've assumed that college naturally follows high school graduation. But my daughter Esther changed my perspective.

Estie graduated from high school in spring 2003, with plans to become a missionary. She told us that she wanted to take a year after high school to go to Kenya, and to learn Spanish in Mexico. I struggled with her decision and did a lot of soul searching. When I looked into my daughter’s eyes, I saw a young woman standing at the doorway of adulthood, so hungry for more of God and to discover herself in His kingdom. Why would I ever discourage that? What better time to see the world and build her faith than during the first year outside our home?

We want our children to deepen their walk with the Lord and discover more about their purpose on earth before they begin studies to earn a living. But taking a year off from the college track flies in the face of society’s expectations. The world has grown complex, and more education is required just to cope, right? So, we nurture our children’s intellects first -- and hope that their spiritual life catches up at some point in the future.

We shouldn’t be surprised when instead they embrace the faithlessness of their peers and professors.


The Problem: The Current System Just Doesn't Work

The current system of higher education is failing Christian students and parents. Often, it transforms our children in ways none of us would ever want. Bright students get lost in a secular system that turns them into relativistic, materialistically-driven adults. Then it saddles them with a mountain of debt that requires getting a good job to pay it all off.

Rather than reinforcing their faith, the current system calls into question everything we, as parents, have worked hard to instill in our children! It does this to them at a time when they are not strong enough, spiritually, to resist, and at precisely the same time that they are outside our care and watchful eyes for the first extended time.

Considering these threats to faith, you’d think spiritual training during the first year away from home would be the norm. Instead, when we follow the “safe” path of sending our children to college, we fail to safeguard them. We entrust their minds and hearts to professors whose values are very different from our own, who have abandoned God’s command to “teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.” (Titus 2:1) Our children are being tutored by people who are in many ways dedicated to undermining their faith! Who thought up that system, anyway? Perhaps when many colleges were faith-based, it worked. But now the system is badly broken. It all plays right into the devil's hands.


A specific opportunity

Esther completed a year of intensive dicipleship through the First Year Missionary (FYM) program with Adventures In Missions. Living in community with a small group of peers, she developed her own ministry and began to grasp God’s call on her life. When her heart was breaking because of what she saw, experienced disciplers poured into her and helped her grow through it. Along with a team radically committed to Jesus, she found a cause worth dying for. Here is what she says about her FYM experience:

"While I was in Kenya, God used a little boy named Mato to break my heart. Every time he'd see me, he'd call out, 'Mama Esta, mama Esta!' I was a mom to him and to a number of the street kids around our house. I came to love them so much. I gathered them together and regularly taught them, played with them, and laughed with them. And in the process, I learned about myself. The thing the Lord has really been teaching me is that He is the One who will always define me. Everything on earth will fade away—family, music, and friends. But God is the solid rock when all else fails."

Christian students, with the blessing and encouragement of their parents and youth pastors, should use the year after high school to cement their walk with the Lord and learn more about Jesus' heart for the lost. This experience – a single year – allows high school graduates to find intimacy with their Lord and purpose for their lives. And then, if they wish, they go on to university. But when they do, they do so with a more-solid, real-world faith upon which to stand.

Participants tell me AIM’s First Year Missionary program is the best experience they’ve ever had. Parents owe it to themselves to decide whether attending college immediately after high school really serves their children’s best interests.

If you’re interested in finding out more information about this program, then let me encourage you to log on http://www.adventures.org