college transition | Aaron Buer

How to Fail College

I recently read a statistic that blew my mind. For most of the 20th century, the United States has led the world in college graduates. Recently, we’ve fallen out of the top ten. In fact, we now lead the world in college dropouts. If you’re curious, I read this in “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough.

Obviously, this is a bad thing…I think. I’m curious why you think this is happening, but for now, I have a few ideas.

1. Cost

The cost of college tuition has gone up 6 fold over the last 30 years. It is true that a college degree is still valuable but tuition costs have spiraled out of control. I personally know of many students who have dropped out of college or decided against college because of the cost. In addition, the epidemic of student loan debt has dissuaded many more prospective students, or at least pushed them toward community colleges, where dropout rates are much higher (roughly 60%).

2. Hyper Focus on College Entrance

Our government and schools are incredibly focused on college acceptance. College is talked about as if it is a magic bullet to end poverty. An incredible array of government programs have been put into effect over the last 50 years to get more students into college, but to my knowledge, very few resources are devoted to getting students through college.

Let’s be real, college is terribly difficult! The academics are demanding, the challenges of transitioning into adulthood are overwhelming, and social temptations are pervasive. If we want to move out of the basement of college completion statistics, we probably need to change our resource allocation and focus.

3. Lack of Direction

Years ago, graduating seniors had far more clarity on their career and life goals than today. Now, for a variety of reasons, college age students often experience an extended adolescence. Most of the college students I know who drop out, do so because they are confused about their life direction and rather than spend thousands of dollars trying to figure themselves out, they drop out, for at least a while. It is clear to me that, whatever the causes, a lack of life direction is a major factor on why many students are dropping out of college.

4. Lack of “Performance Character”

There is tremendous pressure on the typical teenager to achieve–in academics, sports, and extracurriculars. What matters are grades, high ACT scores and awards. While these things have their place, I believe we’ve lost something that matters deeply: character.

I’m talking about character traits like self-control and grit and enable a student to delay gratification and work hard in the face of temptations and difficulty. In short, I believe we are over emphasizing our student’s résumés and under emphasizing the skills and traits that will enable them to succeed in college.

5. College Isn’t for everyone

My last point is an argument that maybe being last in college dropouts isn’t such a bad thing. I know many recent college graduates who have a great degree from a reputable school but can’t land a job in their field of study. It is the dominant story in the 20 somethings I know. In contrast, my dad’s water well drilling business is always in need of skilled laborers who possess strong character and a willingness to work hard. He pays them well too, right out of high school!

While highly educated and qualified college graduates struggle to make minimum payments on their college debt because they can’t find the jobs they were promised, there are more jobs available in the trades than employers can fill. Maybe dropping out of college isn’t such a bad idea.

I’m curious what you think about America’s awesomeness at dropping out of college. Is it good or bad? And, if it’s bad, what can we as student pastors and educators do to help our students?

image credited to Robert Hruzek via Flickr

A Culture of Transition

Recently I was asked to describe our high school to college transition strategy and practices. Since this is one of my life’s passions I thought I’d give it a shot. I hope you find it helpful and I’d love to hear your ideas and strategies.

Culture

What keeps me awake at night is the thought of our students walking away from Jesus and the church in life beyond our student ministry. I believe that our ministry has not been successful unless our students are continuing to pursue Jesus in college and beyond.

I think the mistake many youth workers make is jumping to practices that help students transition before stopping to consider the influence of church and student ministry cultures. What students feel and experience is more powerful than what we say from the stage, especially for those who are involved in our churches from a young age. Here are the culture pieces that I believe are crucial to healthy transition.

1. A Culture of Community

I tend to believe that students walk away from churches where they never actually belonged. Belonging is something that is felt and experienced not taught or preached. We begin placing kids in small groups as soon as they can walk around. We fight for a culture of community from the earliest days of involvement in our children’s ministry. This is crucially important because kids learn:

Adults in my church care about me and my faith development
My story is important and valuable.
Faith is meant to be lived out in relationships.

Everything else that we do in our transition ministry is built around these values.

2. A Culture of Mentoring

For years in student ministry we’ve talked about the importance of small groups in student ministry. I believe that small groups are crucial but only when they are the right kind of small groups. You see, more than anything the students of this generation need mentors. On the whole, our culture no longer invests in the next generation. It exploits them.

We must become ministries and churches that pour into students. We must walk alongside them and demonstrate the way of Jesus. In our ministry, we pair a mentor with 5 or 6 students for 4 years. We use the model of small groups to achieve this. However, we are clear that the “win” is not small group discussions. The “win” is mentoring. Small groups are the spring board into a mentoring relationship. This long term mentoring relationship is key to our transition strategy.

3. A Culture of Honesty

Many students who walk away from faith in college were silently drifting long before they formally walked away. These students never spoke their doubts because they weren’t welcome to do so. Left in the dark these doubts became stronger and eventually overpowered their faith.

Our student ministries must become places where doubts are acknowledged, appreciated and talked about openly. Our student ministry cultures must communicate that doubts are normal. We need to stop providing quick and flimsy answers to deeply disorienting questions. Faith isn’t the absence of doubt. Rather, it is faith in the midst of doubt. Doubts pulled out into the light of community lose their power over us.

4. A Culture of Integration

Some youth workers may disagree with me but I believe that one of the biggest obstacles to students transitioning well is student leadership or ministry teams. Hold on. Let me explain.

Many students walk away from church as emerging adults because they never felt like they belonged to their church in the first place. They felt a fierce belonging to their youth group but after graduating high school they never connected with the larger church body. Leadership and ministry teams are often counterproductive because they foster intense attachment to the student ministry and not the church as a whole.

Our strategy is to encourage our students to serve within the larger church body rather than within our student ministry. We want them to become attached to Ada Bible Church, not LifeLine. We believe that the best place for a student to serve is in our children’s ministry. There they can use their talents to serve kids and perhaps more importantly, they serve alongside and develop stronger relationships with more adults from the church community. This way they can also continue to serve after graduating high school. Integration is the friend of transition.

Helping students pursue Jesus after leaving our student ministries begins with culture. It requires a culture of community, mentoring, honesty and integration. Tomorrow I’ll outline the specific strategies we employ to promote long-term faith development.

2 Ways College Freshmen Struggle

One of my favorite student ministry events over the last few years is our graduate reunion event. I love gathering our previous year’s graduates together with their small group leaders over Christmas break and listening to their stories. Hearing their struggles and triumphs reorients my ministry focus.

So, what did I learn from spending a couple hours with former youth group kids who just polished off their first semester of college? I’m glad you asked.

ADJUSTMENT

Nearly every graduate who shared talked about how hard it was to adjust to life beyond high school. Most of them experienced loneliness during the first semester and talked about how difficult it was to find a group of friends and solid Christian community. They talked about how hard it was to be so far removed from the people in their lives with whom they could be vulnerable and honest. They felt like they had lost their cheerleaders and supporters.

Some of our graduates also felt a sense of letdown as they adjusted to college. For years they had been told that college would be the best time of life and how they were going to have the time of their lives. And yet, during the first few months of their first semester, most students felt profoundly alone and disoriented. Most were not yet experiencing the good life they were promised.

BALANCE

The second thing our graduates talked about was balance. Students struggled to juggle their new found freedom, social life and school work. Most of the students said they planned to focus on school more next semester because they weren’t happy with their grades.

Several of our students talked about how they had to learn to say “no.” One girl joined 18 different clubs before she learned the “n” word.

Balance may seem like a peripheral issue but I think it is actually the main issue for most of our students. Because they struggled to manage all their roles, important areas of their lives suffered. For many it was their spiritual lives. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about God or that they wanted to make bad choices. Rather, it was that they didn’t know how to structure their time in a way that created space for the things they really cared about.

LESSONS LEARNED

We place a major focus on transition in our student ministry. Our goal is that every graduate of our student ministry would continue to pursue Jesus after high school and our programming structure reflects this value. What I’m realizing is that it isn’t enough to prepare our students to defend their faith, find a solid faith community, and warn them of the dangers in life. If they can’t manage their roles and responsibilities, some of the things they deeply care about will inadvertently be put on a shelf.

We as parents and youth workers need to prepare our students to manage clubs, intramural sports, laundry, homework, dating, money, sleep, video games, and family. Maybe these things don’t seem very “spiritual” but teaching our students to manage their time and resources may be one of the greatest gifts we can give.

image credited to Mark van Laere

Green Dye and Dr. Seuss

People learn best through hands on experience and observation. At least, that’s how I learn and I’m assuming you’re the same. In our student ministry, we spend every other Sunday night preparing our high school seniors for college. We talk to them about everything we can think of: money, faith, dating, balance, picking a major, drinking, etc. I firmly believe that these conversations have an impact in helping our students prepare for the their transition to college but one event from a few years ago trumped them all. You see, every spring we do an event for our seniors called Senior Sneak. It’s a weekend retreat to an undisclosed location for fun and extended training on college transition. It’s one of our milestone events and it’s a little fancier than anything else we put on. It’s our way of blessing our seniors one last time before they run off to college.

We’ve learned over the years that the weekend we choose for this event is hugely important. For example, don’t schedule it on a Prom or musical weekends. We fancy ourselves at being highly skilled at picking the right weekend. However, sometimes things surprise us. As it turns out, one year we inadvertently scheduled our retreat for Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Call me boring, but I don’t really pay attention to St. Patty’s so it was completely off my radar.

The funny thing about Chicago on St. Patrick’s day weekend is that it gets nutty. Actually, it gets really nutty. They dye the river green and then proceed to party down. In the words of Dr. Seuss, they “drink, drink, drink, drink, DRINK!” This is what I mean by learning from experience and observation. We essentially provided our students with a front row seat of first semester frat parties. On a side note, how do they dye the river green? Is it just a whole lot of green Kool-Aid?

Although there were quite a few awkward moments as we walked through the city, the weekend ended up being a great experience for our small group leaders and students. All the partying around us provided context for great conversations about boundaries, balance and the partying scene. Sometimes youth groups and churches are guilty of ignoring the realities of the “real world.” One way or another, we need to make sure that our students aren’t surprised by what they encounter. They ought to be prepared to face reality.

I don’t know that I would recommend taking your students to Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day but I do recommend getting your seniors away with their small group leaders for strategic conversations about their upcoming freshman year of college. Are they ready to face the pressures, challenges and opportunities? Now is the time to talk about it.

I’d be happy to share the playbook for our Senior Sneak weekend if you’re interested. And if you have a recipe for green dye please let me know.

7 Reasons You Should Do a Youth Group Reunion Event

One of my passions in student ministry is to remove the cliff–the graduation cliff. Student ministry is at it’s best when it bridges high school and adulthood. I’m done with the days of graduating students and forgetting about them. That was one of my greatest mistakes as a new youth worker. Now, I believe in equipping students for the transition to adulthood and setting them up with mentors to walk with them through the process.

One of the ways we work toward this goal is hosting a reunion event over Christmas break. Basically we’ve invited all of our 2013 graduates and their small group leaders back for an event. I’m so pumped for this event that I’ve come up with 7 reasons why you should do it too.

1. Reconnect Students and Mentors

The best reason for putting on a reunion event is to reconnect students with their mentors. Our graduates, even though they are freshmen in college, still need quality adults in their lives to mentor them. And, truthfully our adult mentors need students in their life too. Mentoring brings life to both sides. Anyone who has ever mentored a student knows this is true. You always get more out of it than you give.

Relationships are the key to growth. Rekindling the relationship between students and mentors is reason enough to do a reunion event.

2. Evaluate Your Ministry

Getting graduates together for a reunion event is a great opportunity to listen. We are very intentional about creating a curriculum for our senior class that will help them transition. Did the curriculum work? A reunion event is a chance to ask our graduates, “What surprised you? What do you wish you would have known? How could we have prepared you better?”

If many of your graduates are struggling in their faith maybe it’s time to rethink how you are doing student ministry. But, you’ll never know unless you ask students who have graduated out of your ministry.

3. Reorient Your Graduates

A reunion event is a great opportunity to speak truth to your graduates. Getting them together over Christmas is like speaking to students at Winter Retreat. They are out of their normal environment. They are more open to truth. They are evaluating their first semester choices. Take advantage of this to remind your graduates of what is important.

4. You Still Belong

It’s terribly disorienting to go off to college. Even after only one semester, your hometown feels different. Church doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. You’re not really welcome in the student ministry and your old friendships have changed. A reunion event is a great way to tell your graduates that they are still a valued member of the community. They still belong. Their small group leaders and mentors still care about them.

5. Evaluate Your Church/Ministry Recommendations

One of the things we do in our student ministry is connect each of our graduates with a church or ministry wherever they are going after high school. Our goal is that the church or ministry would connect with them before they arrive on campus.

A reunion event is a great time to ask about these recommendations. Were a few of your recommendations duds? It would be good to know. I love it when a student falls in love with a new church in their college town. That is a great feeling!

6. Encourage Your Graduates to Plug In

So maybe a few of your recommendations were duds. Or, maybe you didn’t make any recommendations. Get on it for next year!

We know how crucial community is to growth. A reunion event is a good opportunity to remind our graduates of how important community is. Encourage them to plug in. Maybe Christmas break is new opportunity to help them find a good ministry.

7. Remind Yourself of the Goal of Student Ministry

Hanging out with graduates of your student ministry will force you to grapple with the outcome of your work. It isn’t about numbers. It isn’t about great bands, environments or talks. It’s about students pursuing Jesus after leaving your ministry.

Listening to graduates talk about the joys and struggles of life after high school will help you better understand what topics you need to address while they are still in high school. It will remind you of the importance of mentors. It will remind you of how powerful inter-generational church is. It will remind you of the goal of all we do and will help you reorient your practices around these goals.

So, schedule a student ministry reunion event. There’s still time and your graduates will be bored over Christmas break anyway. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Bring together your graduates and their small group leaders. Encourage them, listen to them and reorient them. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it went.

How to Parent a College Freshman

5 minutes ago you were changing their diaper and rocking them to sleep. Now, they are visiting colleges or already working toward their college degree. Time flies.

As a parent, the game changes when your child begins college. Your kids still need you but they need you in different ways. You must learn to adapt.

DISORIENTED

For a student, the first semester of college is incredibly disorienting. Everything is new and unfamiliar. What used to be automatic is now complicated. What used to be done for you is now your responsibility. The workload is impossible. The social scene is foreign. The temptations are new and the churches are weird. The first semester of college might as well be Mars.

College freshman feel lost between two worlds. A few months ago they were kids. Mom did their laundry and made their meals. They aren’t quite adults either. They can still sleep in until noon and play video games all night. Nevertheless they feel lost and it will be a very long time until a college student truly feels like a “real” adult.

Because of this, college freshmen will fluctuate between moments of impressive maturity and forehead slapping immaturity. It’s the nature of the transition. This sort of thing doesn’t happen overnight. There will be crashes, tears, triumphs and setbacks.

NEW ROLES

College can be as confusing for parents as it is for students. What exactly is your role now? The signals are confusing. She calls me crying. He wants money. She screams, “This is my life!” He has a new girlfriend who I’ve never even met.

I believe that college students want and need their parents more than they often let on. The support they want and need looks different than it did when they lived at home but it is crucial nonetheless. Here’s my advice on how to parent a college freshman…

1. A Retreat

Nearly everything about college is foreign and new. It’s all a bit too unsettling and disorienting. In the midst of this, home holds within it everything that is familiar and comfortable. A weekend at home can reorient and recharge.

Many parents quickly transform their college student’s room into an office or spare bedroom. Please don’t do this. You’re taking away your son or daughter’s retreat to the familiar. Even simply knowing that their childhood room still exists can be a comfort.

2. Communicate on Their Terms

You may feel that your college student is delusional when they talk about how busy they are. Just wait until you have a full-time job and children! But, they still feel overwhelmed and perception is reality.

We have to understand that their communication with us will be sporadic and sometimes curt. This doesn’t mean they don’t want to hear from you. In fact, they desperately need to hear from you. They are simply learning to navigate the busiest schedule they have ever managed.

Leave them static communications that they can get to in their own time. Text. Leave a voice mail. Send a care package or snail mail. Communicate regularly, even when you don’t hear back. Encourage your kids, let them know you believe in them and care about them. They are listening and they need you.

3. Don’t Get Offended

Your child is interacting with all kinds of new information. He is meeting people from different backgrounds. She’s sitting under the teaching of professors from entirely different worldviews.

It’s very likely that your son or daughter will come home in a few months and share some new ideas that you will not like. Do you best to restrain yourself from intellectually destroying your son or daughter’s new ideas. Most likely they haven’t changed their entire belief system. They are exploring. They are attempting to reconcile what they have always known with what they are learning.

The truth is, if you did a good job of building their worldview when they were a child they will be fine. If you didn’t, now isn’t the time to pounce all over their independent thinking. You will only drive them away.

4. Advice Instead of Decrees

With all that said, college freshmen still need direction and you are still their parents. However, the game has changed. You aren’t in a position to “ground” them or take away their allowance. Instead of making decrees shift to advice. Share stories from your life. Ask for permission to share your opinions. In short, treat them like they are an adult. Doing this communicates respect. Your kids still want your opinions and advice but they want to be treated like an equal.

To recap, college is exhilarating and disorienting. Your college student still desperately needs you but they need you in new and different ways. My hope and prayer is that you courageously adapt and engage.

Is Your Church Too Happy?

I recently read that one of the big reasons college aged Christians are walking away from the church is doubt. What I mean is that they never openly wrestled with their doubts. They were never given space or permission to do so. As they struggled with doubts privately the power of their doubts grew. And, I suspect, the people who finally gave them permission to confess their doubts also had a hand in dismantling their faith.

We have a problem. Our student ministry, church and family cultures do not provide permission and space for doubt. We have stigmatized doubt. We have given it a bad rep and outlawed it in our ministry contexts. Church is all smiles and praise. If you are doubting you simply need more faith. Please leave your sadness, doubt and pain at the door. It isn’t welcome in our smiley service.

The problem with this approach is that it is unrealistic. It isn’t real life. It only represents half of what we experience as humans. Let’s be real. It’s fake and plastic.

THE SAD PSALMS

The psalms were the song book of the Jewish nation. They were the songs of worship for the people of God. Here’s the thing, if you read the psalms you’re going to come across a lot of raw emotion. Most of it isn’t positive either. There’s a whole lot of, “Where the heck are you God?” There’s a bunch of “God I don’t understand and really don’t like what You’re doing.” And even a little, “I wish I was dead because my life sucks!”

Maybe our student ministry and church environments are a little too polished and smiley. They surely aren’t representative of what we find in the psalms. Could it be that we need to make space for the darker emotions? Research is showing that this generation of students is perhaps the most depressed generation in our nation’s history. What are we doing to meet these kids where they are? Maybe it’s time to reintroduce our students to the raw emotion and struggle of the psalms.

PERMISSION TO STRUGGLE

What our students and children need is the freedom to confess what they don’t understand and don’t believe with adults and spiritual mentors who care about them and will process with them. Doubts are like sins in that when they are dragged out into the light they lose their power over us. There is life and hope in the light.

DOUBT AND LAMENT

What if we taught our students from the psalms of doubt and lament? What if we empowered them to pray as David prayed—with passion and angst? What if we gave them permission to verbalize or at least write down their doubts? What if we led them in songs of lament? What if we recaptured the energy and life of the psalms in our student ministry contexts?

I believe that if we teach our students how to engage their doubts and disappointments while providing them with mentors who will walk with them through these experiences we will see a sharp decline in students walking away from the church. If we remove the shame associated with doubt and the darker emotions we’ll give our students the freedom to be real and authentic.

We must find a way to engage our students in their doubts now while they are still within the orbits of our ministries and volunteers. Maybe the psalms are the key.

Maybe it’s time to reintroduce the psalms of doubt and lament.

image credited to Can’t Think

What Exactly Are Students Walking Away From?

We’ve all read the numbers. We all get a little panicky when we think about how many students are walking away from church. If the numbers are true, we’re facing a very serious problem because what we’re doing as parents and youth workers is not working. We must grapple with one very difficult question: why are students walking away from church after high school?

Maybe I’m over simplifying the issue but I think the answer is very easy. Students aren’t walking away from church. It’s not that the statistics are wrong. Barna and Fuller have their numbers right. That isn’t it at all. And yet, I believe that students aren’t walking away from church. They never belonged to church in the first place. They’re walking away from something else entirely.

WHAT IS CHURCH?

What is church? That’s a really good question. Personally, I think it’s best to define church by what I read in the New Testament. Church is the Jesus community. It’s a people bonded together by the presence, love and mission of Jesus.

The church is marked by the presence of Jesus. There is something to be experienced in the church that cannot be experienced anywhere else. The experience is different because Jesus is Immanuel. The presence of God is with us. Lives are being transformed. Light is shining into darkness. Life is breathed into death. Hope is breaking forth in the midst of tragedy.

The church is defined by love. The Jesus community shocked the world and overthrew an empire with love. The Jesus community transformed the world in a few short centuries through inclusion, radical service, and care for the oppressed and forgotten. Where the Gospel is preached and lived the world can never be the same.

The church is defined by the mission of Jesus. The church is inviting people to follow Jesus. It’s not asking people to join a club. It’s not trying to fill seats in a building. It’s inviting people to follow the most compelling person who ever walked the soil of this planet. The church is inviting people into the restoration of the world through the Gospel of Jesus.

WHAT ARE STUDENTS WALKING AWAY FROM?

This is the church. Students aren’t walking away from this. People don’t walk away from the church. It is far too magnetic. The true church—defined by the presence, love and mission of Jesus is incredibly compelling. It transforms lives, communities, cultures and nations. Our students are walking away from something else entirely.

Maybe the problem is not that students are walking away. In fact, they might be doing us a favor by pointing out the real problem. Perhaps the problem is that we aren’t being the church. Maybe we as parents, pastors and church leaders need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves some hard questions. What exactly are we doing anyway?

The Danger of Not Digging

Have you ever read a situation completely wrong? I have. I once got a person’s gender completely wrong. “Hey Jon, is this your mom?” “Nope.” “It’s my brother.” “Oh….”

I’ve read people wrong in student ministry too. A few years ago, I received a letter from a former student—a student who had been regularly involved in our student ministry for all seven years. He was in a small group with the same leader for 4 years, attended snow camp and even attended a mission trip. His letter informed me that it was all an act. He never believed any of it. He is an atheist. He was playing along for the sake of his parents. We never knew because we never asked. We never dug beneath the surface.

WHY THEY WALK AWAY

Based on the published research I’ve read and my own experience I would say that the majority of students who walk away from church after high school do so for the following reasons:

They never figured out what they believe
They never worked through their doubts
They never understood why Jesus matters

I would attribute most of this to a lack of digging—from parents and youth workers. We assumed things were fine because they were coming to our programs and weren’t smoking pot. We never gave them permission to talk about their doubts because, well, that’s uncomfortable. We never connected them to the mission of Jesus because we were more concerned about intelligent lights and transition videos than we were about actually connecting them to what Jesus is doing in the world. We never gave them the chance to participate.

PICK UP A SHOVEL

The lesson I learned from that letter is that we need to start digging. There is far too much at stake for us to simply assume. We need to get messy by asking harder questions, listening better, and connecting them to the mission of Jesus. The fact that students are walking away from church because they were bored with Jesus is unbelievable.

HOW TO DIG

So, how do we dig beneath the surface? Here are some thoughts:

1. Get on their turf

Who are your students at school, at home and in the world of social media? You might be surprised. Most students have multiple selves and aren’t terribly bothered by the dissonance of being one person at church and another at school. Only by digging into their world can we really see who they are.

2. Drop Your Guard

Honesty unlocks honesty. If you want your students to be real then you must be real. You must be honest about your doubts, struggles and mistakes. They won’t be willing to go anywhere you haven’t already gone. Free them from pretense and masks by dropping your own.

3. Ask Incredibly Awkward Questions

Digging is messy and uncomfortable but let’s be real, there’s a lot at stake. Be direct. Be blunt. If their eyes widen then you’re on the right track. Ask that question that makes you blush. Drag sin out into the light. Force them to verbalize their thoughts. Be ok with silence and unleash the power of the “why” question.

4. Overstay Your Welcome

Digging beneath the surface is a long term project. You have to earn the right to speak truth into the lives of your student. There is no such thing as trust without time together. Students don’t need a quick spiritual surgery to set them right. They need a guide to walk with them as they journey through adolescence. Stay in the lives of your students. Students need small group leaders who will walk with them for 3 or 4 years. Stay engaged with them as they transition into college. Overstay your welcome.

I never want to read a letter like that again. Let’s dig into the lives of students and help them as they struggle to build a faith of their own.

Advice to College Freshmen

For the last 3 years, a major portion of my job has been helping seniors in high school transition well into college and adulthood. Over the course of their senior year we talked through just about every topic out there. Now, they are leaving or have already left for the next phase of their lives. Here’s a compilation of what we’ve talked about and my parting advice:

1. Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future

It’s a guarantee that people become almost exactly like their friends in terms of what they are into and what their values are. Be incredibly picky about who you choose as close friends.

2. You’ll never be more loved than you are right now

The designer of the universe created you exactly how He wants you to be. He really likes who you are and loved you enough to sacrifice His own life to bring you back into relationship. If these things are true, no boy, girl, party, grade, friend, job, car, dress, video game or sex could ever make you more loved than you are right now. Know who you are and live out of that identity.

3. Facebook is the new resume

Everything you post on your social media accounts is permanent and yes, employers will look at your Facebook when considering you for a job. I know because I’ve done it myself. Be wise.

4. You only get one body

Alcohol and tobacco, when used excessively, will hurt your body. And drugs? Well, they’ll make you look like the emperor from Star Wars. You only get one body. Take care of it. Eat well, exercise and get rest. Your body is an amazing gift. You don’t want to mess it up. You have to live in it for like 80 more years.

5. You’re either growing closer or more distant with God

I believe that all relationships are either growing closer or more distant. Time spent together, meaningful conversations and serving each other lead to closeness. Ignoring the other person leads to distance. There is no middle ground. I believe that our relationship with God is the same way. Pursue Him and make space for Him in your new schedule.

6. You’ll marry someone that you date

Whatever dating was for you in high school, those days are over. Dating is a different game in college. It has greater consequences—good and bad. The thing is, you’ll marry someone you date. Unless, of course, your parents are hooking you up with an arranged marriage. If this is true we should probably talk.

Anyway, someday you’ll probably be married. Before that you’ll be engaged and before that you’ll be dating. My advice: only date people you’d consider marrying.

7. Direction, not intention, determines your destination (The Principle of the Path, Andy Stanley)

Life is a path. The choices you make today will directly affect your future. There are no shortcuts in life and wishful thinking won’t help you. If you want financial freedom as a young adult then don’t rack up debt on your credit card. If you want a close and happy marriage in ten years then don’t sleep around with random people. Direction, not intention, determines your destination.

8. Life is found at the intersection of your gifts, passions and God’s mission

God is on a mission. He’s saving lives both now and for eternity. He wants to partner with you. You were made for this. He wired you and gifted you for a specific purpose. Meaningful life is found when your gifts and passions intersect with God’s mission in the world. Do the hard work of figuring out who God has made you to be, pay attention to what God is doing around you, and dive in!

9. Your Parents are smarter than you

College will bring irreversible change to your relationship with your parents. However, this doesn’t mean you should stop listening to them. Your parents have at least double the life experience you do. They understand how life works. Wise people treat their parents with respect and listen to their advice. Sure, there will be times that they don’t understand and even time when they are wrong but please remember that when it comes to life—your parents are smarter than you.

10. Debt destroys future possibilities

I have friends who want to be youth pastors, become missionaries, have children, buy a house, travel or get married but they can’t. They can’t because they can’t afford it. They’re drowning in debt—school loans and credit cards.

Debt destroys future options. It takes away possibilities and can keep you from your dreams. Be very careful with debt.

To my class of 2013: I love you guys and I’m gonna miss you. I wish you the very best and we at LifeLine will always be in your corner. Stay connected with your leader and above all else, keep pursuing Jesus.

photo credited to Tax Credits

Tag: college transition