KRISTEN THOMPSON | GUEST

Do you ever get the sense that all hope is lost for the coming generations? After all, the percentage of people who claim to be a Christian is decreasing, especially for those between the ages of 15 and 29. Increasingly, people in this age group are walking away from the faith in which they were raised. (Read this article for some sobering statistics.) For those of us sitting in the church pews week after week, we wonder why more of the youth we’ve watched grow up aren’t coming back to the church in their adult years. For parents, sending their kids off to college seems scarier than ever before, and maybe that fear is justified if all we look at is the statistics.

But regardless of what the studies say or what we see taking place in our culture, the Church must not forget who holds the future. God has not ceased to be sovereign. He is just as omnipotent today as He was 2,000 years ago when He raised Jesus from the dead. That same resurrection power is at work renewing this earth and sanctifying the heart of His children.

I’ve been working in college campus ministry for the past 9 years. I work with Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) which is the campus ministry of the PCA. And while the church often looks at college-aged students with angst and anxiety, I want to encourage you that God is at work building His Kingdom among the next generation. I’m not saying the statistics are wrong rather, I want to show you the other side of the coin—the stories that don’t get published as widely.

Be Encouraged, God is at Work

• Be encouraged by the student from the west coast who came to faith in Jesus in college, learned to love Scripture, and now as a post-grad student, seeks a church where she can use her gifts to serve the kingdom.
• Be encouraged by the churched student who experienced true Christian community for the first time in college and now seeks to be a connecting point for others in her local church.
• Be encouraged by the young man who spent his first semester partying and drinking, was on the brink of suicide, but then his eyes were opened to the love of his Father and now tells the whole campus of this love.
• Be encouraged by the student raised Catholic who came to understand deeper truths of the gospel through reading Scripture with her campus ministry staff and who now invites her non-Christian friend to join them as they read.
• Be encouraged by the student who was non-religious and same-sex attracted but whose heart God pulled to Himself, drew to saving faith, and who now clearly articulates a Biblical worldview regarding sexuality.

I could keep going and others in campus ministry could tell even more stories. There is hope for the next generation and that hope is a person—our faithful, loving, sustaining Savior Jesus Christ. He will not let His people see destruction, and He will not stop building His Kingdom until He returns to be with His bride forever. As Jesus told Peter in Matthew 16:18, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

I hope these stories of God’s work on college campuses give you hope for the next generation, but even more than stories, may we be reminded that God’s Word speaks truth that we must cling to when worries and concerns arise about the next generation.

Our Powerful and Compassionate God

In Exodus 34:6-7, the Lord comes to Moses and declares who He is. (Isn’t that amazing that we have a direct description of our God from God Himself?)

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’”

This the God who holds the future: the God whose steadfast love extends to the heavens and whose faithfulness reaches to the clouds (Psalm 36); the God who brought the flood upon the earth yet promised to destroy Himself rather than bring destruction to His covenant people ever again (Genesis 9); the God who Himself came down from heaven to accomplish redemption for His wayward children (Luke 2, 23-24). He is not only a powerful God, but also a compassionate Father who cares for His children until the end.

So be encouraged, Church. God is at work even now in the next generation, and He invites us to participate in that work. Maybe there are college students in your pews every semester — have you met them? I can guarantee you a friendly greeting will go a long way and an offer to host them for lunch or buy dinner would go even further. If your church doesn’t have college students attending regularly, you can pray for the youth and college students in our denomination as they face hard challenges and seek to remain faithful.

College is not solely a time when students might leave the faith; it’s just as much a time when they might come to faith or grow deeper in their faith. Let’s pray that the next generation will defy the studies and the statistics and return to their churches with a deeper love for and desire to serve our loving, sovereign King.

Photo by Meredith Spencer on Unsplash