Tag: Millennials

Will You Lose Your Faith in College?

Will you keep your faith in college? Odds are you won’t, at least according to Barna Research.

Barna estimates that roughly 70% of high school students who enter college as professing Christians will leave with little to no faith. These students usually don’t return to their faith even after graduation, as Barna projects that 80% of those reared in the church will be “disengaged” by the time they are 29.

Will you be one of the 80%? Maybe abandon your faith when surrounded by peers who don’t know God? Most people assume their early faith will carry them through their lives. King Joash probably did. He began to reign at age 7 (2 Chronicles 24:1), and he “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest” (2 Chronicles 24:2), King Joash’s mentor and most trusted advisor.

When Jehoiada was alive, Joash faithfully followed God’s laws and made sure others did as well. He even inspired others to give joyfully to God: “All the princes and all the people rejoiced and brought their tax and dropped it into the chest until they had finished” (2 Chronicles 24:10). Joash’s faith certainly seemed genuine.

Far Too Easily Swayed

But when Jehoiada died, Joash turned to his peers. When the princes of Judah came to visit Joash soon after Jehoiada’s death, the king listened to them. After the princes “paid homage to the king” (2 Chronicles 24:17), which probably meant they flattered him, Joash abandoned the house of the Lord and turned to serve idols. These “friends” may have convinced him that they were open-minded and in touch with popular culture, and that Jehoiada had been too strict and old-fashioned. Joash listened to them and reversed all the good things he had done earlier, even murdering Jehoiada’s son Zechariah when he was questioned.

This behavior seems like a shocking turnaround, but it shows that King Joash had likely been trusting in Jehoiada and not God. His faith was not his own. Since he lacked personal conviction, he was easily swayed by faithless people around him. God judged him for his wickedness and he was soon murdered by his own servants. Joash shows us that it doesn’t matter how well we start in the Christian life; it matters how we finish.

For Freshmen and Seniors

Many of us started strong. We assumed that if we were raised with the right values and involved in church, we would always stay faithful. I believed that. There was passion for the Lord in high school and college, but as I immersed myself in my career, my church attendance became sporadic and my time with God infrequent and rushed.

I found that the less time I spent with the Lord, the less I wanted to know him. My unbelieving coworkers were my closest friends. Originally, I hoped to share my faith with them, but instead they passed on their spiritual indifference to me. They had a subtle but profound influence on my priorities. As my faith was getting watered down, reading the Bible and going to church felt more legalistic than life-giving. It was only when I faced real suffering that my faith became important again.

Whether you are a freshman or a senior, if you are heading off to college, you’re in a vulnerable place. It’s easy to assume you’ll develop better spiritual disciplines and get involved in Christian community later on. But as you juggle life’s challenges, it’s tempting to put off pursuing God until you feel more settled, unintentionally falling into the habits of lost people around you. The shift is gradual and often unnoticeable.

Three Ways Not to Wander

So, what can you do, with God’s help, to be one of the 20% raised in the church who remain faithful through college and into their twenties?

First, don’t assume that you won’t drift away — or that if you do drift away, you will eventually come back. We are all vulnerable. Ask God daily for an enduring passion for him. For God to give you joy in him alone. Ask him right now to keep your heart from wandering.

Second, stay closely connected to God. It may sound trite, or even legalistic, but reading the Bible and praying really are the simple keys to the Christian life. As you read, focus and pay attention rather than mindlessly skimming words to “check off the box.” I love using a Bible reading plan because it takes the guesswork out of what to read each morning. Have a look at the Discipleship Journal plan. If you’re reading the Bible regularly for the first time, begin by just reading the New Testament sections each day. Try reading with a pen and paper, jotting down insights, questions, and observations, asking God to open your eyes to see truth and to breathe life into his words (Psalm 119:18).

Third, find real Christian fellowship. Plug into a church and a small group or on-campus ministry. Intentionally make Christian friends and spend time with them. Having good Christian friends in college reduces the pressure to conform. The people around us influence us far more than we realize. King Joash is a vivid example of how easy it is to abandon your faith when surrounded by the wrong people.

Makeshift Saints

Charles Spurgeon, a London preacher in the 1800s, once said,

Oh, what a sifter the city of London has been to many like Joash! Many do I remember whose story was like this: they had been to the house of God always . . . and everybody reckoned them to be Christians — and then they came to London. At first, they went . . . to some humble place where the gospel was preached.

But after time they thought . . . they worked so hard all the week that they must go out a little into the fresh air on Sunday; and by degrees they found companions who led them, little by little, from the path of integrity and chastity, until the “good young man” was as vile as any on the streets of London; and he who seemed to be a saint, became not only a sinner, but the maker of sinners.

None of us is immune from slowly drifting from God. As we see from King Joash’s life, even when we’ve lived an outwardly Christian life, it’s easy to start living like those around us. Yet those who truly know Christ cannot fall away. As 1 John 2:19 says, “If they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” Those who leave the faith never truly possessed it but, as John Calvin said, merely “had only a light and a transient taste of it.”

Will You Fall Away?

Will you fall away in college? You can fight the current, and hold fast to God. First, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? — unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Ask yourself if Jesus is your treasure or if you are only borrowing the faith of those around you. If you have any doubt, commit yourself now to pursue Christ as hard as you pursue anything.

But if you genuinely know the Lord, and see evidences of transforming grace in your life, don’t be afraid that you’ll fall away. He will hold you fast and will strengthen you and help you. God will uphold you with his righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10). If you are his, then you can be sure “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

 

Article taken from DesiringGod.com and written by Vaneetha Rendall Risner. Risner is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Desiring God, who blogs at danceintherain.com. She is married to Joel and has two daughters, Katie and Kristi. She and Joel live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Vaneetha is the author of the book The Scars That Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering.

Lead Yourself First-The 30-Day Challenge

Before you can lead others, you must first be able to lead yourself.

I’m going to share one of my favorite lead yourself first hacks. I won’t touch on the what of leading yourself, simply the how. There are plenty of people out there telling you to add this practice to your morning, or to do this one thing daily for instant success. This isn’t that kind of post. I don’t claim to have those kinds of answers.

I am, however, going to share the how with one of my favorite how techniques.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Luke 12:48 (NIV):

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

I don’t take this verse lightly. It’s the fuel to my constant push for personal improvement in the stewardship of all I’ve been entrusted with.

One thing I do to put this in practice is something I call the “30-day challenge”.

The basic idea is to decide on a practice you want to commit to –– whether it’s something you want to start doing or stop doing –– and simply commit to doing it every day for 30 days. That’s it. 30-days.

There are several reasons why I like 30 days.

First off, the commonly shared timeframe of taking 21 days to form a new habit, in my opinion, is far too short. Honestly, 30 days isn’t even long enough for most people, but it’s often long enough to decide if you want to continue the practice.

An important point to remember here is that the point of establishing a new practice or ritual in your life is not to start something for ritual’s sake, but to add a benefit or an improvement to your life. If your new habit or practice doesn’t deliver the desired benefit, stop doing it and try something else!

There’s no sense in doing something if it’s not yielding the benefits you’re after.

It was Albert Einstein who shared the definition of insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.

If you don’t get the desired result, change your approach. And 30 days is the perfect amount of time to see if your approach is working, or if it’s time for a change.

Additionally, 30 days has a natural rhythm to it in the course of a calendar month. I like starting a new practice each month. I personally don’t even track the days of my challenge this way. I simply know that I started on the first day of the month and therefore know how many days in I am, how many I have left, and what my current “win” streak is as well. The calendar date shows me how far I’ve come and how far I have to go without any external tracking system needed.

So, let me tell you about one of my latest challenges and how it came to be.

I recently took Seth Godin’s altMBA course. It’s an intense, 4-week sprint course for people who want to be effective leaders. When I received my orientation email, the schedule looked something like this:

Tuesday & Thursday evenings from 6-9pm & Sunday’s from 8am-5pm.

Again, this was for four weeks in a row.

Seeing this, I had a “my wife is going to kill me” moment. We have four young kids (Noah, Aiden, Eli, and Adele) and we were in the middle of selling, buying, and moving homes during this same 4-week time period. Being absent for three primetime “dad-timeslots” during the week for four weeks was not going to excite my wife about my altMBA experience (understandably so).

Not wanting to set off the volcano, I looked for an alternative and found out that the London cohort of the course met at the same time, except on London time. Therefore, their 6-9pm slot was 1-4pm New York time and their 8am-5pm Sunday slot was 4am-noon New York time. Perfect I thought, I’m in!

Now a part of the London cohort, I joined 25 other individuals, all from European and Middle Eastern countries.

One of my classmates was Sabastian. Sabastian lives in Germany and worked as a consultant for a number of years. As the consultant lifestyle goes, Sabastian worked 80+ hour weeks and was away from home Monday through Thursday. Each week, he’d return home for the weekend exhausted.

While on a vacation, as is typical for many European cultures, Sabastian’s wife hit him with something two weeks into the trip. She said, “You know Sabastian, you’re really a different person when we get away for a while.”

Not understanding what she exactly meant, Sabastian dug deeper (a true consultant he is).

Through the conversation, his wife shared that he was far more pleasant to be around, now two weeks into the trip, than he was a week ago and certainly than was typical in their everyday lives. He was happier, more joyful, more patient with his children, and a more loving husband.

Sabastian’s hypothesis to this change in his behavior was the additional 2-3 hours of sleep he was getting while on vacation. Rather than his traditional 5-6 hours of sleep per night, he had been averaging 8-9 hours. This piqued Sabastian’s interest in the study of sleep, setting him off on a several-year-long exploration, leading him to be a firm believer in the power of sleep.

Fast forward to my time with Sabastian as a classmate, the topic of sleep emerged.

I shared with my group that for years, I’ve been almost purposefully ignoring the trending topic idea of getting more sleep. I read Adriana Huffington’s “Thrive” years ago and dismissed the concepts as interesting and dreamy, thinking “oh sure, one day I’ll be able to sleep more, but not right now”. I felt the idea of being more productive after getting more sleep was nice in concept, but I don’t have time for that.

Appealing, nice in theory, but not for me. Not right now, at least. After all, I operate pretty well on 6 hours of sleep, right? I never feel tired. I’m happily married, my kids seem to like me, business is going pretty well, why rock the boat?

However, in my typical 30-day challenge style, I told my group I would commit to getting 8 hours of sleep per night for the entire month of August. I’d go to bed when I went to bed and simply set the alarm for 8 hours later. I felt challenged, but overall it was a pretty easy commit.

However, Sabastian fired back. He said, “I want to challenge you further, don’t set an alarm.”

Yikes! That one actually scared me. Don’t set an alarm? What if I sleep the day away (who am I kidding, I have four young kids!). What if I sleep 9 or 10 hours?

Between balancing family time, running a company, buying/selling our home, and taking this course, how am I supposed to risk losing one or two precious hours of the day?

However, the simple fact that the idea of no-alarm did indeed scare me was exactly what I needed to know that it was the right challenge. The fact that I was scared fired me up! So I committed.

Starting August 1, 2018, I completely banished an alarm clock. I left my phone charging in the kitchen at night and always went to bed around 9:30, plus or minus 30 minutes. I tried to always be off my computer by 8:45 and in bed reading by 9pm to give myself 30 minutes of “wind down” time before lights out.

With that, I very consistently woke up 7.5 to 8 hours later, between 5 and 5:30am, without an alarm. I followed this for 30 days, knowing that it may take some time for my body to catch-up and feel truly rested once again.

Reporting back on the 30-day experiment, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the consistency my body has shown in the time it desires to rest each night. My mood has certainly been no worst and I like to think my focus and clarity of thought have been heightened.

With that, I decided to continue the challenge, enjoying the “sleep until I wake” idea.

And now, I encourage you. Find your 30-day challenge. What have you been wanting to do and have been putting off? What is tugging at you to add to your routine? Is it a meal routine? A new morning routine? Working out? Meditation? Sleep? A task system? A family ritual?

Whatever it is for you, give it a try. Set your 30-day challenge and go!

Article written CatalystLeader by Dru Dalton. Dru is the founder/CEO of two companies; Real Thread, a super soft custom t-shirt printer, and Taab, an employee benefit travel program. If that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Dru is also a husband to his wife Carrie, and father to four wonderful kids –– Noah, Aiden, Eli, and Adele.

10 Leadership Tips from the Millennial Generation

As a generation known for lack of long-term commitments, Millennials are poor poster children for proven work and leadership.

However, the tide is turning in churches and culture, with more young adults stepping into the forefront of businesses, arts, ministries, and more.

 

Those of us identified as Millennials, between the ages of 20 and 35, should just admit the stereotypes are true for good reason. We like doing what we want, avoiding responsibility and hard work, and saving money by living with our parents long after we attain a college degree (the fine art of “mooching”). In other words, we are fellow humans who’ve experienced the same difficult economic recession the same as all the rest. We’ve just embraced the new trend called “delayed adolescence,” while the rest of the world tumbles onward.

We may have prevalent flaws, but that means we need all the more help overcoming them. 

Mentors and leaders are the cheerleaders and gatekeepers of our lives, simultaneously pushing us forward and keeping us back from doing meaningful work. To really accomplish something as our life’s work, we’re going to need assistance as well as responsibility. Just because we’re younger doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be respected or listened to. We may not have much proven worth career-wise at this point in our lives, but it doesn’t grant older generations a free pass to ignore us.

10 Suggestions for Leaders from Millennials
Cast vision. 

Millennials don’t want to be given tasks to accomplish. We want to be part of a story bigger than ourselves. Paint the big picture and remind us where we fit into it.

Be accessible. 

You’re an industry professional we can learn much from. But for us to learn from you, we’ve got to be around you and interact with you.

Be interested. 

One rightly emphasized aspect of the postmodern perspective is relationship over rules. We can easily get lost in the minutiae of tasks, so even a brief, friendly conversation with a boss can lift spirits among the cubicles.

Be patient with us. 

We desperately need work experience and we’re hoping your company is one that can grow us and prepare us for a better future, even if it’s not with you.

Lead with passion. 

No one is drawn to dry, robotic rigidity. We want to see what gets other people motivated to do great work.

Develop talent. 

It’s convenient for a leader to use interns or newbies in the office to fill gaps in the company positions, or frantically meet the demand of each day with an unplanned reordering. But take the time to learn who we are and what skills we can best use to benefit the company. It’s better for everybody long term.

Be honest. 

We don’t need you to sugarcoat the truth. If we suck at something, tell us why and shift us into a role that works off our strengths for the good of the whole team.

Respect our commitments. 

We’ve all got more going on in life outside of our work. Sure, we should put in our full hours and be willing to go the extra mile at times. But don’t abuse our schedules or take our time for granted.

Invite us into the decision-making process. 

You can tell us something, or you can include us in creative problem solving and allow us to craft part of the organization. These kinds of opportunities will help us really buy into the vision of the company.

Believe in us. 

We’ll work ten times harder if we know our leaders have our best interest in mind, not just the company’s profits margin.

A time will come when the current generation has had its final day. Transition will be necessary. A leader can’t keep his position forever. By valuing the Millennials in your organization, you ensure the next generation of leaders will take the helm the best equipped they could ever be. They will be better for it, and your organization will be better for it. Good leadership is about leaving a good legacy, and a legacy worth leaving is rooted in what benefits people.

Give Millennials a chance. It will be our turn eventually, so we’re better prepared if you lead us well in the meantime. We are leaders in the making. Don’t underestimate us. Besides, we might even surprise you.

Article written CatalystLeader by John Weirick. John writes resources and blog articles with NewSpring Church in South Carolina. Find out more here.

6 Ways to Lead Yourself in College

As summer draws to a close and you trade in your long weekdays on the lake for early morning classes, here are 6 ways you can lead yourself on your college campus:

Practice self-care

You cannot lead others well if you’re not taking care of yourself.

There’s a time to stay up late with friends, and there’s a time to go to bed early. Good self-care will take learning how to discern when it’s time to slow down, spend time with yourself, and just take a nap.

Get to know yourself

Leading up to college, it can be difficult to know who you truly are due to being a part of an environment that has been crafted for you. You didn’t have a say in what high school you went to or what neighborhood you grew up in. Most life-altering decisions were made for you, and that’s intended to be for your own good. You need time and help to develop.

College affords the freedom and responsibility of becoming your own decision-maker. What will I study? Who will I live with? What church will I go to? It’s these decisions that will reveal who you are and who you’re becoming. Get to know yourself by observing how you’re answering the questions that come with life.

Walk with confidence

You don’t have to have life figured out in order to be a confident person. As you discover your God-given identity, walk in it with confidence. You have nothing to prove. Your heavenly Father crafted you with purpose, approves of you, and has intentionally placed you on your campus. Help yourself walk in confidence by preaching yourself these realities.

Do excellent work

Focusing on your studies may be one of the most simple, yet difficult ways you can lead yourself at college. With friendships to form, organizations to join, places to explore, classes can seem like a joy-sapper in paradise. But you’re there to learn, so learn to the best of your ability. It’s the greatest opportunity to make an impact on your teachers and peers, and it’s a lifelong tool that will do you well beyond college.

Serve With Your Talents

Don’t feel like you have to serve somewhere for the sake of serving. Your local church doesn’t need a lifeless you directing traffic in the parking lot. Once you discover where your passions collide with your talents, use that mark as the means to find your space to serve. Nothing is quite as life-giving as combining passion with talent to serve another person. It’s also an excellent way to continue to sharpen whatever craft you’re developing.

Build Community

The key word is build. Finding yourself within the right community takes work. Join a local church. Check out organizations that share similar passions as you. Seek out people you want to be like.

By graduation, you will resemble the people you spent the most time with. Choose these people wisely.  

 

Article written CatalystLeader by Luke Baker. Luke is the Digital Content Producer at Catalyst. He is a lover of tea and Twitter, and cares too much about his Uber passenger rating.