College Sunday

Message Transcription

SUMMARY:

In this College Sunday sermon, Jeremy Smith, the college minister at Broadway Church of Christ, addresses the critical issue of young adults leaving the church. He cites a statistic that 67% of young adults raised in the church will no longer attend by their mid-twenties. Smith introduces the concept of spiritual self-efficacy, which is the confidence in one's ability to engage in spiritual practices. He argues that developing this confidence is key to helping young people maintain their faith.

Smith draws from Hebrews 4, emphasizing the invitation to approach God's throne of grace with confidence. He acknowledges the challenges college students face, with their lives in constant flux, making it difficult to feel confident in approaching God. To combat this, Smith suggests two main approaches: modeling faith practices and creating safe spaces for young people to experience and practice their faith. He praises Broadway Church for its inclusivity in allowing young people to participate in worship services, stating that this hands-on experience helps develop their spiritual self-efficacy.

TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning everybody. I'm really excited to be with you today. I'm really excited for the opportunity to speak to you on College Sunday. Uh, I'm really appreciative of Broadway giving our college students the opportunity to get up here and to be a part of the worship service. We have some amazing college students and just Marshall with your reading. That was great, Beth. The words and the prayers that you had for communion were just amazing. Uh, really appreciate that, Kenna and Elise, for bringing our our call to worship. All of it is really great. And so if you haven't had a chance to really meet our college group, then I encourage you to do so, because that is just a taste of how awesome our college students are. If you are visiting Broadway today, I want to introduce myself. My name is Jeremy Smith. I am not the preacher, so if this goes terribly, you don't have to worry about it because our main preacher, Carl, will be taking over for us. But, uh, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, because today is College Sunday, and Broadway's college ministry is called Atlas Campus Fellowship. And so I'm the college minister of Atlas, and we have a building right down the street, if you don't know. And on Sunday mornings before worship, we gather together and we have a little worship and a little Bible class. And then on Wednesday nights we also meet together. So if you're a visiting college student, this is the college group right over here in the back corner.

And so come over and meet us, greet us, and we'd love to get to know you a little bit better. Um, as we welcome back our college students. So last week we got to welcome do Welcome Week with Texas Tech. We invited Texas Tech was back in town, South Plains College was back. And this week Lubbock Christian University is starting. And so we're welcoming back our LCU people. So very excited to have y'all back. If you've never been a part of Texas Tech, then you may not know about this little thing called Welcome Week. And I say little thing kind of tongue in cheek because it is not a little thing. Texas Tech does Welcome Week, which actually is about two and a half weeks of welcoming back and welcoming in college freshmen. And during this time, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of different events that are going on all over Lubbock, different college groups in town, different student organizations, different businesses are hosting free events for college students to come and to gather around and to get to know all of the different things that are available in Lubbock. And so over the past week, Atlas has has been involved in six different Welcome Week events. And so if I fall asleep up here, that is why. Because we are exhausted. During that time, I've estimated that we have probably met and talked with around 300 different college students. Just Texas Tech college students who are interested in finding a church home, 300 different students who are brand new to Lubbock, who have come to one of our events, engaged with us and had conversations with us about what it would be like to find home at Atlas.

And so if you and some of them are here with us today, some of them are visiting today, have been maybe once or twice in visiting with us today. And so we're really glad to have you here. If you're checking out Broadway and checking out Atlas, if I forget your name, remember it's because I have met 300 people and had conversations with 300 people trying to get to know. And the weird thing about Welcome Week is that you spend so much time kind of explaining what Atlas is, because you only have a short window with how many people that are coming in and all the different churches in town. And so we got really good at our elevator pitch. We got really good at kind of saying, What is Atlas, what are we about and who are we? And if you go and you visit our website, you will see right on the front page this little site, and you see our motto up there. And our motto is find home. And it says that we are a minute the College ministry of Broadway, Church of Christ. But then it has our little kind of mission statement which says we help college aged students in Lubbock, Texas, make friends, connect with God, and get equipped for their next adventure in life.

And so we got really good at kind of making this pitch. We tell them real quick, this is what we are. This is who we are. And then we'd go into our Sundays and our Wednesday nights and our small groups and all the different things that we do. Give them a little handout and then they would move on and go literally to the next booth, which was another church that gave him the same kind of pitch. And so you never know who you're going to see again. You're meeting all these people. You're hearing just a snapshot of a story of their life. And it's really cool to see all the different places that college students are coming from, their passions, their dreams, what they're excited for. And then you may never see him again, but you get a snapshot into the picture of it. But out of all of the conversations, the hundreds of conversations that we had last week, one conversation stands out among all of them. We were at brunch on Broadway, and we were sitting down, and we had around 70 different students. First time visitors come into Atlas and we're eating brunch food, and we are greeting them and talking with them. And Cameron, our intern, was having a conversation with a girl who was visiting, and I noticed I was running around meeting other people, and I noticed that Cameron had been talking to this girl for a long time, like over an hour.

And so I was like, I wonder what's going on? So I decided I would go up and meet. And Cameron started off the conversation with the elevator pitch. He said, you know, hey, we are we're really glad you're here. Hope that you if you have any questions, let us know. And she goes, well, tell me a little bit about the ministry here. And so he gave the pitch. He gave the we help college aged students in Lubbock, Texas, make friends, connect with God, and get equipped for their next, next adventure in life. And she looked at him and she goes, what do you mean by connect with God? And Cameron goes, well, uh, because he wasn't ready for that elevator. You know, he was like, what do we actually mean by connect with God whenever we say that? I mean, if somebody asked you that question. Somebody said, you know, one of the things that you do is you get connected with God. How would you answer that question? How would you explain to someone who didn't know? Maybe maybe they knew they had a general idea about God, but maybe they'd never been to church before. And they asked you about how how do I connect with God? What are some of the things that you would say to them? And so, Cameron, it launched this hour long conversation that then I got shoulder tapped into and and then she asked me, how do you connect with God? And my response is, well, uh, and so I've been thinking a lot about how is it that we as a church connect with God? Did you know this statistic might not be surprising to you, but did you know that around 67% of us young adults raised in the church will no longer do so in their mid-twenties? This statistic has held strong for the past 25 years, Over eight different researchers have been out, starting all the way back to 1998 through millennials, through generation Z, and it looks like Generation Alpha is going to be the same way.

In fact, there's actually an updated research that Gallup poll just put out in 2022 that said the same thing. 67% of people who are raised in the church will no longer do so by the time they're in their mid-twenties. That means two thirds of people who grew up in the church will fall away during their college years. While in college, they will leave the church. And there is some. Maybe you've heard this statistic before, and there's some misconception that, well, actually, most of them will come back whenever they start having kids, but that's simply not the case. For one, it's really hard to track. It's really hard to track that long of data between the time they're 20 and to the time that they're in their late 30s. It's really hard to follow people that long, but the few research that we had says that maybe around 50% will come back. That's if you're a student minister, if you're Brian in the youth group, the youth minister, or if you're a college minister like me, that is concerning.

It is not okay for me. All the amount of resources and the energy that we put into college ministry and the Brian puts into youth ministry for us to lose two thirds of them, to just walk away from the faith. So one of the questions that has always stuck out on me, this question about how do we connect with God and why are we losing so many young people from the faith is concerning. It should be concerning to all of us. And I think the answer to this question about how do we connect with God? What do we actually mean? Whenever we talk about that, we get a little bit of a picture of that. Whenever we look at what Marshall read today. For us out of Hebrews and Hebrews four, the author starts out by saying, therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands. Let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us just as they did. But the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. The rest. The promise of entering God's rest still remains. It's still out there. This rest that the writer is talking about, he's alluding to two different things.

He's alluding to the creation story. And on the seventh day, God rest that God created rest that we can enter into. And he's also alluding to the Exodus story all the way through Joshua and Sabbath, that we are still invited to gather together and rest in God. But there's a difference between those who have faith and those who have fallen away. And the difference hints with something about obeying that those who have heard. In fact, actually this morning, it's really it's really great. Our intern Cameron taught on Romans chapter two, and he made the point in Romans. Paul makes the point that it's not just about those who who hear the Word of God, but those who do the Word of God. That there is this distinction between those who just hear it and those who actually put it into action. And then he'll go on to say, after talking about the Word of God, referencing the Genesis story, that is sharper than any double edged sword that can pierce through to our very being. He'll go on and say that this Word of God was Jesus, and therefore, since and therefore since we have such a great high priest who has ascended into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness. But we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are. Yet he did not sin. And then he.

Ends.

His chapter on rest about this. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence. Whenever we start talking about what does it mean to connect with God? What does Atlas mean? Whenever we say our mission is to help college age students connect with God, I think we're starting to see a bit of a picture here out of Hebrews. The idea is that we have the ability, because of what Jesus has done, to approach God's throne of grace with confidence, that we don't have to be timid about approaching God's grace, that instead we can approach God's grace with confidence. But there is a problem with that. The problem is, whenever we're talking about college students, there's not a lot of confidence. Now, let me, before all the college students get up and walk out, let me explain this. I'm not saying this isn't a belittling term or anything like that. I'm not saying that you're timid people. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the nature of college age, of young adulthood is this to and fro, never knowing what's going to happen next. You're uprooted from your family, from your whole network. You move across the country. Sometimes you go to school. You don't know what your next class is going to be.

You have friends for one semester, and then maybe those friends are no longer there. You may be dating somebody at one point and then you're no longer dating them. Your entire world is in flux. In fact, a few months ago, one of our students, Todd, he gave me permission to tell this story. One of our students, Todd, decided he's a he was a junior about to graduate. He had one year left, engineer major, chemical engineering. And he decided, you know what? Maybe I need to drop out of school and move to Croatia and play soccer. That was what he. Whatever, whatever reason, this was upon him and he was like, I think, I think I'm done with school, I hate school, I'm going to get up, I'm going to move to Croatia, and I'm going to play soccer, and I'm going to live in a van down by the river. That was his plan. And then about a month later, he moved to Houston and did an internship for the whole summer. And now he's back. And because that internship went so well, he's deciding whether or not he wants to move to after he graduates, if he wants to move to Minnesota or not, Minnesota to Memphis and take a job there. If he wants to stay in Lubbock within four months, his plans radically changed from, I'm going to stay here and I'm going to graduate to I'm going to move to Croatia and play soccer, and then to I'm going to go to Houston and have this internship, and then I'm going to go to Memphis.

The entire college world, the whole nature of of young adulthood, is this movement into flux And if you're not rooted, then there can be a lot of doubt about what do I do? Who am I supposed to be? Now, some of us have been out of college for a while, right? Some more than others. But we won't point to those people. Do you remember what it was like? Do you remember what it was like to leave your family, your support group, to go to college? Do you remember what it was like to maybe doubt your ability to do something? Do you remember what it was like stressing over that test? What it was like to fail an assignment? Do you remember what it was like to be lonely, to not have any money, to be poor, to have to live off of Whataburger and ramen noodles? Do you remember what it was like? Imagine if you need to that world. There is a lot of doubt and it's not this timidness, but there's just this unknown ness that comes with college ministry. And so whenever we talk about approaching God's throne with confidence, it's kind of hard to do that when your entire world is in flux and you're not even sure where you're going to be living next semester, who you're going to be living with, you're not even sure if you're going to be married, or if you're going to be single or forever alone.

You just don't know. So how do we help our young people become connected? Well, one of the things one of my other jobs that I work with is with Lubbock Christian University's varsity program and advocate. Over. We were challenged by the Lilly Endowment and the Youth Theology Network to come up with innovative ways of building faith in young people, and we have done eight years of research on this, and I'm not going to present the research to you. Don't worry. You don't have to do that. But I do want to talk a little bit about some of the findings we found. One of the things that we characterize what Bacardi has done is using the term spiritual Self-efficacy that one of the goals of any young adult ministry in a youth ministry, any student ministry, is helping students develop spiritual self-efficacy. And self-efficacy is the ability the confidence in one's ability to do something. So if you have self-efficacy, you have confidence in your ability to execute whatever that thing might be. So when we talk about spiritual self-efficacy, spiritual self-efficacy is the perceived belief in one's ability to successfully engage in spiritual practices.

It is the perceived a belief. It is the confidence to approach the throne of God whenever. And the amazing thing about this, whenever we talk, about 67% of our students are falling away from the faith. One of the amazing things about self-efficacy this has been tested multiple times over many years, is that if a person has the confidence in their ability to do something, they are more likely to continue doing that thing. If we can help raise the confidence in a person's ability to do something, they will continue. They are more likely to continue doing that thing, which means that if we want. If you're a parent in here and you want your child to read the Bible more, you don't just tell them, go read the Bible. You teach them how to read the Bible. You give them confidence in their ability to read the Bible. And this crosses not just college ministry and youth ministry, but it actually applies to all of us. If we as a church want it to be a church that reaches out to those around us to have conversation with our friends and our family, like Beth said in her in her prayer to be advocates for the gospel, I can't just stand up here and tell you, hey, go out and do this and then expect you to do it.

Instead, we have to give you tools and resources for your ability to do that. If you wanted to be a Bible class teacher here on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights and you wanted to teach, if I just came up to you and you'd never taught before and said, hey, would you teach on Sunday, you're probably going to tell me, no. You're going to be like, no way. I don't know how to do that. But if we offered you a format or a way to do this, you might be more likely to. Does that make sense? Like, the more that you have the confidence in your ability to do something, the more likely you are to do that thing. And so when we talk about helping students connect with God, this is what we're talking about. We're talking about developing the the confidence to approach God's throne of grace. We're not talking about just saying, hey, come to church. What we're talking about is providing them the opportunity to learn, to gain the confidence to approach God. And there's a couple of ways that this happens. There's a couple of ways that that we intend to to help people develop that confidence. The first way is by modeling it. Whenever we place people in conversation with other people they develop, they can see and interact with other people who are doing this.

They can see, oh, that's how it's supposed to be done. And so when we ask you to come over and volunteer at Atlas, or whenever you get up here and you lead the call of worship, and our college students are sitting down there and they're watching it. They learn how to do this by modeling you. And this is what it means, I think to be kind of in this community of faith is that we learn and we model from each other on what it looks like to enact our faith. The other way that we do this is by experience, by creating a safe space for college students to practice their faith to create a safe space for young people to practice their faith. One of the things that I really appreciate about Broadway, one of the things that drew me into Broadway and made me want to come here and work here, was how hospitable Broadway is to young people serving in their service. I remember the first one of my first Sundays here. We had a ten year old serving on the praise team with us. You see, our high schoolers get up here and they'll help with the videos or they'll do communion. We allowed all of the college students to participate today in worship, and that's amazing. That doesn't happen everywhere. There are a lot of places that up here is more performative, and the expectation is that we're going to give you the best worship ever.

But but it's only going to be those who are really, really good because we want you to sit and get rather than experience. But when we create space for college students, for other people to get up here and to practice. Sometimes they mess up whenever you don't have whenever you have a college minister up here leading a sermon instead of Carl, it's not going to be as good as a full time preacher, but you allow us the opportunity to practice, to develop, to become, to develop our confidence. The thing that I think is important to remember is that Jesus calls disciples, not perfect people. When Jesus invited young people to be his disciples, he didn't expect them to be perfect. He expected them to be disciples and disciple. Disciples by very nature are students. They're learners. They're following. They're trying to figure it out. And if you look at the Gospels really closely, you're going to notice that the disciples are terrible students. They're like sea level students at best, right? They're not like the top of the top. Here's one story in particular Luke nine, where Jesus. In this passage, Jesus sends out his disciples for the first time to go out and cast out demons. And they go out and they have some success and everything.

But then you get this main story where it says, the next day, when they came down from a mountain, a large crowd met him and a man in the crowd called out, teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is only my. He is my only child. A spirit seized him and he suddenly screams, and he threw himself into convulsions, so that he foamed at the mouth. And I scarcely ever leave him, and it's destroying him. And then he says, I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not. And Jesus criticizes them for their lack of faith and goes into this. But when you read stories like this, like the disciples have been given the gift to drive out demons and then they often fail. It's actually hilarious how often the disciples fail at doing what they're supposed to do. I mean, Peter standing in a garden and some guy walks up to him. Jesus has just been preaching this whole sermon on the Mount about loving peacemakers all this. And Peter whips out a sword and cuts a guy's ear off. I mean, they are their failures when it comes to following it, but eventually they get it. Eventually they figure it out. But Jesus doesn't call them, expecting them to know what the kingdom of God is, expecting them to be perfect speakers or perfect song leaders or whatever.

Instead, he invites them to learn with him. When we provide experiences, a safe space that allow young people to practice their faith, it helps them develop confidence in approaching God. And that's what we're talking about. Whenever I sit down and I talked with that girl for two hours about what do we mean by connecting with God, she had a lot of ideas and I had a lot of ideas. But the conversation, the questioning, the ability to practice, to have a dialogue open about what do we mean when we gather together as church? That's what's formative. And so if we want to help young people stay connected to the faith, we don't just say to them, stay connected to the faith. We don't just look at them and say, you need to go to church. That's not what we do. Instead, we help them develop ownership of the church because they are members of the church just as much as you and I are. They're not the future of the church. They're the church now. And so I encourage you, as our worship team comes back up on stage, I encourage you to think about your confidence level through the grace of Jesus. All of us, young and old, have been invited to approach the throne of grace with confidence. Not because we're perfect people, but because we're disciples of Jesus Christ.