This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally airing on September 26, 2022.  To listen to the program, please click HERE.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Well, you don’t need to be a sociologist or an expert in cultural concerns to know that the world that we live in has enormous problems. Living in and growing up in the world today is daunting. And things that our children and grandchildren are facing is beyond our imagination. And we must be honest, the cause of Christ and the gospel seems like it’s not making the impact that we would hope it would have.

Only one out of five young people attend church today. A large portion identify themselves as atheist. Suicide is a record high for that generation, and George Barna tells us that 74% of today’s young people believe truth is both subjective and situational. And even more discouraging is that if a parent, after you have diligently raised your kid, given them biblical training, send them to Christian school, kept them involved in church, modeled Christ in your home, you send them off to college, and after that, they may get train wrecked.

Many believing young people experience spiritual confusion and compromise during that first year of college, and sadly, it’s even happening in some Christian colleges today.

I’m Jamie Mitchell, the director of Church Culture, and we’re here at Stand in the Gap Today. And today we’re going to consider Christian higher education and try to gain some understanding on what is happening in the halls of academia.

And to help in our discussion, I’ve tapped two friends who have given their lives to Christian education, both who have led Christian colleges. Dr. Peter Teague is the president emeritus of Lancaster Bible College & Graduate School. He served as its president from 1998 to 2020. And Peter has been a mentor and coach to many college presidents and has watched Christian education develop these last 50 years.

And also with us, hopefully, is Dr. Todd Williams, president of Cairn University, my alma mater. And Todd took the helm of Cairn in 2008 after serving as its provost. He has led the school through a myriad of changes, and like Peter, has served in various educational settings throughout his career. Gentlemen, what a joy to have both of you join us today.

Peter Teague:                   Thank you, Jamie. It’s a delight to be with you on this broadcast. I have so many pastors telling me on a regular basis how you are helping them dealing with difficult subjects that have to be addressed and you are addressing them. So we are forever grateful for you and Sam and your ministry and leadership.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Todd, are you there?

Todd Williams:                  I’m here. And I would echo that, Jamie. I really appreciate the opportunity. I do think this is a critical issue for not just students but their parents and families as well as their pastors and church leaders. So I really want to thank you for giving this issue the time that I think it needs.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Well, I’m just thrilled to have you guys with us today. Now, I don’t want to assume that our listeners understand the academic world or even the idea of Christian Colleges. Peter, why don’t you start things off. When we say a school is a Christian college, in essence, what are we talking about?

Peter Teague:                   Well, first of all, it’s an institution of higher education offering accredited degrees, often a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, a doctoral degree, and is dedicated to the integration of Christian faith and learning in the traditional academic fields. A Christian ministry education equips students to have a biblically based mindset, teaching students to think and to live as the Bible tells us to live.

And certainly in Christian higher education today, we are preparing young people for the vocation God has chosen for them. And we do this primarily through the lens of a biblical worldview based on biblical principles. And really, quite frankly, not only is it an academic journey for people, the goal is to produce lovers of Jesus.

Our schools are really firmly anchored in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we offer a depth of intensity of Christian community really teaching a new generation, Jamie, how to be the people of God.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Amen, amen. Todd, like anything, not everything is the same. And there is a distinct difference between Christian colleges and what has historically been called Bible colleges. What’s the difference there?

Todd Williams:                  I think that there’s a pretty diverse array of schools out there, and a lot of parents and students will be thinking about Christian colleges or universities. And a number of those schools that they’ll be looking at are either still considered Bible colleges or have developed from what our Bible college roots.

So about a hundred years ago, a little more than that across the board, evangelicals started what were known as Bible institutes or lay leader training institutes. Our own institution founded in 1913 was a lay leader institute. It was really for people who already had their degrees or their trades. They were simply learning the Bible as a way of augmenting their education and training them to work in church and church-related ministries.

And then that developed into vocational ministry schools, what we think of typically as Bible colleges. But most of the Bible colleges that came through that movement have added degree programs outside of Christian ministry, outside of vocational ministry or parachurch ministry.

And so there are Christian colleges today that used to be Bible colleges strictly or are still consider themselves Bible colleges now. The difference would be primarily, I think one, the vocational aspect, although a number of Christian colleges have ministry degrees. I think the big distinction is how much biblical and theological study is a part of the curriculum. While there are still sort of historically Bible colleges that are just doing Bible and theological training for people in vocational ministry or parachurch ministry, most of them have added liberal arts and other professional degrees to their array of programs.

I think the difference is that in schools like ours and Lancaster Bible where Peter was, there is still a heavy component of biblical and theological study to every student’s curriculum, whether they’re a business major or pre-med major or communications major. Everybody’s still studying Bible and theology. Where in some of the more traditional Christian liberal arts schools, there might only be two courses or three courses in Christian studies than Bible. Most of us that are part of the association for biblical higher education are doing upwards of 30 hours, so upwards of 10 classes per student as part of their core.

Jamie Mitchell:                 And there’s something that both of you have alluded to as we come to the end of this first segment, and that is this whole idea that we strongly talk about here on Stand in the Gap. And that is a biblical world view. Both at Cairn and Lancaster Bible College and many others, there is a commitment to take the word of God and weave it into all thinking, into all disciplines and living that biblical principle out in all your vocation.

When we come back, we’re going to start to talk about some of the challenges facing colleges, especially Christian colleges today, in light of the very hostile culture that we find ourselves in. Come back and join us for the second segment of Stand in the Gap.

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Well, we’re talking about the state of Christian colleges with Dr. Peter Teague and Dr. Todd Williams, both men I know personally, respect, love, and appreciate, and we’ve said that the decision to send your child off to college, even Christian colleges, could be devastating to their spiritual lives. And there’s a lot of reasons for that.

However, one of the issues that we need to consider is that colleges, especially Christian colleges, are facing real challenges today. Todd, as a present president of a university and having a good handle on the landscape of the academic world, what are our few major challenges that Christian colleges are facing today?

Todd Williams:                  Yeah, I think that when you think about the challenges that are facing Christian colleges, a number of them are the same challenges facing every college. You have a problem with rising costs and a diminishing demographic group, a decline in the number of high school graduates looking for college. You have cultural pressures as to whether or not a college degree and a college education is worth the time and money that will be spent on it.

But I think when you’re talking about specifically Christian colleges, while we’re dealing with those realities, there are three or four challenges and they’re internal and external. There are issues related to the cultural and political issues that are going on around us and the pressures that are on young people and people in churches to acquiesce to a secular way of thinking.

And if that’s the case, then you start thinking, “Well, if I’m going to acquiesce in my personal life to secular thinking on a number of issues, then why would I bother looking at a distinctly Christian college where the Bible and theology are taken seriously and where the biblical world view that you talked about is such a central part of what’s going on?”

So one of the challenges we’re facing is whether or not the church will still have a demand for these things, whether people will hold the line on biblical authority and the centrality of the gospel and still desire to give their students and students to study in a way that is distinctly and intentionally Christian.

So that’s one issue. I think another issue will be sort of how we navigate some of the challenges related to our being distinctly Christian while we’re part of a larger academic community. And I’ve told people many times, if you find yourself in an academic setting that claims to be Christian and you get a whiff that they are in any way placing the acceptance of their secular counterparts as a high priority, you should run the other way because you’re going to get influenced by that secular take on academic work.

And I think those are two things that really stand out to me along with the cost issue and all of those issues. Will the church keep desiring to send their kids to a place where they’re going to get a distinctly Christian education? The colleges and university is doing a great job preparing them for the marketplace. The question is, will the church be the church?

Jamie Mitchell:                 Amen. Peter, as a newly retired president, you must have seen some of these difficulties coming your way when you were leading Lancaster Bible College. These are real challenges, but how does it affect the students’ education?

Peter Teague:                   Well, I think the greatest challenge is maintaining mission integrity. So today’s young people have got to see in adults, professors, role models, parents, pastors, youth leaders, men and women who have clear hearts and clean hands who not only read the Word of God, but allow the Word of God to affect them, affect their life, their decisions. They affect them in the classroom.

And today, we are seeing we have a cultural convulsion. Everything has been turned on its head. White is now black. Black is white, wrong is right, right is wrong. We’re celebrating sin quite frankly. And so more and more of our young people today are coming to us confused. Quite frankly, their families have let them down, their churches have let them down. Certainly, society is sending confusing messages.

So perhaps like never before, we see students coming who are filled with despair and anger issues and hurt and apathy. They feel alienated. Really, they are very plugged in but they’re very lonely. They just don’t have close, close friends. And I think they’re weary of living in a world where there’s hypocrisy presented every single day. It contributes to their low self-esteem.

They come to us oftentimes with low study skills and their social skills are lacking. So I think the societal changes that we are seeing all around us have affected the hearts and the minds of young people who are coming to our institutions of higher education. And we just have a tremendous opportunity to be life on life with this generation and to simply show them the Word of God works. If we live our lives according to biblical principles, He will bless us, He will honor us, and it will be a life of fulfillment.

So we offset the challenges by living in the presence of the Lord, in the presence of our students’ life on life on our campuses today, Jamie.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Yeah, what a challenge, Peter, when these students are coming and they are where you thought they’d be really prepared to receive some of the greater truths in the higher education, and you’re almost starting from square one. Todd, I know that you have personally at Cairn face some real difficult challenges, especially in the area of accreditation and some of the secular agencies and their expectations. I think our audience needs to understand how this conflict of biblical worldview is affecting colleges. Can you just comment on this and what Christian colleges are facing in some of these areas?

Todd Williams:                  Yeah, I think we all in higher education deal with the reality of accreditation and for us in Christian higher education interacting with a number of agencies that don’t share our specific worldview commitments. And I think that those are exacerbated right now. I think in the culture that we live in, I think as you mentioned earlier, this approach to truth which is firmly relativistic, there is no such thing as outside objective knowable truth, which undermines the idea of biblical authority.

Those things, we don’t expect secular agencies and accrediting bodies to hold. Those are unique to us. What we do want to do is preserve the fact that as Christian higher education institutions in the United States where the constitution guarantees religious liberty, that we’re free to hold those. And I think there will be times, and I think the times will increase when those kinds of agencies and bodies begin to put pressure on us, particularly as we watch some of the social and cultural issues around human sexuality and other things.

There’s a lot of pressure on us to acquiesce on our biblical commitments so that we can maintain good standing with those agencies that we interact with. What we faced at Cairn, particularly with the accrediting body on social work, is not unique to Cairn. They didn’t come after us. We just simply made the decision that this relationship is no longer tenable. They basically have a set of expectations and standards that are, in our view, not tenable for us as an institution committed to biblical education.

And so we ended up eliminating a program and severing that relationship as voluntary. We have the right to do that. But I think that kind of pressure is going to come more and more as we continue to take up our place as Christian colleges and universities within the broader secular academy. And I think for all of us, we just have to be willing to ask ourselves where are the lines and where will we draw them and what will we say?

And I think we can dance with our secular accrediting agencies and tell them this is who we are and this is what we do. And most of them respect that. But there are times when the pressure will come, particularly I think on some of these, what the secular society believes are social and cultural issues but for us are moral and biblical issues, where we just have to be willing to be true to who we are.

And I think that institutions are going to have to navigate those waters in a new way. I think the challenges are going to be greater going forward.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Well, you know what? I think I’ve talked to both of you individually at different times, and I think we’ve had the same conversation and that is when Christian colleges want to take a stand for biblical truth and they hold the line and things like secular agencies that were giving accreditation or validating certain programs, withdraw a Christian parent and Christian supporters now have to make a choice.

Am I willing to send to my kid to a Christian college? And they may not get certain accreditations or they may not get certain things, but that’s the school I want to go to and that’s the school I want to support. And where it really comes down is even things like when funding is pulled from schools. And that’s a challenge because of our Christian beliefs. The church is now going to have to step up and say, “Man, do we really believe in Christian education enough to open up our wallets?”

I know, Todd, you and I have had that conversation about is the church really going to say, “Hey, I’m willing to get behind.” Speak to that just for a minute or so.

Todd Williams:                  Absolutely. And I think the church has a good record of doing that. I mean, from the very beginning, we just keep doing what we do. There’s only one direction for the Christian to walk and that’s forward. And so when we encounter those kinds of challenges, we navigate them. We try to be as cunning as serpents and gentle as doves. We try to bring wisdom to bear on it and navigate those kinds of thorny situations wisely. But when the line is drawn, we hold to our commitments and we expect that the church will rally. And I’ve been encouraged actually at the kinds of encouragement we’ve received on that.

And I do think that that’s what we do as Christians. We keep on going and we shouldn’t let the threat of funding or other things deter us. We have to find a way to keep doing what we’re doing because our missions, for those of us that are committed Christian colleges, our missions are distinctly Christian, distinctly biblical, and we believe it’s a service to the church and that it’s worth supporting.

So I think people will, but it will be a test. You have to get behind it. And then we have to deliver it. We have to be worthy to get behind. And I think that’s our charge.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Yeah. Look, Christian colleges are facing challenges. The Christian community, we have a responsibility. If we want these distinct institutions, we have to support them. It seems like the world is bearing down on anything Christian and any entity that attempts to live out a biblical worldview is going to be attacked.

When we get back, I want to talk about the changes in education and the way Christian academic institutions are responding without losing their soul. Come back and join us for Stand in the Gap Today.

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Jamie Mitchell:                 We are discussing Christian higher education with two leaders in the Christian college world, Peter Teague and Todd Williams. And obviously, there are a number of Christian colleges that would provide a wonderful, complete competent biblical education experience for your young people. Peter, how can they find out about LBC?

Peter Teague:                   Our website is lbc.edu. We are located at 901 Eden Road in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And our telephone number is 717-569-7071.

Jamie Mitchell:                 And Todd, the same way, what and how can they find out about Cairn University?

Todd Williams:                  Sure, same way, Cairn University, cairn.edu is our website. And then they can look for us on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media feed just by looking for Cairn University.

Jamie Mitchell:                 And I want to encourage you, listeners, if you have young people, you have grandchildren looking for colleges, please, please look into these two wonderful schools. Now great, like anything, change is inevitable. You are breathing, you are changing. And although change is necessary, it can be difficult and sometimes well-intentioned change can cause drift and compromise.

Peter, during your time as president, you saw a lot of change in academia. What do you believe are some good changes that have taken place throughout Christian colleges and that they have embraced in the last few years that have improved education and kept Christian colleges competitive?

Peter Teague:                   Well, we certainly have had to work on our model in the time in which we live. And I would say we have, like many other institutions of biblical and higher education, broadened the number of majors we offer. This is a very good thing. And now many of us offer more degrees right up to the doctoral degree.

We have also really made our athletic programs competitive, missional. And many of us have aligned ourselves with regional conferences. So the level of play for the Christian athlete is significantly better than what it was just a few years ago. And if you keep athletics missional-focused, athletics are an important part of developing the whole student.

And obviously, the methods of delivery have changed. This generation, which is a good thing, connects with a digital platform. So more and more of our programs and our degrees are offered online. We now cater far more to the adult learner than the 18 to 23-year-old, coming-of-age student. And this enables us to deliver education literally around the globe.

I think also I have been so pleased that we have been able to be laser focused on our mission. Quite frankly, some of our institutions of higher learning that are Christian explicitly have really come under attack. And rather than to be on the defensive, this has caused us to be on the offensive. What is our mission? Preparing a new generation of young people who are biblically grounded, who can make a difference in church and society.

And this has been good for us as we have marketed far more effectively. We now have a very targeted marketing effort, most of us in higher education. We are looking for the mission mindset student. Quite frankly, it’s costly to recruit students and have them leave in a year or two because they didn’t know what they were getting in for. So we intentionally want the student who comes to us and said, “Boy, God is working in my heart. I am being changed. I am really wondering what God has for my life, and this school offers the program that I’m interested in.”

And this is such a good thing for our institutions. We are also more ethnically diverse. This is the new majority in America. And I am very pleased that our schools and our colleges are really deliberately not only recruiting these students who are ethnically diverse, but then shaping and tailoring the campus experience and majors around them.

And finally, Jamie, there’s a host of them, but I would mention that our colleges are far better equipped to handle the mental health issues that this generation comes to us with. And that’s only in the last five years that we have really been able to significantly provide services in the area of counseling and community enhancement, community relationships for students who are struggling to come in, get adjusted to college life, get on with their academic program, graduate as healthy students and contributors to the church and society.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Excellent. Todd, you’ve gone through a lot of change at Cairn. During your tenure, you became a university, you changed the school’s name, you expanded your graduate offerings. You know the value and pain that comes from change. But looking forward, what changes now as university president who has to look towards the future, what changes do you think in the next few years schools need to really consider and be prepared for?

Todd Williams:                  Yeah, I think there are quite a few of those. I think Peter touched on a number of them. The demographics are going to change over the next 5 to 10 years in dramatic ways. We’re going to need to be able to serve a more diverse population, not just ethnically and racially, but also in terms of generationally who’s looking for college and serving international communities. Those changes that Peter outlined have been taking place are going to need to continue going forward.

But I do think there are some hard decisions that are going to have to be made about the way we manage resources, how we control costs while giving a good value. I think most of us have come to terms with the fact that we’re going to have to be living in a digital age and be thinking about the modality in which we provide an education.

But I do think the business model needs some serious attention. I think there are probably going to be, I would hope rather than more closures, there will be more consolidations and mergers between Christian institutions, more efficiencies realized. That challenge is going to be significant over the years and to come. And I think we’re going to need to stay on top of that.

And I think we need to be careful about debt. That’s another major issue. I think schools that years ago would have … When I was coming up, you heard a lot of this, raise the money. What you can’t raise, you borrow. Build it, they will come. I don’t really think that’s going to be the answer going forward given the context that we’re in. We’re going to need to be more careful, more prudent and more daring in other ways to join forces, to partner together to see more mergers and networks of universities.

And I think too, there will be some issues with regard to our needing to position ourselves on the legal front in ways we haven’t had to before. I think given how divided the country is and how visceral those divisions are and the increasing secularization of things, I think we’re going to need to be thinking about legal challenges and ways we hadn’t thought about before. Those are expensive, they’re very time consuming. And I think we just need to be honest about what’s in front of us while remaining positive that we’ve got great opportunities and great resources and great missions and important work to do, but we really have to lean into those challenges going forward.

Jamie Mitchell:                 I want to ask you both this question. But Todd, if you respond first with the changes, especially cultural changes affecting us, any institution can experience what some would call mission drift or even theological compromise. What do you do and what does Cairn, and we’ll talk about LBC, but what do you do to protect the orthodoxy and the traditions that make up your school’s identity?

Todd Williams:                  Well, there’s a lot that you can do to keep your statements and your foundational documents tight and known. You keep teaching your people, you orient your people, you talk about it often. Our board, as does the LBC board I’m sure, affirms the mission and theological statement of the school every year. All of those things are key.

But I remember the political adage from the Reagan era personnel’s policy. And at the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to the president and the board and the administrators and the faculty and staff consistently holding a line on the mission that we don’t allow ourselves to drift, that we stay committed to it, that we aren’t moved by fear but rather by conviction. That’s really the way that we’re supposed to think as Christians.

And I think the way we protect ourselves from drift is to just be watching. I think that a lot of it happens. If you think about the warning in the book of Hebrews, be careful less you drift away. No one drifts away on purpose, but it takes a whole lot of effort to get back to where you started. And so I think it is being vigilant and diligent on the front end.

So here, I interview every faculty member before they’re hired. Our faculty members are only on a single year contract. We do not have tenure. And a lot of that is just to monitor that we’re staying with regard to orthodox. People move, they change their minds. Especially in our work in Christian higher education, so many of our faculty, as I did, go off to secular universities for their advanced degrees.

And it’s up to the administration and the academic leadership of an institution to monitor when faculty members are moving and to make the changes quickly for the sake of the students and for the sake of the institution, because that kind of drift, that kind of philosophical, theological ideological mission drift is extremely detrimental and you have to be very vigilant. And so you have to be involved and aware of what’s going on and be willing to make the decisions to make changes when necessary.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Peter, I will circle back with you, but what we’re talking about here is not just something that’s happening in schools, it is happening in churches. Churches are drifting. Listen, when we come back for our last segment, I want to tap into these two presidents to speak to parents and give them some advice on helping them with their college bound kids. We’re talking about Christian colleges today on Stand in the Gap.

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Well, this has been the delight today to have two friends, Dr. Todd Williams and Dr. Peter Teague to help us understand the unique elements of the Christian college education from the inside. But I want to take a little shift now and I want to help parents who may be listening or grandparents who are facing college decisions. And Peter, I want to go to you first. Over the years, parents have probably asked you, “Is my child ready for college?” What tips would you share with parents and how to prepare their students to head off to college?

Peter Teague:                   Well, I encourage parents to bring their sons and daughters to the college that they’re interested in, usually the summer of their sophomore year. And there is no substitute for actually visiting the college campus. Virtual tours are good, but they don’t really get at the heart and soul. And when you visit a college campus, you get to know the faculty. And it is critical for a college today to have faculty members who are role models to our sons and to our daughters.

Parents today should be wondering if faculty members know their subject, can communicate their subject, and then can mentor their son or their daughter. I like to say we have to examine what the spiritual climate is of the college or the university. What is Jesus doing in the lives of the students who are on that college campus? And very quickly in a visit, you can see if a campus is united around genuine Christian belief and behavior.

I’m always on guard for admission counselors who are pushing too hard before they get to know our sons and our daughters. And that will help you gauge the depth and the intensity of Christian community. I think it’s wonderful when admissions counselors lead from the question, “What is God doing in your heart?” And after you ask that question of a prospective student, you listen and then you say, “Perhaps this is the college for you and perhaps it isn’t.”

And if I were a parent today, I would want to make sure that a college was filled with faculty members who have the right biblical view on marriage, gender, and life. I would just summarize those three areas and are willing to really invest in my son or in my daughter. So many colleges today, it’s become a machine. It’s a process concerned with the double or the bottom line, how much income. We really have to get back to examining a place where academics are taken seriously. Nurturing is experienced by the faculty and the staff and people are on that campus setting who are genuinely concerned with the hearts and the minds and the souls of our sons and daughters.

Jamie Mitchell:                 Todd, as we began this broadcast, one of my concerns had been sending kids off to school and then something happened to the child spiritually. They have a decline, not an increase. Speaking to parents, how can parents help to guard their kids’ heart spiritually as they release them into the world of academia?

Todd Williams:                  Yeah, I think one of the things as we think about this and having sent our own kids off and watching parents do it for so many years here at the university and knowing what our friends have gone through, it’s a serious concern. You are sort of releasing them. I joke around a lot with parents and tell them, just be ready when they come back after their first year at college, they’re not used to being asked to where they’re going and when they’ll be back. So there’s a big adjustment for parents when a student goes off to college and a big adjustment for students to navigate a new relationship with their parents.

But I think starting out right, as Peter said, getting a sense for the spiritual community you’re sending them into. And I think trying to spend those years in high school, not just talking to the students about maybe their spiritual interest, but actually attempting to make some inquiries into what they believe about truth, what they understand the gospel to be. Attending to our kids’ spiritual lives is absolutely essential prior to sending them off to college so that you can sort of feel good about the fact that you’ve touched all the bases before they get sent out.

It’s not much different from parents when they’re releasing their children to marriage and you’re giving them advice leading up to that and wanting to make sure they understand the sanctity of marriage and the importance of those things and what a vow really is and why we do it this way and all of those issues. Same thing would be true here. We should be talking to our young people, not leaving, and even to their youth leaders and their Christian school teachers and those things, we ought to be talking to students about their spiritual lives but also their Christian minds.

And I think one of the things that I’ve noticed over the years is that students go adrift spiritually at Christian colleges in particular, not because they are not being cared for spiritually, not because we don’t have chapel or we don’t have discipleship programs, but because somewhere in a Christian college, someone weakens a student’s confidence in the authority of the Scripture or that the Bible can be relied upon or that truth can be known.

I have a story when I was the headmaster of K to 12 school, parent sent their student off to a very well-known Christian college and the philosophy prof told the students on the first day, everything you’ve been told about truth in your church and your Christian school is wrong and we’re going to correct that. That should not be happening in our Christian school.

So one of the things parents can do is make sure they’re sending their students to a school that is seriously Christian and not just in name alone, because if you’re going to send them to a place that’s Christian in name alone and going to work to erode their biblical worldview and their Christian faith, you might as well send them to a secular campus where they can be involved in a campus ministry. Because I think the greatest damage done in Christian colleges is from those individuals who would seek to lead the students to a more enlightened position with regard to their Christian mind.

And it’s a real problem. And I think we have to make sure that the kids’ minds are sound and then send them to a school that’s going to going to strengthen that, not weaken it.

Jamie Mitchell:                 As both a pastor and a parent having faced it personally as well as a pastor for years, giving parents direction, I used to say this to them. If they were sending their kids to a Christian college and they saw the faculty’s names and they saw where the faculty went to college, and you would just assume everything was good, don’t assume. Assume nothing. Go to those schools like Peter said. Visit that college. Go and meet some of those faculty members. Talk to them. Ask them questions about how they view the Scriptures and how they’re going to bring a biblical worldview into their class and be interested in your kids’ life. And it makes a huge difference.

Listen, we have our kids for let’s say 18 years. God gives them to us. We’re good stewards of those kids and then we have to launch them. And so we need to do our work at home, parents, and then pick and select the right school.

Men, I just want to thank you. What a joy. This has been an instructive hour and we hope this has informed you, our listening audience, and caused you to think about your child’s future. Our kids, our grandchildren, they’re entrusted to us. We need to be wise in our discerning of their lives and choosing things like their academic world. But most importantly before they head off to college, they need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And so I want to pray for all of our parents, all of our students as we close. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for Peter, and thank you for Todd. Bless Lancaster Bible College. Bless Cairn University. Bless these ministries and other Christian colleges, and we pray for our families as they make decisions concerning their children’s academic future. God, give us great wisdom. By your Holy Spirit, lead us. We pray these things, in Jesus’ name.

Thank you for joining us today until tomorrow. From Sam Rohrer, the entire APN team, thank you for taking this time. We will be back with you in 23 hours for another edition of Stand in the Gap.