Choosing A College

        This is my Lord's Day offering.


         My son is 27 years old now. He graduated from high school in 2004 and it was in his junior year that he, I should say we, started getting serious about choosing a college. I have had friends tell me that they gave their son or daughter complete freedom in choosing the school they would go to. I was a little bit different. To begin with I enrolled in a masters degree program in Higher Education in no small part to learn more about our colleges and universities and their history in order to have a more valuable input in helping our son choose a school. I was going to learn all that I could to give him the best advice that I could before he would make that very important decision.
         I had all the reference books and used them to research everything about the schools and then we started on the campus visits. I'll just write about one here. There is a prestigious college down south that is known to be very conservative. So we got in the car and travelled. My son wasn't exactly thrilled with this visit for it is an all all-boys school. So it wasn't a good start and then I got a speeding ticket about two miles from the campus. Reaching that campus after a long tedious drive, a young man took us on a tour and the first stop we made was the dormitories. I causally asked him what the policy was for girls in the room, fully expecting him to say something like...'Oh girls are not allowed in the rooms." He answered me with "Three days."  Three days...hmmm...what does that mean? He answered my thought..."Girls are only allowed to stay for three days....anything more than that would be considered a residence!" My son and I looked at each other. That was the end of that but we finished the tour anyway and came home visiting two other schools on the way. We were fortunate that at the end of this college search we both loved the same school. He matriculated there and graduated two years before his future wife.
         But this post isn't a trip down memory lane for there is a message that I'd like to give here, primarily to the parent, on searching for a college for their son or daughter.  What are the churches like near the college being considered? What good would it be to have four years at even a solid educational institution without a Christ preaching pulpit for your son or daughter to sit before every Lord's Day? Four years is a long time to go without a good church, particularly in what is often the radically secularized environment of higher education. Is it any wonder that statistics show that many young people fall away from faith in college? There will indeed be churches near every college and university but finding one that consistently preaches Christ therefore consistently preaches His cross is very hard and often impossible to do!
         And to the student reading this... the nearness of the church, the friendliness of the congregation, the music, the comfort....what good are any of these things if Christ and His cross are not preached? What good is the prestige of the diploma if you have lost even the discernment you came to college with? What good are friends next to you in the pew if all of you become spiritually malnourished due to a touchy-feely church where preaching our Savior's blood shed on Calvary is considered too morbid for church growth? The key to your education begins on the Lord's Day! Seek a pastor who consistently preaches Christ and run to that worship, then trust Christ to protect you and strengthen you on the other six days and provide you with the discernment necessary to navigate the shoals that are all around the college student of today and to keep faith while a tempest of monumental proportions is rocking our ship of state and wreaking havoc on a populace with little sailing experience and less desire to learn.