5 Things Your College Student Might Be Afraid to Tell You About Their Faith

We hope and pray that our newly minted young adults follow in our footsteps. We think “I’ve tried my best to instill [insert virtue here] in my child.” But there is lingering doubt.

We wonder what their faith will actually look like when they leave the nest.

I once had a conversation with a first year student about church. His mom was clearly very concerned about his church attendance. Every Sunday night they would talk on the phone and every Sunday night, without fail, she would ask, “Did you go to church this week?” He told me that he would kind of hem and haw, but eventually he’d be honest and tell her no. The reasoning he gave was always a little vague. “I slept in,” or “My friends didn’t want to go this week,” or “I was studying this morning.” She didn’t press but also always made sure to remind him how important it was to attend church. 

He confessed to me a couple of things: First, he was not ready to visit churches let alone commit to one. He was in his first semester, feeling overwhelmed, and by the time the weekend rolled around, he felt like he needed space to get his footing. And second, he didn’t think he could tell his mom that full truth without it, in his words, “turning into a thing.” 

So, what are some things happening in a college students’ faith journey? And what might they feel a little nervous to tell you about?

1) I want to make my faith my own.

The faith your student grew up with was shaped by your family, church, and community. Now, they want to figure out what they believe for themselves and how faith and their identity intersect. This isn’t a rejection of your care and upbringing, but it can be a challenging conversation to have when your young adult is departing from the faith of their youth in significant ways.

2) Church attendance is complicated.

Going to church may not feel as simple for your young adult as it once did, especially if they are trying to understand their faith apart from their upbringing. They might be looking for a different kind of church, struggling to find a place where they belong, or wondering whether attending regularly is important to them right now. Church often heads to the backburner in the first year of college, which is totally normal, but hard to talk about with parents.

3) I’m having significant doubts about the faith of my childhood.

Your emerging adult may be wrestling with big questions about Jesus, the Bible, or beliefs they once accepted without much thought. Some of these questions may feel unsettling, especially if they've been taught that doubt is dangerous or that faithful Christians shouldn't question what they believe. (By the way, even if you never taught them this, that messaging likely seeped in, explicitly or implicitly, from elsewhere). They may not know where their questions will lead, but they know they can't simply ignore them. … And it can feel hard to talk about.

4) I don’t know how to engage with spiritual life on campus.

College offers new opportunities for your student to explore faith, but it can be difficult to know where to start or which communities and practices might be right for them. Christian campuses tend to offer so much that students easily feel overwhelmed. Public schools often have a diversity of disconnected ministries that can be difficult to parse out. They may want to grow spiritually but need help figuring out what that could look like in this new season of life.

5) I need time and space to figure this stuff out.

Your student may feel pressure from family, friends, or their church to have answers about what they believe and how they want to practice their faith. But they're still learning, asking questions, and making sense of experiences that are new to them. They need room to explore honestly, without feeling like every question or change in belief has to be resolved immediately.

So, what did I tell our church-wary student? Honestly, we focused more on his relationship with his mom than we did on his church attendance. Experience has taught me that church attendance will often work itself out. Students who grew up connected to a faith community and who don’t express outright rejection often find their way back to one in some form or another — just not always in the timing parents would like!

But what to do about those Sunday night phone calls?

First, I tried to help him reframe what he saw as good old fashioned parental nagging (sorry, mom) as genuine concern and care for his spiritual wellbeing. Even thinking about that ever-present, “Did you go to church this week?” question differently was helpful for him. Then we talked about ways he could begin to open up about the real reasons church was feeling hard in this season. It turns out, once he thought through those reasons, it didn’t feel so scary to tell his mom he was feeling overwhelmed. Finally, we talked about what participating in a faith community could look like in the future. He told me he was optimistic about finding a church but probably not until the spring semester. And I encouraged him to have an open, honest conversation with his mom about that.

Parents, pastors, and friends of Emerge, we pray you engage in meaningful conversation with the young adults in your lives this month and invite those young adults to move toward honesty and openness, even when it’s challenging!