Helping the young stick to faith

At first, there didn't seem to be much an 80-something grandmother could do to help her church's college freshmen wrestle with the trials and temptations of their first weeks away at college. After all, she knew very little about Facebook, YouTube, online homework, smartphones or texting, let alone "sexting."

She did, however, know how to write letters. So that is what she did, writing personal letters to each student to let them know that she was praying for them, wishing them the best as they searched for a college church and looking forward to seeing them at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

According to church members, the "students sought her out and rushed to give her hugs and to say, 'Thank you,' whenever they came home," said Kara E. Powell, who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and directs the Fuller Youth Institute.

However, another church member later stressed that the researcher had not heard the whole story. "Instead of writing one letter and that was that, she had actually written a letter to each of the students every week," said Powell.

This was one of the most striking stories that the seminary professor heard while doing follow-up work for the Youth Institute's six-year College Transition Project, which followed 500 Christian young people as they jumped from high school to college.

The goal was to find strategies for parents and religious leaders who wanted to help teens develop a personal faith that would "stick" when tested. The research was released earlier this year in a book entitled "Sticky Faith: Everyday ideas to build lasting faith in your kids," written by Powell and another Fuller colleague, Chap Clark.

The letter-writing grandmother, said Powell, was an example of one major lesson discovered during this process. After years of "segregating" teens off into their own niche, age-specific worship services and programs, there is evidence that young believers also profit from intergenerational contacts, conversations and mentoring projects with senior adults. Young people are also more likely to retain their faith if they helped teach the faith to the very young.

Right up front, the researchers admitted that the young people in this study had higher than average grade-point averages, were more likely to have been raised in unbroken homes and had grown up in churches large enough to employ youth ministers. That was the point.

Nevertheless, some of the results were sobering.

* When studies are combined, it appears that 40 to 50 percent of "churched" young people will abandon their faith -- at least during the college years.

* Only one in seven young people in the Fuller study felt they were ready for the personal, moral challenges of college.

* Events in the first two weeks establish patterns for many college careers, especially those linked to alcohol, sex and involvement in religious activities.

The finding that will inspire, or trouble, many parents, according to Powell and Clark, is that the faith practiced by most young people is rooted in the beliefs, values and choices that they see practiced in their own homes. If young people see their parents praying, it's more likely that they will pray. If they hear their parents weaving faith into the joys and trials of daily life, it's more likely that this behavior will "stick."

It's one thing to talk to children, said Powell. It's something else to find ways to truly communicate -- two-way communication -- with the young about faith, doubt, temptation and forgiveness. Breakthroughs can take place while discussing everything from homework to movies, from a parent's confessions about mistakes in the past to a child's hints about his or her hopes for the future.

"We are not saying that it will help if you lecture to your children about faith," she said. Instead, the goal is for "every parent to be a student of what their children love and, whether its sports or movies or who knows what, to be able to engage their children on that topic. You have to ask, 'What is my child passionate about?' You also have to be honest and let your children know what you're passionate about.

"Then you have to ask how you can bring faith into those conversations so that you can share your faith journeys. There is no way to force this. If it isn't happening naturally, the kids are going to know it."

Vanilla values on the DC mall

The program opened with a homily by President Bush about American values, teamwork, dedication and the National Football League.

It ended with Aretha Franklin singing the National Anthem, with the glare of red rockets reaching the dome of the U.S. Capitol.

Washington Redskins great Joe Theismann reverently called it "a national moment of remembrance," saluting thousands of uniformed military personnel in the crowd. ABC Sports and "New Pepsi Vanilla and Diet Pepsi Vanilla, the Not-So-Vanilla Vanilla" simply called it "NFL Kickoff Live 2003."

This pre-packaged spectacle on the National Mall was business as usual for most American viewers. But it may have taught a lesson to the 7,000-plus pastors, parents and youth ministers who read and passed on one of Walt Mueller's email alerts to punch "record" on their VCRs and use this as a religious education lab.

"This kind of stuff has become so mainstream that we don't even blink," said Mueller, founder of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (www.cpyu.org) in Elizabethtown, Pa. "The whole thing is about mass marketing, of course, but those messages are mixed in there with patriotism, sex, entertainment, sports and everything else. ...

"This was a peek into the American soul. It said, 'This is what we value. This is what we think is acceptable, good and, of course, cool.' "

The show had something for everyone, from the generic rage of tattooed suburban rockers to bluesy power chords by graying superstars who are eligible for the AARP. Football legends hugged military heroes, while TV producers wrapped everything in red, white and blue.

But the reason many tuned in was to see what former Mickey Mouse Club boy toy Britney Spears would do to top her girl-on-girl love fest with Madonna on the recent MTV Video Music Awards. The one-time Southern Baptist babe gave it her best shot, lip-syncing her way through gender-bending "freak dance" moves that mimicked sex with reed-thin female dancers as well as the hunky males.

Washington Post critic Tom Shales was amused, in a tired sort of way: "When they weren't being groped or fondled by her, dancers helped Spears strip her pants off, revealing a bikini-like black bottom. ... They even helped straighten out the little pixie's shorty shorts so that they didn't reveal too much. Or maybe so that they did."

It was a pathetic sight, said Mueller, and many viewers probably laughed. But it's important for adults to see this through the eyes of millions of girls who started watching Spears -- with parental blessings -- when they were nine or 10 years of age. Now they are entering a time of tremendous physical, emotional and spiritual changes.

What did they see on their television screens?

"Twelve- to 14-year-old girls are not going to watch something like this and say, 'Oh, what a cynical attempt to be shocking in the name of commercialism,' " said Mueller. "No, the girls who grew up with Britney -- whether they want to admit it or not -- have to see this and think: 'This is how Britney looks now. This is how she acts now.