Armed with Truth

Even though my children are not teens or college bound today, I pray that I send them to camps like this. -Sandra.
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By Chuck Colson
Summit Ministries Worldview Camps

A few nights ago a colleague of mine called her son, who was away at college in Chicago—and got no answer. She called twice more that evening, and the same thing happened. Very frustrating.
But then her son finally called back. “Sorry Mom,” he said. “My roommates and I were holding our weekly Bible Study for non-believers.”

What Christian parent wouldn’t love to hear that? This young man was not only a strong believer—he was helping non-believers understand how the Bible stood up to non-biblical philosophies.
This kind of worldview understanding doesn’t happen by accident. Young people have to be trained to recognize when they’re being fed false worldviews by filmmakers, the media, and especially college professors.

And if kids don’t receive this Christian worldview training? The statistics tell a chilling story. Thirty to 50 percent of young Christians abandon their faith by the time they graduate from college.
George Barna recently conducted a survey in which young adult Christians were asked questions relating to their fundamental beliefs. The answers the respondents gave revealed if they approached life from a biblical or a non-biblical perspective.
Incredibly, less than one-half of one percent of these young adults answered in a way consistent with a biblical worldview. In fact, according to the survey, less than 20 percent of self-professed born again Christian adults of all ages even had a biblical worldview.

So where can kids go to get worldview training? We can take them to Sunday school, of course. And many parents send their kids to good Christian schools. But while these do a good job of teaching kids the doctrines of the faith, they often neglect worldview training.
That’s why you ought to consider sending your teenager to a Summit Ministries worldview conference this summer. Summit will give high school and college students a two-week crash course in worldview analysis. They’ll learn about the major worldviews battling Christianity for their hearts and minds—worldviews like Secular Humanism, Marxism, Postmodernism, and Islam.

Students will learn how these worldviews have arrived on the college campus and in the culture, and how the Bible differs from these false philosophies. They will also study the big cultural questions—such as God’s design for marriage, abortion, and biotechnology issues—and how to respond from a biblical worldview. The idea is to teach kids to place these battles in the larger context of the war of worldviews rather than thinking about them on an issue-by-issue basis.
With this kind of training, they will be able to walk into any college classroom and know how to defend their faith no matter what the professor throws at them. They will know how to make the case that only the biblical worldview fits the structure of reality and enables them to live in harmony with that reality.

Worldview training camps are also available for younger teens. Camps like these, run by worldview specialists, can help your child learn Christian worldview lessons so well that—like my colleague’s son—he can become a well-armed and confident ambassador of Truth to his professors and fellow students.

And what Christian parent wouldn’t love to see that?