Every Student Sent
Whether retired, semi-retired, or on your way, as a member of the Retirement Reformation movement, you know that this season of your life can bring your greatest impact for the Kingdom of God.
We’d like to introduce you to a way you can have a tremendous impact on young people and the nation as well as churches and families through a powerful national movement.
For decades, our nation has watched around 70% of college-bound teens who have been attending church youth groups become blindsided when they land on the university campus and fall away from any form of Christian fellowship! Barna studies show that around a third of these used to return to their faith after they start having children, but now culture is preventing even these from coming back.
What is the reason for this? Many of these students have been taught valuable lessons of Worldview and Apologetics, but they still fall away. The key is that young people were never designed to enter something like a university culture alone! A Navigators study revealed that the friends that a student makes during the first 72 hours on campus, typically steer their entire faith trajectory.
What is the answer? The good news is that Every Student Sent has assembled a national coalition of denominations, churches, college ministries, and Christian high schools with a proven solution to remedy this situation once and for all. Now when students consider their future college anywhere in the nation, they can get to know a team of incoming Christian friends and ministry-trained leaders they get to know many months in advance. This allows them to land on campus with friends, roommates, and study partners, and a plan to work together and reach their dorms for Jesus. Every Student Sent has seen dorm awakenings because, during the first weeks on campus, the new freshmen are more open to new things, new friends, and the Gospel than at any time in their lives. Entire churches have gone from losing 70% of students to losing nearly none!
The larger goal: The coalition is committed to making it normal in America that no parent sends their student to college alone. The awareness is spread nationally and city by city. As the success already seen in churches is scaled, we can expect to have double the number of Christian freshmen who survive, thrive, and multiply. When they graduate 4 years later, more than double the number of Kingdom-minded college grads will enter the workplace to impact the culture in our cities.
Chelsea saw many of her older friends fall away from their faith in college. She researched and was determined to not do the same. Chelsea was able to find the Navigators at the University of Nebraska and meet the leaders and other students involved in the ministry over the summer. On her first night on campus, four girls in her dorm invited Chelsea and her Christian friend to a party. Chelsea convinced them all to go to a Navigators hangout instead. Today, a couple of years later, all six are still in the Navigators and are strongly walking with Christ!
What can retirees do to help? Every Student Sent has content that affords many ways you can help your church or community know about this resource. Content includes training on evangelism, worldview, apologetics, finding the right life purpose and college major, ways to minimize college debt, and help in the transition from college to the marketplace. Making your church aware is a great start. You could also be the spark that brings awareness to your entire city as part of the city movement strategy. You may have professional experience that you would like to apply to this nation-changing movement. You can talk with Every Student Sent about what is the most fitting way for you to apply your talents. There are even ways you can work with our partners related to helping students identify their purpose, career, and major that can tie to some modest income.
Here are specific ways that you can help, which can be done in-person or remotely and nationally :
Introduce Every Student Sent to:
Pastors and Youth Leaders in your city
Highschools and Homeschools
Ministries and Foundations
Business Leaders with a passion for youth
Radio and TV stations
Retirees who could volunteer
Volunteer:
Mentor students re: faith or career
Arrange and conduct phone and Zoom calls
Marking, communication, or IT expertise
Ministry expertise for: Students/ Pastors/ Parents
Help facilitate a city movement
Public speaking or recording content
Next steps to learn more:
Go to Every Student Sent – Retirement and reach out to them. They would be glad to share with you ways you could have fulfilling involvement that matches your gifts and time so that more students will become the needed leaders for our nation. The harvest is plentiful. This is the time to stop losing laborers and help them multiply the Gospel!
See an interview with John Decker, an Every Student Sent leader here