Overcoming 'Culture Shock' through Campus Ministry

Students entering their first year of college away from home experience a “culture shock” that leads many to begin drinking, partying, and engaging in sexual relations, according to ministry analysts.

Students entering their first year of college away from home experience a “culture shock” that leads many to begin drinking, partying, and engaging in sexual relations, according to ministry analysts.

This is what Ministry Edge founder Jeff Schadt discovered while working to prepare high schoolers to make the transition to the college campus with their faith intact. After realizing that record numbers of college students were losing their faith – up to 96 percent according to researchers – Schadt founded Ministry Edge last November to deflect this problem.

Through Schadt’s ministry, high school students and their families are educated directly from a college student's vantage point.

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Currently, Schadt is training 20 college students to speak at local church youth groups across Arizona with the message that they ought to connect to a campus ministry should they desire to retain their faith.

"I want them to say no to drugs, camping, and drinking,” Schadt said, noting that “They're going to feel like they're in prison and in isolation.”

However, Schadt said, “If they don't plug in to a Christian ministry, the needs they're going to have are going to sink their faith."

The “culture shock” that confronts all incoming freshman, Schadt said, becomes a challenge for the campus ministry - although for mission agencies, “culture shock” helps missionaries interact with the culture every day even if they don’t speak the language.

The term, "culture shock" was coined in the early part of the 1900s when social scientists found that the body yields a physiological response to a new environment - a response that opens the person to adopt the second culture.

"When students leave their parents, friends, and church, and hit the campus without any relationships in place, their bodies are screaming, 'I need love and acceptance.' In that rush to get their needs met, they can often bond to things that would be very counter to their original culture," he explained.

"What will it be like when those needs aren't being met? We're throwing our kids into an incredible amount of stress," he added.

Dr. John Townsend, a Christian psychologist, agrees that, "Culture shock certainly is a problem for youth.”

“But it doesn't have to be," he added. Townsend attributes culture shock to the failure of the family for not preparing the student enough.

"Culture shock occurs when a young person doesn't have the necessary tools to handle the culture around him or her, so that they're not ready for the world," he said.

"I think it's a symptom of the lack of preparedness of the family," he added.

Townsend stated that many students have managed to avoid culture shock, and those students who do so successfully can be the "salt and light of the world.”

For example, two students who were not Christian had upperclassmen, Christian roommates. In their first semester, both students found their faith in God, and took active roles in a campus ministry, said Schadt.

If successful, Ministry Edge plans to implement this model in every state. Planning for a nation-scale campaign is underway as denominational and ministry executive leaders will decide on when to hold their first meeting.