back to school tips

“I can’t hold on much longer,” I admitted, trying not to look down. 

Hiking with a friend had seemed like a great idea until we became stranded on a cliff. While my friend managed to pass the danger zone, I remained stuck with no further footholds—and time running out.

“Don’t you have a rope in your backpack?” my friend asked.

Right! I fished out the cord and tossed one end to my friend, who had a firmer grip on the cliff. Together, we worked our way to safety.

I share the rest of this story in my book for Christian students, Prepare to Thrive, explaining how, like I needed a rope connected to a grounded friend, Christian students need connections with others who are securely gripping the Rock, Jesus. A support system of these connections makes up a student’s interpersonal foundations—one of three foundations Christians need to keep their faith strong at college. (You can learn about the other two in my previous articles. Part 2) 

Students I’ve met around the world weave their interpersonal foundations from communities including campus ministries, biblical churches, and godly mentors. Let’s look at practical tips for getting involved with each.

Campus Ministry

The benefits of joining a campus ministry can include friendship, encouragement, prayer support, accountability, opportunities to serve, and—importantly—regular reminders that you’re not alone in your biblical beliefs. However, some students I’ve spoken with said they couldn’t find solid Christian groups. The leaders didn’t teach the Bible, or the members didn’t act like they knew Jesus. 

Joining a group with compromised doctrines or lifestyles can do your spirit more harm than good. To recognize an unhealthy group, ask:

• Are there doctrinal issues within the leadership? 
• How will spending time with this group impact my spiritual health? 
• Will these relationships more likely lead me closer to God or closer to compromise? 

Your personal boundaries will be far easier to overstep if professing Christians around you overstep them too. The point of steering clear of such relationships isn’t to be self-righteous, but to guard your heart and relationship with God (1 Corinthians 5:9-11). 

Local Church

As awesome as campus ministries can be, peer groups alone aren’t enough. Students also need connections with the wider Body of Christ. That’s where the local church comes in. As a retired professor once told me, “Not attending church is the biggest mistake students make.”

Research suggests that students who move away to college are most likely to stay plugged into church if they find a new home church within two months. So, it’s essential to find a solid church early. What should students look for in a church? The most important must-have is solid biblical teaching. Ask, “Does this church believe, teach, and live out God’s Word?” 

Older Mentors

Churches are prime places to connect with potential mentors. A mentor is simply anyone willing to personally share valuable wisdom, knowledge, and insights to benefit someone less experienced. From what I’ve seen, students can benefit from at least three types of mentors:

• Sages—seasoned individuals you might meet for regular discipleship. 
• Allies—older Christians who offer informal support, whether by inviting you for lunch, chatting with you after church, or praying for your exams. 
• Responders—people who you may not see often, but who are always available to answer questions or offer advice. 

What are some practical ways to find mentors? Here are seven ideas:

1. Ask God to connect you with the right people. 
2. Look for trusted Christians who you want to be like and ask if they’d be willing to meet. 
3. Consistently attend a biblical, intergenerational church. 
4. Intentionally get to know older adults who walk closely with God. 
5. Find ways to serve or volunteer alongside mature Christians. 
6. Be open to asking older Christians for prayer.
7. Remember that books and media work like mentors too. Through (auto)biographies especially, we can be mentored by extraordinary men and women of God throughout history! On the flip side, beware of negative media influences, because we become like those we spend time with.

Solidly Connected

Ultimately, connecting with godly mentors, biblical churches, and campus ministries are three ways to build interpersonal foundations for surviving university. And the number one trait to seek in all three community types is a commitment to God’s word. By surrounding ourselves with others who seek to learn, understand, and follow Scripture—and by being such people ourselves—we can stay grounded for life on the Rock. 

There’s much more to say—enough to fill a book! Find practical tips for building strong spiritual, intellectual, and interpersonal foundations in the book, Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students. 

Patricia Engler is a Christian apologetics speaker, writer, and Youth Outreach Coordinator for Answers in Genesis. After 12 years of homeschool and a B.Sc. degree, she backpacked 360°around the world documenting how Christian students keep their faith at university. The top takeaways from this research are available in Patricia’s book, Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students. You can follow her stories and get connected through Facebook, Instagram, and AnswersinGenesis.org. 

Picture this: you’re sitting in class when the lecturer says something that contradicts Scripture—something you’ve never heard before. As everyone else nods and takes notes, you notice your heart is beating faster. What if you’re wrong about your biblical beliefs?

This scenario isn’t just imaginary. It’s what I’ve experienced firsthand as a Christian student at secular college. But we don’t only hear unbiblical messages in classrooms. Whether online, in conversations, or even at church, persuasive—but unbiblical—messages may pop up anywhere. How can we respond?

Enter, Intellectual Foundations

The answer lies in having what I’d call strong intellectual foundations—one of three personal foundations Christian students need to keep their faith strong at college, as my last article explained. 

Building intellectual foundations involves learning some basic apologetics. As the field of study which looks at why Christianity makes rational sense, apologetics helps us answer questions like, “How do we know the Bible is true? Does science contradict Scripture? How does Christianity compare to other beliefs?” (A great place to dig into these topics is AnswersinGenesis.org.) 

But no matter how many apologetics answers we learn, we’re always bound to have new questions. So, we must also be able to think like apologists—to process new faith-challenging messages and arrive at biblical, logical answers ourselves. That’s where the other side of intellectual foundations comes in: biblical critical thinking skills. 

Critical thinking is all about evaluating messages to see if they’re worth believing. To give you a head start building strong intellectual foundations, let me share the critical thinking system that helped me process new messages in college. 

How I Learned to Think About ‘Facts’ That Challenged My Faith:

First, when I heard information that seemed to contradict my beliefs, I resolved not to panic. I knew God’s word is true; therefore, any message that conflicts with Scripture must be a lie. And every lie must ultimately fall apart.

With that in mind, I’d put faith-challenging information in quotation marks when writing notes in class. This reminded me that the information was just my professor’s explanation—not an absolute fact. Next, I’d flip to the back of my notebook and write down my questions about the information. This record of my questions let me follow up on finding answers later without feeling like a weight of vague uncertainties was accumulating against my beliefs.

When I had the chance, I would then filter the information through a series of mental checkpoints I call the Seven Checks of Critical Thinking:

Check Scripture: What does the Bible have to say about this topic?

Check the challenge: Does this message contradict clear teaching from Scripture?

Check the source: Who’s sharing this message? What is the source’s credibility and worldview? How did they arrive at their information? Is the information being reported accurately?

Check the definitions: How are keywords being defined? Do their meanings change?

Check for propaganda: Why does this message sound true? Is it trying to persuade by appealing to logic, or to something else like emotion, appearances, or humans’ desire for acceptance?

Check the interpretations: Which parts of this message are facts we can observe in the present, and which parts are assumptions, interpretations, or speculations about the past? What’s another way to explain the same observations from a biblical perspective?

Check the logic: Are there any other errors in reasoning that should make me think twice before believing this message?

This seven-step framework helped me respond biblically to almost all the faith-challenging information I encountered in college. But sometimes, I still had unresolved questions. That’s when I’d have to give God my remaining questions, to remember that He held the answer, and to trust Him even if He never revealed that answer to me.

Unanswered questions can be fiendish faith destroyers. But faith crises don’t start when Christians begin asking questions. They start when we give up on finding answers. And three great places to find answers include Scripture, solid apologetics resources, and godly mentors. (More on that next time!)

Thinking Biblically

With these tools for evaluating new information, and with apologetics knowledge for answering common questions, you’ll be well set to build strong intellectual foundations. Then you’ll be prepared to defend your hope in Christ with gentleness (1 Peter 3:15) whenever you hear new a faith-challenging message—in college and beyond.  

There’s much more to say—enough to fill a book! Find practical tips for building strong spiritual, intellectual, and interpersonal foundations in the book, Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students. 

Patricia Engler is a Christian apologetics speaker, writer, and Youth Outreach Coordinator for Answers in Genesis. After 12 years of homeschool and a B.Sc. degree, she backpacked 360°around the world documenting how Christian students keep their faith at university. The top takeaways from this research are available in Patricia’s book, Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students. You can follow her stories and get connected through Facebook, Instagram, and AnswersinGenesis.org. 

Walking through the classroom door, I could only imagine what I might be getting myself into. Secular college, I’d heard, would be a spiritual battlefield like none I’d experienced before. Would my faith survive?

As the semester unfolded, I constantly heard messages which contradicted God’s word—like the idea that humans evolved from apelike ancestors over millions of years. This idea lies at the heart of a worldview—a system of thinking about everything in the world—known as secular humanism. A quote from one of my professors summed up this worldview by claiming, “God did not create people; people created God.” 

Although I realized these ideas were false, hearing them taught as fact every day wore on me. What helped me survive with my biblical beliefs intact? The answer comes down to three personal foundations that God had helped me prepare as a teenager:

• Spiritual foundations: Keeping a close personal walk with God.

• Intellectual foundations: Being able to logically defend biblical beliefs and answer messages that oppose God’s Word.

• Interpersonal foundations: Staying surrounded by strong Christian community, including godly family, friends, church, and older mentors. 

After I graduated, I backpacked 360° around the world asking other Christian students about their university experiences. These conversations revealed that, although Christian students face diverse challenges worldwide, the solutions for overcoming those challenges look incredibly similar. They all trace back to having those three foundations I’d needed as a student. 

What are some of the top practical steps that Christian young people can take to develop these foundations? Answering this for all three foundations will take a couple more articles. But for now, let’s start with Spiritual Foundations. 

Walking with God

No student can keep their faith during university unless they have their own faith to begin with. The point isn’t for us to masquerade behind our families’ faith, but to cultivate vibrant personal relationships with God that color our moment-to-moment lives. As a result, we ground our identities in this relationship with Jesus rather than in anything temporary.  

During my own teen years, nothing kindled my desire to pursue God this way more than reading missionary biographies. Stories of ordinary people who witnessed God’s extraordinary faithfulness made me want to know God like that myself, and to approach every aspect of life—even schoolwork and summer jobs—as part of a greater mission with Jesus. With this mindset, I could view challenges in university as opportunities to draw closer to God by giving him my concerns (1 Peter 5:7). 

How to Build Spiritual Foundations

If spiritual foundations involve walking closely with God, how can we build those foundations now—and keep them strong throughout university? Here are three ways: 

1. Pray

Talking to our heavenly Father is one of the best ways to draw close to God and impact our world. A vibrant prayer life includes not only setting apart daily time to meet with God, but also practicing an ongoing attitude of prayer by transforming whatever we’re doing, thinking, and feeling into opportunities to pray throughout the day. 

2. Worship

After hearing a tough lecture full of unbiblical messages in college, I remember heading outside to detox my mind by listening to worship. Playing instrumental worship while we work, taking study breaks to sing or listen to worship, and checking the songs in our heads throughout the day are all great ways to stay “in tune” with our Creator. 

3. Soak in Scripture

Reading God’s Word every day, memorizing verses, and even listening to audio Bibles while going about our day helps us stay filled with Scripture. This, in turn, equips us to spot lies, counter temptation, and live the lives for which we were created. 

Along the way, we can keep our foundations strong by prioritizing daily time with God, being aware of little compromises which could hinder our relationship with God, and drawing biblical boundaries ahead of time—before we face pressure to compromise our convictions.  

Pursuing God

Ultimately, building strong spiritual foundations prepares us not only to thrive as Christians in college but also to live the life we were created for: a life of relationship with God. Then, whichever doors God leads us through—whether into a college classroom or out to the world beyond—we’ll be confident that we’re going there with our Creator. 

There’s much more to say—enough to fill a book! Find practical tips for building strong spiritual, intellectual, and interpersonal foundations in the book, Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students.

Patricia Engler is a Christian apologetics speaker, writer, and Youth Outreach Coordinator for Answers in Genesis. After 12 years of homeschool and a B.Sc. degree, she backpacked 360°around the world documenting how Christian students keep their faith at university. The top takeaways from this research are available in Patricia’s book, Prepare to Thrive: A Survival Guide for Christian Students. You can follow her stories and get connected through Facebook, Instagram, and AnswersinGenesis.org.