Christian College Students Maintain Faith, After Graduating

A study of alumni from two Christian liberal arts colleges shows that a high majority of graduates remain interested in maintaining their faith and worldview from a religious perspective even after they’ve left the university, said a professor who led the research.
The four-year study also suggests that “the integration of Christian values within a college experience ensures the successful well-being of graduates,” according to the report released recently by Gordon College psychology professor Kaye Cook.

Nearly 1,000 Christian graduates from Gordon College and Wheaton College were interviewed on subjects such as spiritual commitment, identity and well-being.

Cook and her team of researchers found that even four years after graduation, 97 percent of the alumni considered themselves moderately to extremely interested in religion, with 76 percent attending church at least once a week.

“That means, those who entered a Christian college with a strong faith graduated four years later with a faith commitment intact – though one that had been tested and deepened,” said Cook in the report. “And we found that their education gave them a higher sense of life satisfaction and well-being, in part because they felt they had a worldview that enabled them to face life’s challenges.”

Christian liberal arts colleges are uniquely dedicated to worldview exploration and character development, said Cook, who is on the board of the international Association for Moral Education and was a recent visiting professor at Dartmouth College.

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Cook told The Christian Post that she was prompted to do the study by the growing interest in “emerging adults,” as evidenced by more studies about 16- to 30-year-olds.

“There are many things we’ve learned from this study. First, is that college higher education needs to look more carefully about what we are doing to our emerging adults,” Cook said. “We need to pay more attention to worldviews and to support emerging adults as they struggle to figure out who they are and what they believe in.”

Cook said that college students can often experience a disorganized, piecemeal, even agnostic approach to higher education.

“Christian colleges have to have a tolerance for raising questions and be willing to explore questions more deeply than maybe we many times feel comfortable with,” she said. “I think (students) raising questions about faith within the context of faith can make one’s faith stronger.”

Cook said that her research also shows that religious faith improves overall well-being.

“Religious faith has multiple positive effects on daily life; it improves well-being by influencing one’s personal characteristics (identity) and relationships (attachment), and the choices one makes,” she said in her study.

“One’s worldview, although it receives little attention in the (academic) literature, is conceptually intertwined with the other two measures of identity and attachment,” Cook said. “And the data shows that Christian college graduates retain their faith to a striking degree.

“Consequently, Christian colleges can serve as a model for a context in which values and academic disciplines are taken seriously, and within which one can be encouraged to develop coherent values to secure success beyond college.”

The study titled, “Is a Christian College Education ‘Worth It’? Worldview Development Among Christian College Students as a Model for the Larger Academy,” was funded in part by an initiative grant from the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.

The research team included co-principal Cynthia Kimball, associate professor of psychology at Wheaton College; Kathleen Leonard, visiting assistant professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell; Chris Boyatzis, professor of psychology at Bucknell University; and 16 Gordon

College undergraduate students

Three Earthquakes in Three Days

The strong earthquake that rattled the eastern United States on Tuesday was highly unusual in its severity, though it was centered in a part of Virginia known for smaller quakes, seismologists said.

he initial earthquake, which registered a magnitude of 5.9 just before 2 p.m. EDT, was felt from the Carolinas to New England.

"One of this size is highly unusual," said Karen Fisher, a professor of seismology at Brown University and president-elect of the seismology section at the American Geophysical Union. "This is the largest earthquake by far that I am aware of occurring there in recent history."

The quake's epicenter in central Virginia is in an area the U.S. Geological Survey calls the Central Virginia Seismic Zone, Fisher said by phone from Providence, Rhode Island.

While the strength of the quake was unusual, the wide spread of the shock waves was common for the East Coast, according to Peggy Hellweg, a research seismologist at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory in California.

This is largely due to the difference in the terrain, Hellweg said in a telephone interview.

"Our ground is all of this chopped-up stuff ... like a pile of marbles," Hellweg said of California's geology, which means that the waves from a quake don't spread out all that far.

In the Eastern United States, she said, "What you've got there is gorgeous bedrock and ... the waves propagate beautifully."

Another difference between the East and West U.S. coasts is that the West Coast is over the boundary between two active tectonic plates, the North American and the Pacific, and the force of these plates sliding against each other generates quakes regularly, Fisher said.

In the East, she said, "There's no driving engine in terms of the two plates sliding past each other ... so that's why it's much more unusual."

David Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said aftershocks should be expected for months.

"You'll feel magnitude 3 earthquakes over great distances ... I would expect tens of magnitude 3s for earthquakes of this size," Oppenheimer said from Menlo Park, California.




SOURCE: Reuters

Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

(Additional reporting by Mari Saito; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Christian Rappers Out To Redefine Manhood in Urban Culture With Movie 'Man Up'

“Men, what will you do with this life” is the question that Reach Life ministries is using to challenge the lives of its audience, with the emergence of their Man Up Campaign.

The campaign is focused on addressing the issue of manhood in hip-hop culture because they feel “its evident that men don’t know what it means to be a man” said Christian rapper KB, a spokesperson for Reach Life ministries.

Reach Life ministries is a non profit of Reach Records, which houses co-founder and famed Christian rapper Lecrae. Gaining a platform because of the label’s success, the organization has purposed to “help bridge the gap between biblical truth and the urban context” and one of the ways they have set out to accomplish this is through their soon coming movie Man Up.

The film stars, new comer and main character Anthony Moone and presents six different areas of manhood that the creators feel young men often fail to live up to. The six depictions of manhood are aimed at making young men of the urban culture question their standards and beliefs of what authentic manhood means.

The movie also features six reflection segments on manhood that features Reach Records label mates Tedashii and Trip Lee among others.

Man Up is “calling men in the hip-hop culture to true biblical manhood through repentance and faith in Christ” says an official statement released about the movie.

Along with the movie portion of the campaign, a curriculum, soundtrack, panel discussion, and concert series will also be released in hopes of promoting further conversation and discussion on the subject.

The film will first be released in six cities in accordance with the concert series.

Young Christians Texting Their Faith

There's hardly a young person out there without a mobile phone and the HOPE movement is tapping into their technological dexterity with a new campaign encouraging young people to text about their faith.Textify was recently launched by Hope Revolution, the youth arm of HOPE, at the Redeemed Christian Church of God's Festival of Life in Manchester.


As part of the campaign, hundreds of young people will use their mobile phones and social netowrks to begin conversations about Jesus.


The campaign takes 1 Peter 3:15 as its inspiration, encouraging young people to use Textify as a way to "always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have".


Textify challenges young Christians to spend a week praying for three friends and then text them each a question or 'God thought' as a conversation starter.


Participants are encouraged to pray daily for their friends and use their responses as an opportunity to speak about the difference Jesus makes in their life.


The vision is to see conversations drenched in prayer, youths empowered and confident to engage in mission, and young people coming to know Christ.



SOURCE: Christian Today

Pray for Pastor Zachery Tims Family

The pastor of a Florida megachurch who often appeared on TBN’s “Praise the Lord” program, has been found dead inside a New York City hotel room. Police say Zachery Tims was discovered on the floor of a room in the W Hotel in Times Square about 6 p.m. on Friday.

It was not immediately clear if Tims, 42, had been alone in the hotel room.

No foul play was suspected, officials told The Associated Press. An autopsy was expected to reveal the cause of death.

Tims and his family founded New Destiny Christian Center (NDCC) in Apopka, Fla., in 1996 where he served as senior pastor. The church boasts a congregation of about 8,000, according to its website.

A message was posted on NDCC’s website Sunday, informing congregants that a meeting would be held to discuss Pastor Tim’s death.

(We must truly pray for his family in their time of Grief)
Source: Christianpost.com

THE RESPONSE: Young Christians to Lead the Third Great Awakening

A portion of the day's prayer has been dedicated to praying for the next generation, for young believers to carry on the legacy of Christian leaders and make broader impact into their communities. They called it the Third Great Awakening.


A string of teens spoke at the mic, giving 30 second prayers asking God to rise up young people to spread Christianity and "shine a light" in middle schools and high schools.




The pastors praying also emphasized the return of prayer in schools. The crowd--in groups of two or three--prayed Christianity to go out in specific campuses by name.




James and Shirley Dobson, two of the biggest names in 20th-century American Christianity (known for their role in Focus on the Family), prayed on behalf of youth, as did Don Wildmon, of the American Family Association, the controversial Christian group who sponsored The Response.




He apologized for the fault of his generation and said, "We pray that you will give them the ability and the desire to begin to clean up the mess we left them."




Youth groups from across Texas drove in to Houston to attend the event, in buses filled with kids from Christian homes and new believers fresh out of Christian summer camp.




"I didn't expect it to be like this," said 14-year-old Josh Hutchison, who rededicated his life to Christ earlier this summer. "It's big, but you can feel that the people are warm, it's like a celebration. I have been praying about everything, about football, about my relationship with God."




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SOURCE: The Houston Chronicle

Kate Shellnutt

Save Your Self !!! Save The World!!