FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Susan Arpin or Nicole Devin, 413-848-1407, [email protected],
[email protected]
HOW CAN COLLEGE KIDS FIND FREEDOM
WITHOUT LOSING THEIR FAITH?
COMPREHENSIVE TRACKING STUDY CONDUCTED BY
FULLER YOUTH INSTITUTE PROVIDES SURPRISING
ANSWERS IN NEW BOOK
STICKY FAITH:
Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids
Dr. Kara E. Powell & Dr. Chap Clark
(Zondervan, September 27, 2011)
Parents often see big changes in children during the first year in college, but one change that
often catches them off guard is a diminished commitment to their faith.
In fact, various studies of young adult Christians have shown that by
the time they receive their diploma four years later; approximately
40 to 50 percent of them will have abandoned their faith. Even those
actively participating in church youth groups in high school, who,
when polled the year before college, claimed they had every
intention of sticking with their faith—approximately 80% in one
study—aren’t immune.
How does such steadfast faith become so quickly unstuck?
That’s what Fuller Seminary faculty members Drs. Kara Powell and
Chap Clark, along with a team of graduate students, set out to
discover over a six year period with the College Transition Project*.
Conducted by the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI), the Project included
qualitative and longitudinal quantitative studies of 500 Christian
youth group members following high school graduation that tracked individual and collective
journeys during the first three years of college.
The research results are the impetus for the latest book by Powell and Clark, Sticky Faith:
Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids, a guide for parents of kids of all ages (from
preschool to college), providing practical and developmentally appropriate suggestions on
building faith that will stick through college and beyond.
“I am a different and better parent because of our research. Every day I interact and talk with my
kids differently because of what we have learned," says Powell, FYI’s executive director and a
mother of three who has been parenting for ten years and serving kids in youth ministry for
twenty-five years. (Co-author Clark has been parenting for some thirty years and in various forms
of youth, family and pastoral ministry for over 35 years.)
2
Whatever the age of the child, say the authors (who stress it’s never too late or too early to start
building Sticky Faith), parents need to understand a few broad and fundamental concepts,
including:
Even more important than parental support throughout childhood, the research suggests
that Sticky Faith depends on how parents express and live out their faith. Parents’ own
faith is one of the primary influencers on their kids’ faith. Attend church just a couple of
times a year? Expect the same from your kids.
When asked what it means to be Christian, one-third of college juniors (prior youth group
attendees) listed answers related to “doing” the faith—a lifestyle of external behaviors
insufficient to sustain their faith. Instead of the “Gospel of Sin Management”—that is, a
long list of dos and don’ts that defines being a Christian—parents need to focus on
teaching how to trust (not just obey) Christ along with teaching how he leads, guides, and
changes us from the inside.
Kids need to develop a strong personal identity for faith to stick and community helps do
just that. Whether it’s family or friends, building “social capital” into kids’ lives creates a
network of caring supporters who aid in the self-discovery process and keep kids
connected to faith for the long haul. Build a 5:1 (or 7:1, or 10:1, or whatever you
determine works best for your family) sticky web adult to child ratio for mentoring your
kids since other adults are often able to speak to them in ways you cannot as the parent.
Luckily for parents, Powell and Clark also provide a host of tested ideas, including family
traditions and rituals, which serve to launch kids of all ages on that lifelong faith trajectory. Here
are just a few:
College-Bound Kids
Since only one in seven high school seniors report feeling prepared for college, start
talking about life after high school before graduation. As part of practical discussions on
issues such as managing money and time, help them plan a schedule that will include
church attendance. Forty percent of college freshmen report difficulty finding a church,
so help them make the connection before arrival for a smoother and stickier transition.
High School Kids
While more than two million U.S. teens go on mission trips annually, five out of six
report that these trips have little impact on their lives. For service that sticks, find causes
that matter to your high schooler, ones that hit close to home. Make service a family
affair, an ongoing process rather than a one-time event. By the way, the research shows
that teens who serve younger children are more likely to develop stickier faith.
Middle School Kids
Talk to your kids! And that means providing the space and time for quality conversations
in the midst of having some fun too, perhaps while hiking, baking cookies, tennis, etc.
Forget lecturing. Your job is to listen and ask questions. Talk about your faith—its ups
and downs—and encourage your kids to talk about theirs, including their doubts (less
than half of the kids studied don’t share their spiritual struggles with parents). Giving
permission for independent thought leads to stickier faith.
Preschool and Elementary School Kids
Healthy rituals in family life help reinforce identity and build a faith that starts young and
sticks. Spend a few minutes each day debriefing your child’s day and saying prayers at
3
bedtime. Celebrate everything—from the first day of school to the start of football
season—with streamers, balloons, and a favorite food that matches the occasion. Perhaps
at every birthday, have each person pray a word of thanksgiving for the unique gift of the
birthday child.
Written by authors known for the integrity of their research and the intensity of their passion for
young people, Sticky Faith delivers what nearly every Christian parent in America wants—a
resource that empowers them to develop dynamic and robust faith in kids that sticks long term.
For youth pastors and ministries, Sticky Faith, Youth Worker Edition by
Powell, Brad Griffin, and Dr. Cheryl Crawford is also being released in
September 2011. Presenting youth workers with both a
theological/philosophical framework and practical programming ideas that
develop long-term faith in teenagers, each chapter in the book presents a
summary of FYI’s quantitative and qualitative research, along with the
implications of this research, including program ideas suggested and tested
by youth ministries nationwide.
As well, Sticky Faith Parent Curriculum, a DVD by Powell, will release
December 2011 in time for the holiday gift season.
For more, visit www.stickyfaith.org or follow Twitter @stickyfaith
*About the Research
Drs. Kara Powell and Chap Clark focused on two research projects: the HURT Project and the
College Transition Project, a series of groundbreaking studies conducted by the Fuller Youth
Institute in collaboration with their colleague, Dr. Cameron Lee, over six years.
The College Transition Project is comprised of four separate research initiatives: an initial
quantitative pilot study involving 69 youth group graduates, two three-year longitudinal
(primarily quantitative) studies of high school seniors during their first three years in college
involving 162 and 227 students respectively, and additional qualitative interviews with 45 former
youth group graduates currently in college.
Thanks to a sizable research grant from the Lilly Endowment, central to the College Transition
Project are two longitudinal studies of 384 youth group seniors during their first three years in
college. The majority of the students surveyed took their first online questionnaire during the
spring of their senior year in high school, and then one or two online questionnaires during their
freshman, sophomore, and junior years in college. Each phase of data allowed researchers to peel
away less significant layers of the transition and focus on what lay at the Sticky Faith core. The
research was not designed to prove causation, rather to discover strong correlations between
variables that might predict the relationships between those variables.
Students in the study represent “typical” Christian seniors transitioning to college. They come
from different regions of the US. They attend public, private, and Christian colleges and
vocational schools. 59 percent are female and 41 percent are male. Of note, kids in the sample do
tend to have higher high school grade point averages and are more likely to come from intact
families than the typical student heading to college. The kids also tend to come from larger than
average churches that employ full-time professional youth pastors.
The HURT Project is based on Dr. Clark’s qualitative research conducted from 2001 to 2010. It
started with recording stories and coding observations collected over a year as a substitute teacher
at a California public school campus with permission to be a “participant-observer.” It evolved to
4
include on-going observations, interviews, open-ended conversations, and deliberate focus
groups with high school and college students across the US and Canada.
For
more
on
the
research
methodology,
visit
www.stickyfaith.org
or
www.fulleryouthinistute.org
About the Authors
Dr. Kara E. Powell is executive director at Fuller Youth Institute and a faculty
member at Fuller Theological Seminary. She has authored or co-authored several
books, including Essential Leadership, Deep Justice in a Broken World, and
Help! I’m a Woman in Youth Ministry. She is the general editor for The Fuller
Youth Institute E-Journal and regularly speaks at conferences and seminars. She
lives with her husband and three children in Pasadena, California.
Dr. Chapman “Chap” Clark is Vice Provost for Regional Campuses and
Masters Programs and Professor of Youth, Family, and Culture at Fuller
Theological Seminary. Chap’s extensive publication of books, articles and videos
focus primarily on relationships. Among his many books are Hurt 2.0, When
Kids Hurt, Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World (co-authored
with his wife, Dee), and Deep Justice in a Broken World. Chap and Dee
currently live in Gig Harbor, Washington.
Product Details
Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids
Dr. Kara E. Powell & Dr. Chap Clark
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Zondervan (September 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0310329329
ISBN-13: 978-0310329329
List Price: $14.99
Sticky Faith, Youth Worker Edition: Practical Ideas to Nurture Long-Term Faith in Teenagers
Kara E. Powell, Brad M. Griffin, and Cheryl A. Crawford
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Zondervan (September 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0310889243
ISBN-13: 978-0310889243
List Price: $16.99
Sticky Faith Parent Curriculum
Kara E. Powell
DVD
Publisher: Zondervan (December 2011)
ISBN: 0310683750
Price: $24.99
###