collegiate-ministry-blog

Advice from Tim Elmore on how to say No

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:21:00 GMT

I know something I have always struggled with is the ability to say no. Whether I was too scared to hurt someones feelings or to cause them not to like me or I felt like I should always encourage people through saying yes, I have always struggled with telling people no. In fact, we joke around the office that I'm the "yes man". On rare occasions I have not lived up to my "yes man" billing and actually told people no. Whether you like saying it or not, at some point in your ministry you will be required to tell someone no. How you go about doing so requires some thought. That is what the following blog from Tim Elmore provides you with, some thoughts on how to go about telling people no. I found the article helpful in how to say no gracefully and I hope you find some help with the post as well.

The following post originally appeared on growingleaders.com on May 14th, 2012.

I have concluded that what defines a leader today is not so much their ability to say “yes”, but their ability to say “no.” Learning how to say no can be life-changing. It’s possessing the skill to sniff out what fits into your wheelhouse and what would be a distraction. Let’s face it. America is the land of opportunity and today, we’ve created more opportunities that ever. Most leaders can’t handle it.

The most accurate words to describe our lives today are:

Overwhelmed
Options
Obese
Open-minded
Over-committed
Opportunities

We have a hard time saying no to anyone or anything. We don’t want to miss our chance to catch that big break or that next promotion. We don’ want to be narrow.

On the other hand, most of us would dearly like to reduce and simplify. We are weary of all the tasks, clutter and noise around us. If only we could learn how to say no to the people who approach us with another “opportunity.”

Let me offer some simple reminders of how you can do this.

How To Say No Gracefully…

When we know who we are, what our gifts are, and what our calling is, it’s easier to determine the “yes’s” and “no’s” of life. As a leader, when a task would not further your team’s goal, you are a steward of that team’s time, resources and talents and you are embezzling from the team if you say yes. You need to say no, even if it is a friend. The way you say no, however, is just as important as deciding to say it.

Say no to the idea not to the person
Make sure the person understands that you are not rejecting them. You’re simply saying no to what they want you to do. Give their idea affirmation, but explain that it doesn’t fit with your calendar or current responsibilities.
Respond in terms of the interests of the person asking.
Make sure the person knows that you’re not choosing the easy response, but that you want to genuinely help them. Communicate that your time constraints would prevent you from doing the kind of work they deserve.
Defer graciously. Come up with an alternative for them.
Be a problem-solver and help them complete their task. Give them confidence that they can do it, or suggest someone to them who would be better than you to do it, in terms of available or gifts. This adds value as it meets their need.

Steve Turner Webinar Now Available to Watch!!!

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:05:00 GMT

We are very thankful to have had Steve Turner impart his wisdom and experience on ministry teams to us this past Monday and have the video up on Vimeo for you to watch. Steve gave great advice as to what criteria he has used in recruiting leaders, how his ministry helps those leaders grow and what he expects from his leaders. Whether you are just starting out a college ministry or you have ministry teams already in place, Steve gives wonderful insight as to how he has gone about setting up ministry teams and sustaining them as healthy members of his college ministry.

Join Us for our Webinar This Morning at 10:30 am with Steve Turner!!

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:21:00 GMT

Join us today at 10:30 am to hear Steve Turner, Minister of Young Marrieds from Shandon Baptist Church where he also worked with the collegiate ministry for 18 years talk about starting up and maintaining healthy ministry teams within your college ministry.

This webinar will look at how ministries with existing ministry teams and those who are looking to start up ministry teams can maximize their potential within your college ministry. Specifically Steve will walk through defining ministry teams, recruitment to your teams, finding the right leaders, mentoring your teams and leaders, keeping them on task, avoiding the roller coaster effect and launching them out for greater things.

We hope you can make it for the webinar. To attend the webinar please visit www.sbtexas.com/webinars

Are Your Collegiates Prepared to Graduate from Your College Ministry??

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:15:00 GMT

The following post is a timely reminder of how the properly functioning college ministry should equip students to feed themselves spiritually. While the post is written by a campus minister, church-based ministers often lose many of their college students over the summer or they are replaced (numerically speaking only) during the summer by the collegiates that go away for school and come back home for the summer. Regardless it is an important reminder to think through how your ministry is preparing students to "graduate" from your college ministry.

The following post was written by Guy Chmieleski and originally appeared on faithoncampus.com on May 2, 2012.

The end of the academic year is nearly here… which means that students will soon be departing for… well, somewhere else.

And one question that many of us who work closely with student want to know is:

Are they ready to go?

And what we mean by this is…

Are they ready to go forth from our ministry and care for themselves spiritually over the summer months that we’re apart.

And it’s not that we have an over-inflated sense of what we (or our ministries) have to offer students (at least I hope that’s true)…

But if you’ve been serving students for very long at all, then you know that the summer months can be a challenging season for many of our students.

Spiritually speaking, many will struggle to re-engage back in the community of faith they were apart of before they left for college… (which assumes, of course, that they had one to leave in the first place).

Why?

Because they’re different from who they were just 9 months ago.

And that’s OK.

In fact, that’s hopefully a good thing.

A very good thing.

A sign of growth and maturity… in process.

But they might not realize this. And to go home, unaware, could be damaging… even devastating!

So whether they’re new believers in search of church home (back home), or growing believers in search of a new church home (back home), or simply steady believers who have been away from their “old” community of faith for much of the past year… Our students need to be aware that going home can present some challenges in this regard.

But their spiritual struggles may come in a different form… one that has to do with them “feeding” themselves.

This begs several questions of us:

Have we prepared them and equipped them to “feed” themselves? Or have we made them overly dependent upon us (or what our ministry has to offer)?

Have we given them room to grow — on their own? Or have we been overly prescriptive with their spiritual life on campus?

Have we allowed them the space to question, doubt, struggle and search… in ways that have helped them to more fully “own” their faith? Or have we spent the year “spoon-feeding” them and now worry who will take over this role in our absence?

Sure, there will be ways we can (intentionally) stay connected with students over the summer…

But we shouldn’t have to in order for our students to continue to grow and mature in their faith.

Our job isn’t simply to “feed” them, but really and truly, to learn to “feed” themselves — and ultimately, others!

So, as the year moves towards its inevitable end, one question still remains:

Are they ready to go?

Join us this Monday, May 7th, for a Webinar with Steve Turner!!

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:23:00 GMT

Don't forget about our webinar this month, when Steve Turner, the Minister to Young Marrieds and former college minister (of 18 years) at Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, SC. They predominantly minister to the University of South Carolina. During this webinar Steve will discuss Starting up and Maintaining Ministry Teams. He will look at how ministries with existing ministry teams and those who are looking to start up ministry teams can maximize their potential within your college ministry.

The webinar starts at 10:30 am on this Monday, May 7th. All you have to do to join is visit www.sbtexas.com/webinars. To chat during the webinar or ask Steve questions click on the arrow on the right side of the webinar window and then type in your questions.

We look forward to hearing from Steve.

What do College Students believe about Religion?

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:45:00 GMT

I came across this article today on the gospel coalition blog which presents statistics that were gathered on today's millennial ages 18-24. For more information about the millennial generation I would recommend reading The Millennials by Thom Rainer or Generation iY by Tim Elmore. Both are great reads that provide insight into the mind of college students.

The following blog post originally appeared on thegospelcoalition.org on April 23, 2012.

The Story: Younger Millennials (ages 18-24) report significant levels of movement from the religious affiliation of their childhood, mostly toward identifying as religiously unaffiliated, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown's Berkley Center.

The Backgroung: The 2012 Millennial Values Survey took a random sample of 2,012 adults age 18 to 24. Interviews were conducted online in both English and Spanish between March 7 and March 20, 2012. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample is +/- 3.3 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.

The Highlights:

• While only 11% of Millennials were religiously unaffiliated in childhood, one-quarter (25%) currently identify as unaffiliated, a 14-point increase.

• Catholics and white mainline Protestants saw the largest net losses (-7.9% and -5%) while black Protestants and white evangelicals saw the least decline (-1.1 and -0.8).

• College-age Millennials are more likely than the general population to be religiously unaffiliated. They are less likely than the general population to identify as white evangelical Protestants or white mainline Protestant.

• Millennials also hold less traditional or orthodox religious beliefs. Fewer than one-quarter (23%) believe the Bible is the word of God and should be taken literally, word for word. About 1-in-4 (26%) believe the Bible is the word of God, but that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. Roughly 4-in-10 (37%) say the Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God.

• Millennials' feelings toward present-day Christianity are fairly ambivalent. Approximately three-quarters (76%) of younger Millennials say that modern-day Christianity "has good values and principles" and 63% agree that contemporary Christianity "consistently shows love for other people." On the other hand, nearly two-thirds (64%) say that "anti-gay" describes present-day Christianity somewhat or very well and more than 6-in-10 (62%) also believe that Christianity is "judgmental."

• A majority of college-age Millennials say that abortion should be legal in all (24%) or most cases (30%). More than 4-in-10 say that abortion should be illegal in most (28%) or all cases (16%). Roughly 6-in-10 (59%) believe that at least some health care professionals in their community should provide legal abortions.

• Millennials are nearly evenly divided over whether sex between two adults of the same gender is morally acceptable (48%) or morally wrong (44%). But nearly 6-in-10 (59%) of college-age Millennials favor allowing same-sex marriage, compared to 37% who are legally opposed.

• Nearly 6-in-10 (57%) support making it more difficult to access Internet pornography compared to less than 4-in-10 who are opposed.

• Only one-in-four (25%) say they attend religious services at least once a week, while 3-in-10 (30%) say they attend occasionally (once or twice a month or a few times a year). More than 4-in-10 say they seldom (16%) or never attend (27%).

• One-third (33%) report that they pray at least daily and about 1-in-4 (27%) say they pray occasionally. Nearly 4-in-10 (37%) say they seldom or never pray.

• A majority (54%) believe that God is a person with who one can have a relationship. About 1-in-5 (22%) say that God is an impersonal force, and 14% say they do not believe in God.

• Fewer than 1-in-10 say that religion is very important or the most important thing in their life. Nearly 8-in-10 white evangelicals (78%) and black Protestants (77%) say that religion is either very important or the most important thing in their life.

How are you Implementing Facebook into your College Ministry??

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:08:00 GMT

The following is a blog by Matt Stauffar which emphasizes the importance of being active on Facebook for the sake of connecting with your college students. Now I realize that everyone does not have a vast majority of their students on Facebook but I would be willing to guess that most college ministers do. For that reasoning the following post provides some valuable insight on how to become versed in the Facebook world which your students are already a part of.

The following blog post originally appeared on faithoncampus.com on April 18, 2012.

I think if there’s any technology that holds the most potential for use (and abuse) for campus ministry, it’s Facebook. Our students live, communicate, flirt, sin, evangelize, teach, learn, and much, much more on Facebook. Yet most of us give little to no attention to how we can use it to minister more effectively.

We write about Facebook a lot on Staffhacker, and I’d suggest you check out our archive of Facebook-tagged posts. But there are a few primary points I’d like to make even for those who don’t see the value of using Facebook strategically (or even joining the network at all):

You must join Facebook.

This might seem offensive or just indicative of my relative youth, but it’s neither. If you haven’t joined Facebook yet, you’re doing yourself and your students a disservice.

We cannot pretend to desire to minister incarnationally as Christ did if we’re unwilling to place ourselves in the world our students occupy. A campus minister who’s not on Facebook is a little bit like a campus minister who never visits campus. This is where our students spend hours a day, and there’s no excuse for us to remove ourselves from a context with so much potential for good.

The news feed is your friend.

As great as it is for you to set up a great Facebook page for your ministry, the majority of visitors never return to a fan page after clicking “like” on it. What do they do instead? They look at their news feed.

Now, armed with this information, you should take all the time you spend (or don’t spend) developing your page, and instead work to reach your students’ news feeds. There are quite a few great tricks in the article I linked here, but if you remember one thing, let it be this: create/upload great content and get your students to interact with it, whether by liking, commenting, or sharing. That’s it! You’ve now drastically increased your user engagement and your Facebook reach.

Lists are the most under-utilized aspects of Facebook.

Let’s say you have a personal Facebook account. You have friends who are your personal friends, your family, your college buddies, your students, and your donors. Have you ever found yourself censoring what you write out of fear of what one group might think? Or losing relationships with non-Christian friends because all you ever post about is the Bible Study on the quad?

Facebook lists allow you to segment your friends into customized lists and then target your communications to them. So, create a list for your friends and family; create one for your students; create one for your donors; and when you’re posting to Facebook, target your posts to the people who would benefit from your post. Don’t bog down your college friends with Bible Study details; share prayer requests with your donors and family; use Facebook more wisely and with more forethought.

Keep experimenting and learning.

These are just a few tips. If you have any other tips or tricks for using Facebook in campus ministry, please share in the comments below; and be sure to check out Staffhacker’s archive of Facebook-tagged posts for more thoughts on how we can use Facebook as a tool for ministry.

Why living together before marriage isn't a good idea

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:48:00 GMT

Below is a blog post from Denny Burk, released today, regarding an article posted in the New York Times regarding cohabitation and the negative effect it has on marriage. As this is a growing mindset with collegiates and young adults I thought the post would be helpful for college ministers to reference and read...

Denny's blog is located at dennyburk.com

There was a fascinating article in The New York Times over the weekend titled “The Downside of Cohabiting before Marriage.” It shows that—contrary to popular belief—living together before marriage does not produce better or more stable marriages. In fact the divorce rate is higher among those who cohabit before marriage than those who do not. The reason for this is due in part to the different agendas that men and women have for cohabiting. Here’s an excerpt:

Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean. When researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas. Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse…

Founding relationships on convenience or ambiguity can interfere with the process of claiming the people we love. A life built on top of “maybe you’ll do” simply may not feel as dedicated as a life built on top of the “we do” of commitment or marriage.

Conventional wisdom often isn’t wisdom at all. That is certainly the case when it comes to attitudes about cohabiting. Women especially need to understand that cohabiting is most often not a step toward marriage, but a step away from it.

April is the season for Evaluation

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:12:00 GMT

Benson Hines just posted a new blog about evaluating your ministry and how April is a great time for college ministers to evaluate themselves. He also provides some good reads that help you evaluate your ministry. It is a good reminder for college ministers.

The following post originally appeared on exploringcollegeministry.com on April 12, 2012.

April is a good time for evaluating how it’s really gone this semester and school year. (But really, is it ever a bad time for evaluation?)

As you may realize, I’ve had the chance to write a lot within the “Assessment & Strength” category, and you can see all those posts right here. But I’ve rounded up ten of my older faves. Hopefully these – and the many others you can flip through – can help as you’re asking God about where your ministry is – and where it can go.

1. For the Budding Evaluator: a good place to start
2. Where Do They Come From?: examining how students actually ended up in your ministry
3. For a Lifetime: have we crammed or laid foundations?
4. Impact Now vs. Build for Then: where have you positioned your ministry on this spectrum?
5. Millennials from the Mailing List: is our ministry a fit for these students?
6. Inside Information: an under-used source for figuring out what future students will need
7. College Ministry in the Land of Continual Upheaval: before you make big changes
8. Explore the Edges of Your Year-to-Come: considering small changes for a big difference
9. What Memories?: thinking about how students will think about this year
10. Missions Means Difficulty: in case you’re a little discouraged

SENT Conference Coming Up Soon

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:10:00 GMT

As April is churning along, it is almost time for our SENT Conference which happens on April 27-28 at First Euless in Euless, TX. We have posted an informational blog, Found Here, but now we have put together a promotional video to let you know what the event is all about.

Remember that the event is FREE for ALL COLLEGE STUDENTS and the first 100 to register will receive free lodging as well. If you're interested please register as soon as possible as the free lodging is filling up quickly.

CLICK HERE to register.

What is Happening at Vanderbilt University??

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:18:00 GMT

For those of you who haven't heard about new student organizational policies at Vanderbilt University, they have recently implemented a requirement that all student organizations (not included frats and sororities) become tolerant of any lifestyles/beliefs as possible leaders of their organization. In other words, if the local Wesley Foundation wants to require that students nominated as leaders be believers then they cannot. Nor can they keep atheists, homosexuals, alcoholics, Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses out of at least being nominated to be student leaders. So much for religious freedom.

In discussing more about the history of Vanderbilt University, including it's Christian beginning, Dr. Al Mohler comments on how these restrictions are forcing religious organizations off of the campus which we believe makes the need for churches to penetrate the campus even that much more essential!

"What we see at Vanderbilt University is secularism with its gloves off. In the name of tolerance, it will not tolerate orthodox Christian conviction. The university now comes full circle and forces off campus the only organizations that hold to the Christian beliefs of the school’s founders. Look carefully at Vanderbilt’s intolerance. Be assured that it is coming soon to a campus near you."

To read all of Mohler's article CLICK HERE.

How are you Planning Activities for Your College Ministry??

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:07:00 GMT

Activity planning in any ministry can either be rewarding or a miserable fail. How can we as college ministers do our best to ensure (within the best of our ability) that the activity will be a rewarding one? Benson Hines recently suggested that activities should be planned around clear, explicitly determined purposes. In other words, we don't just have an activity to have an activity. Every thing you do as a college ministry should have a purpose or goal tied to it.

Below is Benson's full article as it appeared on his blog, exploringcollegeministry.com on January 25, 2012.

Simple (but possibly painful) assessment question for you:

How many of your activities this semester will be planned around clear, explicitly determined purposes?

When we realize just how much a standard college ministry actually does, it’s amazing:

every weekly large group
each and every small group meeting throughout a week
every retreat
every planned social event
each leader’s meeting
each staff meeting
every service project

That’s an awful lot of events. Some are probably planned by you; some might be planned by volunteers or other staff; some might be planned by student leaders.

And so I ask the question another way: How often will the planners start by praying through and thinking through what – exactly – they’re meant to aim for, and only afterwards plan the retreat, the small group session, the music set, or the service project? Are your students doing this every time? Are you?

Though God can certainly bear fruit from all sorts of poorly planned methods (and does all the time), our participation with Him as co-laborers demands seeking His thoughts on the front end, not just seeking His blessing on the back end.

So how well does your count – the actual number – of events that will be planned with the end in mind correspond with that reality?

(For more on this, you can definitely read my series on Backwards College Ministry.)

How does Your Ministry Interact with Others

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:18:00 GMT

And in others, I specifically want to draw attention to how you interact with non-believers and even those who try to tear you down? I came across this story from a blog by the gospel coalition where an atheist who was threatening to sue a County in Texas regarding a nativity scene at the courthouse. This person had a detached retina and temporarily suspended his attack on the nativity scene to try and handle this new life issue. A church in Athens reached out to this man and gave him money for groceries and may even be able to provide financial assistance towards the man for his retina surgery. Anyways, it's a great story about the love of the body of Christ on those who are outside of the body and I believe that we should imitate churches like this one in our care of the needy.

You can read the entire story HERE.

After reading this story and seeing how now the atheist man is impacted by this act of abundant kindness makes me wonder how we can show similar kindness on college campuses. Now I know that college students don't have alot of money to offer to various causes but maybe your group can start some kind of tutoring program for struggling students or possibly a mentoring program where businessmen and women in your church reach out to students on the college campus where the Gospel can be communicated in a clear way. Sometimes I think our ministries can become overly concerned about ourselves and forget about loving on and being concerned about "the nations" as it were.

How has Your Denomination shaped your College Ministry

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:38:00 GMT

The following article appeared today on Faith on Campus' blog site, written by Guy Chmieleski. I thought it was a great topic for us to think through and hope it helps you figure out that we can still learn from other denominations. The article also challenges us to think through how our denomination has shaped our college ministry.

Our ministry with college students is shaped by a number of factors…

In a post last week I suggested that one of those factors was the particular “stream” of ministry from which we serve — campus-based ministry, para-church, church-based or campus church were the four different “streams” I identified (you can read more about that here).

In similar fashion, I think the denomination that our ministry is tied to (or that served to shape our own theological development and/or formal ministry training) plays a big role in how we do college ministry as well.

Different denominations understand (and therefore approach) ministry with college students in different ways… for different reasons.

Some see it as more central to their Kingdom mission than do others.

Some are willing to give it more resources than others.

Some design their ministry with college students to take on a specific focus — that clearly ties back to the denominational “parent.”

I think exploring this for our specific ministry context can help us to better understand how our ministry functions (or at least, how it has functioned for much of its recent history). It can also help us to understand our current state and the direction that we appear to be heading. Understanding this denominational tie might also help to explain why certain changes have been a struggle for our ministries.

Yes, it is definitely worth spending some time considering how our denominational ties have influenced our ministry…

And it might serve us well to consider how other denominations approach ministry with college students… and what we might be able to glean from them that could benefit the students we serve.

So…

How does your denomination do college ministry?

What makes it special or unique?

What limitations do you currently find within your denominational approach to ministry with college students?

Know where your stats come from

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:35:00 GMT

I came across this article from Lifeway and thought it was interesting and a good reminder to make sure when you quote stats or use them to prove a point, that you actually research the stat you use and make sure it means what you think it means.

This post was originally published on Mar 7, 2012 on www.edstetzer.com

This past Thursday (February 23), Rick Santorum told talk show host Glenn Beck that "62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it." This statement turned the heads of listeners and media alike. LifeWay Research was quickly contacted by a few major media outlets to verify this statistic. At this time, we can't say that it is true-- or even that going to college has great impact on the dropout rate.

We were not the only ones asking this question but we have a unique interest in the subject having done major research on it. That research was published in Essential Church, a 2008 book by Thom and Sam Rainer.

Although this is not a statement of the "rightness" of his policies, it appears Senator Santorum may have mixed up the numbers on this particular statistic.

There are some studies that point to church dropout percentages, but none we know that indicate a 62% dropout rate due to college attendance (feel free to let us know if you can identify the source).

On the contrary, most of the data does not show that college attendance causes a higher dropout rate-- our data shows no statistically significant difference, but there are other sources of data to consider as well.

For example, one study from the University of Texas looks at the idea that colleges are corrosive to faith.

You can read the report summary here. In it, they claim:

Thus, the assumption that a college education is the reason for such a decline gathers little support. The results remain the same even when we employ multiple regression models to account for other factors that might explain the college-religion relationship (such as age, marriage, drinking habits, and sexual behavior, to name a few). Simply put: Higher education is not the enemy of religiosity. Instead, young people who avoid college altogether display a more precipitous drop in their religious participation...
In conclusion, the college experience--more than the education itself--seems corrosive to religious faith only among those who were at an elevated risk of such corrosion when they arrived on campus.

There is a UCLA study cited in this article that points to such religious decline, though another article on the same study indicates that students become more spiritual in college.

Also, this Harvard study led the Harvard Institute of Politics director to this conclusion: "Religion is not only very important in the lives of college students today, but also religion and morality are critical to how students think about politics and form opinions on political issues,"

The three main academic studies we could locate are these three from the University of Texas, Harvard, and UCLA. They all mention college students leaving the faith, and some of their stats include a "62%," but none match up like Santorum mentioned. Finally, the UT Austin study actually shows that people who attend college are less likely to walk away from the faith than those who don't attend college.

As for LifeWay Research on the issue, we conducted a survey in April and May 2007 of 1,023 adults ages 18-30 to uncover the reasons young people leave church. Each indicated that they had attended a Protestant church regularly for at least a year in high school.

Our data showed that among young adults who had attended church regularly for at least a year in high school, 70% stop attending regularly for at least a year between ages 18-22. However, 35% of these had returned to attending twice a month or more by the time they were surveyed for the study.

The article has 2 powerpoint presentations associated with it. The first goes through the dropout rate and the second (slide 45 and following) talks about effects of education.

USAToday reported on this research a few years ago. Thom Rainer was asked about the dropout rate in an article in USAToday that was published this morning.

Long story short: There are dropouts (and returns), but there is no statistical difference that the dropout rate among those who attended college than those that did not attend college.

Thanks to Amy Whitfield for gathering the research on this article.

UPDATE: Thanks to Pat H. in the comments for helping us locate another study published in the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Sociology journal, Social Forces, that further supports our LifeWay Research findings.

The findings of this joint study between researchers at Cal-Berkeley and UNC-Chapel Hill, concluded that "college students are no more likely to develop liberal religious beliefs than non-students. In some cases, collegians actually appear more likely to retain their initial beliefs." You can find the research abstract here.