Located off Ft. Campbell Blvd., the Park Lane Church of the Nazarene is located in the city of Clarksville and near Fort Campbell Army Post.

SENIOR PASTOR

Larry and Mary Anne Spraker

Dear pastor,

Over the past 3 years, I have made it a point to talk with our transfer students. I’ve asked them, “Why did you leave where you were to come to Trevecca?” The stories I’ve heard are heartbreaking – dorm ethics that are nothing short of hedonism, professors who view Christians as stupid, profanity in classrooms, classes taught by student assistants who have little more than an undergrad degree. For a while I chalked this up as protected Nazarene kids experiencing the raw world. But the stories kept coming. And then I began to see studies done on the e ffect of the non-Christian university on the Christian teen. The study that became the tipping point for me was done by Professor Mike Adams at the University of North Carolina , Wilmington . He writes,

If your kid comes home from college one day and tells you that your Christian faith is stupid, welcome to the world in which I live. The college environment does that to our kids. It makes good Christian students stupid. By that I mean it turns them into liberals, atheists, or both. Three out of four Christian kids (75%) abandon the church when they go to college and only about a third of them return by age 30.

Two Jewish researchers went on campus (this is not a joke) last year to see just how anti-Semitic the faculty were. Their findings? In a survey of over 6,600 college professors across the country, they found virtually no anti-Semitism. Instead, they found a distinct bias against evangelical students: more than half (53%) of college faculty view evangelical students unfavorably. Mormons are next at 33%, followed by Muslims at 22%.

Let me put this in proper perspective: In the United States of America , professors are two and a half times more likely to view evangelical Christian students unfavorably than Muslim students.

The study also found that professors are five times more likely to be atheists than the general public: 19% vs. 4%. There are far fewer Evangelicals among the faculty than the general public: 11% vs. 33%.

Professor Adams goes on to support a campus evangelism forum for the non-Christian university. And I join him in support of every Christian attempt on every non-Christian campus to make a case for Christianity. We have some wonderful Nazarene examples of this. Several employees at non-Christian universities have sought me out to tell me that the problem is as bad, or worse, than the statistics I shared. Three of them told me of professors in their universities whose sport was to see how quickly they could destroy the fragile faith of a 17 - year - old freshman.

Friends, if you know me, you know that I am not prone to motivate by fear. You also know that I do not embrace a theology of cloistering away from the world. It has taken a lot of listening to our transfers, hearing many first person stories, reviewing statistical studies, and a prayer-saturated push to bring me to write this letter. As I think of the teens I have pastored, including my own 3 daughters, I am not sure tha t many of them could have withstood the 24-hour ethical atmosphere of the dorm, the authority - laden professor calling Christian faith silly and stupid, and the ethos of a campus where 75% of the students abandon the church before they graduate. In the fragile first years away from parental and church influence, are we “making disciples” by placing our teens in this atmosphere? Or are we risking the very faith we have labored to nurture them in?

I am not interested in getting your teens to Trevecca because it will grow our enrollment. I want them here because they will live in dorms directed by Christian women and men, sit in classes under professors who know and love God, attend chapel where they will hear the stories of great saints, do hands-on service projects in the community, and be with friends who share a common faith. Are we perfect? No more than your own local youth group. Can a student lose faith at Trevecca? Yes. But the odds are significantly different than at a non-Christian university.

For my children, no price was worth the risk that they would be attacked during their formative educational years by those who despised their faith. No price was worth placing them in a dorm that violated ethical principles with regularity. No price was worth depriving them of a potential Christian mate.

Yours for the next generation,

Dan Boone

President

333 Murfreesboro Road

Nashville , TN 37210

615/248-1251