reaching the lost &/or losing the reached?

Here's Michael Horton in Touchstone-- a brief quote from a long but interesting symposium of six prominent evangelicals, "assessing their movement"...

Ironically, while Evangelicalism celebrates reaching the lost, it is losing the reached.

Of course, this takes us back to the Reveal study, the Great Commission, and the need to emphasize discipleship rather than conversion and church activity.

This also relates to the common phenomenon of young women and men "losing their faith" in college. The onus is usually put on malevolent college professors who exert undue influence over Johnny and Jenny. Secondarily, at most, there is a burden and a call to parents to better equip their children.

The primary factor is the latter. By definition, if Johnny and Jenny are well-equipped, then the college professor is unlikely to mess with them very much-- intentionally or not. The most likely explanation is that J&J were not believers in the first place or possessed a shallow faith. J&J might have been active in their youth group and "nice kids", but outside of parental influence, without true ownership of an individual faith, the results may not be a pretty picture.

External conformity to religious practices and moral norms is neither the goal of Christian faith nor of competent biblical parenting.