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3 Shifts to Help Students Get Unstuck
As pastors, we must recognize that these students need both practical equipping and pastoral care to overcome these challenges.
If your church plant is located near a college campus, you’ve probably noticed that, more than ever, the average student steps onto campus wrestling with identity issues, anxiety, compromise with sin, shame, isolation, doubt, distraction, and burnout. These issues keep this generation of students stuck in the mud and struggling to gain traction in their walks with God. Even well-intentioned Christian students often find themselves overwhelmed by the spiritual and practical demands of life.
As pastors, we must recognize that these students need both practical equipping and pastoral care to overcome these challenges. As we inspire them with the God-sized vision of transforming their campus and reaching the nations, we must also build a deep, gospel-centered foundation that enables them to live free, joyful, and Spirit-filled lives.
Let’s look at three shifts we can make to help students get unstuck from what holds them back.
1. From Application Centered to Gospel Centered
I am a huge fan of weaving practical application into all our ministry environments, and I am a strong advocate of what some call “obedience-based discipleship.” In other words, instead of merely filling people’s minds with biblical knowledge, one of the best ways to help someone grow in Christ is to start obeying what they already know. Simple tools, spiritual disciplines, and reproducible strategies have always been my go-to approach when discipling students. I still believe these should be the bread and butter of the discipleship training every church or ministry provides.
And we must also be intentional about grounding students deeply in the gospel and their identity in Christ.
A student can know how to share their faith, lead a Bible study, and make disciples, but if they are not anchored in the gospel, they will eventually struggle to sustain a healthy and fruitful walk with God. It’s not either-or; it’s both-and.
While weaving practical application into our teaching is essential, may we never apologize for slowing down long enough to explore the depths of the gospel and its implications for the issues holding students back. If we focus only on obedience and never on gospel identity, we can easily slip into legalism or discouragement. God wants us to be worshipers before we are workers!
The more rooted a young person is in the gospel, the more they will naturally (actually, supernaturally) forsake sin and develop a humble, confident, and resilient faith. Theologian J. I. Packer put it well when he said, “We never move on from the gospel; we move on in the gospel.”
Likewise, Tim Keller wrote, “The gospel is not just the ABCs but the A to Z of the Christian life. It is inaccurate to think the gospel is what saves non-Christians, and then Christians mature by trying hard to live according to biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our minds, hearts, and lives by believing the gospel more and more deeply as life goes on (see Rom 12:1 – 2; Phil 1:6; 3:13–14).”
Practically, for your church plant, this could mean devoting a series to exploring how the gospel addresses issues like anxiety or doubt, or it could mean studying foundational texts on identity like Ephesians in small groups. Even though these issues are common among college students, others in your church plant will be struggling with them too, and these series can be helpful for the entire church body.
Our friends at The Salt Company take thousands of students through a ten-week Gospel 101 course each year, seeing many students saved, established, and revived. The combination of an in-depth exploration of the gospel and practical training provides a potent formula that God is using to ignite movements on campuses across the nation! A similar study could have a great impact on your church and community.
2. From Low Expectations to Compelling Vision
The churches and ministries that consistently raise up the healthiest and most fruitful laborers are not those that pamper and protect students. While many are struggling with significant spiritual and mental health challenges, the answer is not an inward-focused ministry. There is nothing better for a student than embracing the demands of discipleship and God’s mission. Often, the answer is not less challenge but greater purpose.
After traveling to India and seeing our friends who are experiencing a church-planting movement, I’m convinced we should empower believers to start laboring even sooner. Last December, my Father, brothers, and I led a training for 60 fired-up Indian students and encouraged them to start groups among their peers. They immediately began applying what we taught, and already they have launched 40 groups and are seeing many come to Christ! After traveling to India and seeing our friends who are experiencing a church-planting movement, I’m convinced we should empower believers to start laboring even sooner.
You only need to be one step ahead in order to share Christ and make disciples. New believers are often the most effective people in the world at sharing the gospel. Why? Because they have a raw passion for Christ, the most non-Christian friends, and they don’t know any better than to boldly share what God has done in their lives!
A key to movement is empowering disciples to make disciples as quickly as possible while still providing encouragement and coaching. Empowering is one of the 4 top practices of a movement leader! In our discipleship school here on Oahu, we encourage students to find someone they can teach the discipleship lesson to the very next week after we teach it to them. I am convinced that one reason many ministries aren’t seeing multiplication is that they have bought into the myth that someone has to have “arrived” before they can start sharing Christ and discipling others. Rather than waiting until they feel fully prepared, we should give them opportunities to put their faith into practice from day one.
Yes, we should exercise wisdom and caution when selecting those in higher levels of leadership. But far too many ministries end up smothering the fire of new believers when that very zeal could have led to whole groups of people coming to Christ!
The best person to reach a student with the gospel is another student. There is no better way for a student to get unstuck from what is holding them back than to get their eyes off themselves and onto Christ and His mission.
I am not advocating for imposing strict expectations or legalistic standards. I am simply challenging you to cast a God-sized vision for their lives and invite them into the adventure of following Jesus with reckless abandon.
We should never apologize for asking too much of students; we should apologize for not asking enough!
3. From Spiritual Highs to Sanctification
As I travel and speak on campuses across the nation, I get to see firsthand how God is moving among students. There is no doubt that sparks of revival are breaking out across the nation!
While the effects of revival are thrilling, I have also noticed a trend of students sharing dramatic before-and-after testimonies, communicating as if they no longer struggle. With any movement of God, there is always a danger of excesses and subtle doctrinal drift.
I have noticed a growing number of TikTok preachers who are engaging and well-spoken but desperately need a basic hermeneutics course and would benefit from an overview of systematic theology.
In my attempt to keep up with what students are learning from, I am encountering everything from Antinomianism to extreme versions of Keswick “Higher life” theology. One influencer with millions of followers even went so far as to teach that we do not need to pray “forgive us our sins” in the Lord’s prayer.
When students embrace an unbiblical model of sanctification that promotes perfection over progress, it can easily lead to discouragement, hypocrisy, or doubt. Young people need to be taught that the pursuit of holiness is a lifelong process filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, and a daily battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
I praise God for all the powerful encounters with the Holy Spirit students are having, as many experience miraculous, supernatural breakthroughs in their walk with God. God can do more in a moment than we can do in a lifetime, so let’s ask for and expect Him to do even more!
We need encounters with the Spirit, but those moments must be followed by the everyday Spirit-empowered process of sanctification. Otherwise, the fruit of revival may be short-lived. Revival needs tracks to run on, and disciples must engage in the ordinary means of grace God has provided for their ongoing spiritual growth and maturity.
Our goal is not merely to see students experience a spiritual high for a season. We want them to be thriving in their walks with Jesus fifty years from now!
That burden is what led me to write a brand new Bible study for college students called Thrive: Cultivating a Faith That Endures. The goal is to help students discover how the gospel addresses the most common issues they face and shapes every area of life through the lifelong process of sanctification.
The aim is not merely to address problems but to cast a compelling vision for a life fully leveraged for God’s glory. When students embrace their identity in Christ and actively pursue sanctification, it cultivates a life marked by confidence, faith, peace, consecration, connection, discipline, and zeal for the glory of God.
The good news is that young people are hungry for God’s Word and weary of gimmicks, trends, and quick fixes. There has never been a better time to roll up our sleeves and raise up the next generation of laborers for God’s kingdom.
