Rick Mattson's Blog, page 12
April 13, 2019
Explicitly Jesus
Not long ago I was about to hop an Uber cab in Detroit when I got a prompting from the Lord. He seemed to be saying, “I want you to talk about Jesus in the first ten seconds of this ride.” Ten seconds isn’t a lot of time. The driver greeted me outside his car and stowed my bags in ...
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April 7, 2019
Riseaboveability: Do You Have It?
I don’t often write devotional blogs. But the topic of elevating ourselves above the fray of life’s troubles seems important enough to make an exception. I call it riseaboveability. College students don’t have it, much. And I’m afraid I don’t model it for them very well. They rise and fall according to the latest fortunes of class assignments, GPA volatility, ...
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March 31, 2019
The Decline of Mental Health on Campus: One Small Antidote
Counseling centers on college campuses are packed out these days. Students are waiting in long lines to visit a counselor to talk about anxiety, depression, suicide, sexual trauma, substance abuse, and more.* I’m not a counselor but I do offer a listening ear. I hear a lot about medical issues, family conflicts, broken friendships, and academic pressure. And more than ...
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March 18, 2019
The 90-10 Rule (part 4 of 4)
In my prior post I suggested two main causes for students’ diminished participation in the church: ecclesiology, and caricatures from campus (the focus of this post). On campus, the dominant portrayal of the church is that it’s guilty of being a historic oppressor and, in modern times, of excluding persons of alternative lifestyles. My response is to propose a 90-10 ...
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The post The 90-10 Rule (part 4 of 4) appeared first on Rick Mattson Outreach Ministry.
The 90-10 Rule
In my prior post I suggested two main causes for students’ diminished participation in the church: ecclesiology, and caricatures from campus (the focus of this post). On campus, the dominant portrayal of the church is that it’s guilty of being a historic oppressor and, in modern times, of excluding persons of alternative lifestyles. My response is to propose a 90-10 ...
Read More
The post The 90-10 Rule appeared first on Rick Mattson Outreach Ministry.
How Students Got This Way (part 3 of 4)
In my last post I shared my observations about Christian students’ lack of commitment to the church. How did they come to this position? I offer the following thoughts with a bit of caution. See what you think: 1. We forgot our ecclesiology (theology of the church). A strong ecclesiology says, in effect, there is no true Christian spirituality outside ...
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The post How Students Got This Way (part 3 of 4) appeared first on Rick Mattson Outreach Ministry.
How Students Got This Way
In my last post I shared my observations about Christian students’ lack of commitment to the church. How did they come to this position? I offer the following thoughts with a bit of caution. See what you think: 1. We forgot our ecclesiology (theology of the church). A strong ecclesiology says, in effect, there is no true Christian spirituality outside ...
Read More
The post How Students Got This Way appeared first on Rick Mattson Outreach Ministry.
March 16, 2019
Understanding College Students: Church Attendance (part 2 of 4)
In my prior post I did a flyover of the collegiate landscape, mainly in terms of atheism and agnosticism. What I meant to suggest is that, overall, campus culture is quite secular. As for religion, it’s allowed to exist as an exception to the prevailing rule of secularism, and especially as a concession forced by higher education’s stated commitment to ...
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The post Understanding College Students: Church Attendance (part 2 of 4) appeared first on Rick Mattson Outreach Ministry.
Understanding College Students: Church Attendance
In my prior post I did a flyover of the collegiate landscape, mainly in terms of atheism and agnosticism. What I meant to suggest is that, overall, campus culture is quite secular. As for religion, it’s allowed to exist as an exception to the prevailing rule of secularism, and especially as a concession forced by higher education’s stated commitment to ...
Read More
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March 14, 2019
College Students: What Makes them Tick (part 1 of 4)
Church people often ask me, “What’s happening on college campuses these days? What are students like?” I usually start my reply at the macro level, and talk about atheism, because along with its softer cousin, agnosticism, it’s the most dominant view on campus. Actually, there are two kinds of atheism in the university world: modern and postmodern. Generally speaking, moderns ...
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