Equipping Your Student With Christian Community
How can parents equip their young adults with Christian community?
Friends influence friends.
It’s a demonstrated reality that we are all intuitively aware of. The people we hang out with influence us, for better or for worse.
As young adults step out in the world their circle of influence widens. They also come into contact with more influences.
The parent’s role is to help their child launch into life without being influenced and turned aside by negative worldly influences. But stifling your student from the outside world won’t work either. To raise a well-rounded young adult who is prepared to engage the culture intelligently and confidently, without being negatively influenced by it is a high task.
The Importance of Christian Community For Young Adults
That’s why helping your student develop Christian community in their post-high school years is so essential. This is especially true if their high school friends are beginning to ship out to colleges and universities.
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If your student has decided that college is not for them, they are most likely making a wise decision. There is some benefit from attending college but oftentimes, the cons outweigh the pros. Debt, negative peer pressure, and intellectual attacks on their faith are just some of the problems with a traditional college experience. So if your child has opted out of traditional higher ed, they have probably saved themselves a lot of time, money, and headache.
But the problem of community persists. How will your children find solid like-minded friends if their friends are off attending school?
Unbound’s Community Approach
This is where the Unbound community has come in and blessed numerous young adults. Not only is the Unbound community a thriving and healthy community of Christian young people, it is all centered around an alternative to college that our students can bond over.
Students in Unbound’s Ascend program join a team with seven to ten other students. This serves as their community “homebase”. These teams operate under the leadership of a highly trained coach who leads the team in encouraging one another, supporting each other in projects, and peer coaching.
In-Person Connection
If you were to conclude that Ascend’s flexible remote environment lends itself only to online community you would be mistaken. Our students engage live with their teams, and the Ascend community as a whole, three times per year at minimum at our live student events. These events happen throughout the country: Michigan, the Gulf South, and Colorado, allowing students to literally travel the country with their friends during the program.
While these official live events are key elements of the Ascend program, it doesn’t stop there. Many students have met up unofficially with their friends from the program and have organized trips together.
A strong community of like-minded young people is available to your son or daughter. This community takes influence seriously. Young adults in the Ascend community are exceptional leaders who meet and exceed high expectations.
As such, it’s important that students who join Ascend contribute to this community. With numerous student leadership opportunities available, your child can engage in a community and influence it for good.
An Example
Take APEX for instance. This is the first live event of the Ascend year and it takes place in August. This event is entirely planned, organized, and executed by students. The students book the speakers. The activities are led by students.
APEX is just one example that demonstrates that the Ascend community is built for and by students. This community is often the highest-rated element of the program experience for our students.
Conclusion
If your child is feeling “left behind” as their peers head off to college to get saddled with debt and a useless degree, get them plugged into the Ascend community by enrolling them in the program. In addition to community, they will also receive expert leadership training, high-level certificates, professional and life skills training, project-based education, and a job guarantee.
Learn more about Ascend by scheduling a free consultation today.
Jace Bower is a Copywriter for Unbound. An Unbound alumnus, he has experienced firsthand the powerful advantages of doing college differently and participating in an intentional community. Jace graduated with his bachelor’s degree in History in 2016 and has worked in restaurant management and marketing since then. He also served on the Unbound Student Cabinet in 2019.
The author of two books and a semi-regular blogger, Jace can often be found doing something with words. When he’s not, chances are he’s reading about theology, listening to music, or playing pool or tennis with his wife Shannon in their Virginia home.
