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New Guide Helps Students Put College Life in Biblical Context

by Jenni Parker
December 9, 2004

(AgapePress) - The author of a book designed to help Christian students hang onto their faith during the sometimes turbulent and often spiritually-challenging college years has written a new study guide to be used as a companion to that resource, or a stand-alone guide to surviving the college years with faith intact.

Although Abbie Smith graduated from Atlanta's Emory University in May 2003, she remains involved in the college ministry, largely for the same reasons that she wrote her first book Keeping Your Faith in College. After experiencing the spiritual riptide of transitioning to college life herself, Smith says she felt called to help other students like herself "avoid the temptations and pitfalls of college life while developing a healthy and more mature faith."

Now the recent college grad-turned-author has compiled a new resource for Christians on campus, the Keeping Your Faith in College Study Guide. This eleven-week, 180-page introspective resource allows the reader to put issues and questions arising out of college life into a scriptural context for prayerful exploration.

In Keeping Your Faith in College, Smith offered a compilation of real-life stories from students on the eye-opening and sometimes faith-shaking experiences they encountered in college. However, the book was designed to give encouragement and insight, not necessarily to provide an application-based outline for growth. Over time, however, as readers responded to her book, the author began to recognize the need for a more practical and scripture-focused key to understanding the stories shared in it, and a guide to help readers apply the principles biblically to their own college experience.

Each study in the guide includes three sections and themes organized around a chapter of the book, along with its affiliated verse. However, the studies are not ordered or organized in such a way as to depend on one another; nor are they meant to be dependent on reading the original book.

Although the Keeping Your Faith in College Study Guide specifically targets small-group environments, Smith says it can also work well if used individually or in the classroom setting. "It's unique in that it's specifically written to the college stage of life," she adds, "and so it resonates with audiences of high school seniors and college students alike."

Through her involvement with Emory's InterVarsity chapter as well with a local congregation, North Point Community Church, Smith says she enjoyed both spiritual growth and an increased desire for the Lord during her college years. She encourages other young believers heading to college to seek out the kind of support and insight she received from fellow believers, and offers her book and study guide, available from www.keepingyourfaith.com, as additional resources to supplement the Christian college student's support system.

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