Who We Are

Young Life College is a program of Young Life especially for college students. While Young Life has been involved in the lives of college students since the mission’s early days, an organized outreach on college campuses is relatively new.

What We Do

• Young Life College is a program of Young Life especially for college students. While Young Life has been involved in the lives of college students since the mission’s early days, an organized outreach on college campuses is relatively new.

 

• Today’s college students are catapulted into adulthood as soon as they arrive on campus. They’re away from home, trying on newfound independence and wondering where and with whom they belong. While they’re still navigating their way through an extended adolescence, they are confronted with major life decisions about careers, relationships and their view of the world and their place in it.

 

• In the midst of it all, college students who’ve been on a faith journey begin an uphill climb. The familiarities of Young Life club, Campaigners, leaders and church are now fond memories, but no longer part of a comfortable weekly routine. As the past fades, diversions of the college culture emerge. Alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, pressures to achieve and succeed, as well as alternative lifestyles, can take over the lives of college students.

 

• Although the college culture can be an easy place to get lost, Young Life staff and leaders are experts in seeking out those who have wandered far away. Through relationships built on unconditional love, Young Life helps kids find their way back. Young Life is passionate about being involved in the lives of all college students — from those who are trying to grow in their young faith to those who’ve never considered God before.

 

• Young Life College has some elements similar to traditional Young Life, but it's tailored for college students. There are opportunities to be with their peers to learn about God, to be involved in small groups and to simply hang out and have fun together.

 

• The mission of Young Life identifies colleges and universities where Young Life College will be complementary to the other campus ministries. Young Life College also wants to identify adults in those communities who want to reach college students in this way. Young Life College leadership may be comprised of local adults, as well as older students who are interested in sharing their faith with others.

What We Believe

• We the members of the Young Life mission – trustees, staff, instructors at Young Life schools and volunteers – join together in our affirmation of the following articles and our central purpose of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and introducing adolescents everywhere to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith.

 

• The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, being given by divine inspiration, are the Word of God, the final and supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.

 

• In the Scriptures, God reveals Himself as the living and true God, Creator of all things. Perfect in love and righteous in all His ways, this one God exists eternally as a Trinity of persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

• God made man and woman in His image that He might have fellowship with us. Being estranged from God by our disobedience, we are, as sinful people, incapable of a right relationship to God apart from divine grace.

 

• The only Mediator between God and all human beings is Jesus Christ our Lord, God’s eternal Son, who as man fully shared and fulfilled our humanity in a life of perfect obedience.

 

• By His death in our place, Jesus revealed the divine love and upheld divine justice, removing our guilt and reconciling us to God. Having risen bodily from the dead and ascended into heaven, He rules as Lord over all and intercedes for us as our Great High Priest.

 

• The Holy Spirit, through the proclamation of the Gospel, renews our hearts, persuading us to repent of our sins and confess Jesus as Lord. By the same Spirit we are led to trust in divine mercy, whereby we are forgiven all our sins, justified by faith through the merit of Christ our Savior, adopted into God’s family as His children and enabled so to live in the world that all people may see our good works and the Gospel of grace at work in our lives and glorify our Father who is in heaven.

 

• God, by His Word and Spirit, calls us as sinful people into the fellowship of Christ’s body. Thus He creates the one holy, catholic and apostolic church, united in the bonds of love, endowed with the gifts of the Spirit and summoned by Christ to preach the Gospel and to administer the sacraments, to carry on the ministry of reconciliation, to relieve human need and to strive for social justice.

 

• God’s redemptive purpose will be consummated by the return of Christ to raise the dead, judge all people and establish His glorious kingdom. Those who are apart from Christ shall be eternally separated from God’s presence, but the redeemed shall live and reign with Him forever.