Today marks the beginning of the end of my year here at Faith ON Campus… and what a fantastic year it has been!

Over the course of the next week I will be counting down the Top 25 most viewed posts of 2011.

I’m so thankful for all of you who have helped to shape my own thinking, and doing, and being in ministry this year!

I hope you will be blessed, encouraged, inspired and challenged by this look back on the year that was… at Faith ON Campus!

SO, without further delay, here are posts 21-25 on this year’s Top 25 list:

25. The Senior Year Transition: How Are We Preparing Our For Life After College? | Erica Young Reitz

Even for the best and brightest, the transition from college to life after college is arguably one of the most difficult transitions college students will face up to this point in their lives. The “real world” confronts recent grads with new challenges on multiple levels…

 

24. The Hook-Up Culture & Trending Virginity on Campus

I grieve for this generation of young people who participate in this broken relational system, and even believe it to be the only option, especially given that they appear to be unaware of the mounting baggage that they will carry forward — possibly into marriage — and the challenges it will produce.

 

23. 5 Ways to Tune-Up Your Social Media Strategy Before School Starts | Brian Barela

Perhaps you have a website that has not been touched in two (or three) years. Or a Facebook group with 800 students who have already graduated. Let me offer five quick tune ups that will feel the same as putting those old shoes in the box and walking out with new ones.

 

22. A Good Theology of Bad Words | Rachel Foose

Because I believe that Jesus came to redeem all of creation, and that there is not a part of creation that is not apart from His sovereignty, I have no fear of “bad” words anymore. As I have explored the deep reaches of my brokenness and sin I have come to times in my life where even in prayer I have no other words to describe my great pain, confusion, or frustration other than words classified as “bad.”

 

 

21. On Helping College Students to Identify Their Calling [A Little Sooner]

As I sat in our kitchen yesterday, sipping my coffee and listening to the radio, I was surprised to hear a news report about how little today’s college students are actually learning.

Some of the numbers the reporter quoted were staggering:

45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during the first two years of college, 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” over four years of college, and those students who do show improvements tend to show only modest improvements. Students improved on average only 0.18 standard deviations over the first two years of college and…

And there you have it!

This year’s countdown is officially underway!

I hope you’ll make it back over the course of the next week (and following weeks) to check out the rest of this year’s Top 25!

Merry Christmas my friends!!