While your students won’t forsake their faith or the values you’ve taught them, they will certainly grow and change. And that’s a good thing.
College is a time for students to try new activities, like sports, drama, student leadership, or service organizations. It’s a time to develop new interests and passions, like working with people who have disabilities or translating German Reformation texts. It’s a time to grow stronger in their faith and to see life in new ways.
While exploring these new depths and distances, your students will develop a clearer view of who they are and how they’ll use the gifts God has given them. The answers they arrive at might not be the answers you had anticipated. But that’s okay. It’s all part of the process of individuation—growing up and separating themselves from you, taking everything you’ve given them and becoming individuals who will make their own distinctive marks on God’s world.
That’s something to celebrate!