It is always a joy to be standing around the church hallway and see some teens sauntering up the stairs to their Sunday school class.  Many medium-sized mainline churches don’t have many youth, and it is a blessing that we have a good handful.  It was a joy this morning as I was sitting in the back of the sanctuary, noticing a few seniors, students that I have nearly watched grow up.  A few I played with in the nursery 15 years ago; my own youngest daughter’s cohort will soon be graduating from high school.  Last year this time—well, most every spring for the last dozen years or so, when my oldest was active in youth group and I knew some of those kids with senioritis—I was in a serious funk about what might become of these older teens, kids I knew and cared about., mostly all heading off to some kind of higher education.  Would they get involved in some campus fellowship group when they went off to college?  Would they find themselves being followers of Christ in their new homes?  Would a local church reach out to them?  Would they develop good new friends that would wisely assist them in discerning the big questions about their future, their major, their callings and careers?  Would they, like most young adults in what developmentalists now call “the critical years”, take up the values of the American way of life or would they choose God’s Kingdom’s ways—upside down values of service and justice and a deeper purpose than upward mobility?  Would they find a spouse that suits them well?  Oh, how we fret about these very young adults.

Of course, the fretting comes to a head for me when we pray over them (if we do at all) or recognize them in some churchly ceremony.  Does your church do something for students graduating from high school?  And does it sound something like God’s radical call to them and a profound blessing upon them, or just a religious veneer over the same kind of stuff they hear at their mawkish high school commencements?  Do we commission them to a new phase of Kingdom living, with fear and trembling, or do we just sprinkle a little civil religion over the hope they’ll be happy and successful?  I hope it is the former. 

And—again, of course—this concern of what message we send to our graduates really comes to a head for me when we give them some sort of graduation gift.  (We are asked this in the store each year, too.)  In our experience some well-intended folks get students a plaque or pen or gifty type knick-knack. (A tie tac?  How do you ask a customer if they are out of their cottonpickin’ minds?)  Most students find these remembrances pretty boring, reinforcing their hunch that church is about as relevant to their lives as, well, their great grandma’s gifts of a monogrammed hankey.  Or, usually better, we give them a book, like a faux leather compilation of Bible promises, as if some 18 year old is just dying to do a concordance type study of every listing of every Bible verse around a certain theme.  Anxious about leaving home?  Wondering what major might make sense or what classes to choose?  I am not so sure they will turn to that handsome little pocket guide, even if they do deep down want to know what God might say to them.  I recall one kid trying to sell such a book back to us; you had to admire not only his ingenuity but his honesty.  “I just wouldn’t use a book like that,” he said.

And so, I am here to announce, as urgently and as plainly as I can, that
we have found the best book to give to college-bound high-school seniors and graduates.  Those in the throes of that “college transition” will enjoy this book which is substantive, interesting, important, and–and this is important—cool looking and fun.  It is called Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life + Learning by Derek Melleby (Baker; $12.99.)  As Steve Garber (one who has studied, and studied with, college students as intentionally as anyone I know, most college professors included) writes of it,  “Make College Count is just right!  What Derek Melleby has done is find a way to come alongside someone on the way to college and offer guidance about things that matter most.” 

THINGS THAT MATTER MOST 
There are several very nice books for college-bound students and they have useful stuff about getting along with room-mates, doing laundry, avoiding the college party scene.   A couple warn about the atheism of their secular professors.  They almost all admonish youngsters to not have sex, to stay in touch with mom, to study hard.  They are fine.  And they are almost all cleverly written and still mostly inane.  This 17 or 18 year old has just completed the first major phase of his or her educational life;  it feels (at that age, at that transition point) like one of the most important moments in their whole life, and they are off to one of the most challenging (and expensive) and life-changing, formative episodes of the rest of their life, and we give them a whimsical guide to doing laundry, and one last warning not to have sex?  This is the best God’s people can do??  This is all we have to say?

Mr. Melleby, in Make College Count, thinks more foundationally; without seeming at all high-minded or overly serious, he winsomely invites students to think about, as Garber says, the things that matter most of all.  There are seven questions that Melleby has discovered to be important for students to ask themselves, most usefully, before they get to State U, or at least early on in their college experience. Derek is increasingly known as a national leader on the psychology and spirituality of the college transition, and he affirms the research that has shown that college is a time where emerging adults will become the person they most likely will be for the rest of their life.  How can they make the most of that time?  What might we ask them to consider, to set them in the right direction?  What are the things they should wrestle with a bit before they jump into the pace of the collegiate experience this fall?

Melleby is a fine and at times funny writer, and after each chapter, where he takes up one of the primal questions, he does an illuminating interview with a young woman or man who has recently been out of college.  He invites them to look back over their shoulder and tell their story, how their identity and sense of calling was shaped by their university years.  These are not composites–they are real interviews. I know almost all of these students. Derek (I’m happy to disclose) is a very good friend and his campus ministry work where he met these students occurred at a campus near here.  I can say that nearly all of these students who are now young alum, have bought books from us, have shared some of their story with me, and I can vouch for their thoughtfulness and integrity.  The interviews are like little sidebars, and they are upbeat and very interesting.  And really helpful.

So, I am confident that this little book—offering a way to discover a path to true success at college and beyond (as it says on the back cover)—is the best thing we’ve seen like this in 30 years of book selling.  There is simply no other book that asks these very
basic sorts of fascinating questions and offers such solid counsel about such good stuff in such a brief, colorful, (and likely to be read) format. 

Here is a part of the table of contents:

What Kind of Person Do You Want to Become?  Following Jesus During the Critical Years
Why Are You Going to College?  Finding Your Place in the Story of God
What Do You Believe? Taking Ownership of Your Faith
Who Are You?  Securing your Identity in Christ
With Whom Shall You Surround Yourself?  Connecting with the Christian Community
How Will You Choose a Major? Putting Your Faith into Action
How Do You Want Your Life to Influence Others?  Leaving a Legacy

And, happily, he selected a few key books and websites that he suggests as “resources for the road ahead.”  He names that great college conference that we help with, the CCOs annual Jubilee Conference, and, yes, he mentions Hearts & Minds BookNotes.  How cool is that?

Derek is employed by the CCO, in partnership with the Center for Parent and Youth Understanding directing their College Transition Initiative.  He co-wrote my favorite book for  college students about taking their faith perspective into the classroom, The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness (a must-have resource for students, presuming a somewhat more intentional reader.)  This illustrates the broadly evangelical perspective he holds, and the exceptionally thoughtful approach he brings, besides his upbeat tone, his funny stories, his great interviews, and the fantastic and artful design of the small hardback.  This is a book you can give to any college-bound student with great confidence that it will be appreciated.

You know the old story of Goldilocks’ bears?  Some books for graduates are too this, some are too that; some too long, some too short, some too heady, some not heady enough.  I can hardly name any that are truly “just right.”  Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life + Learning is the prime example, perfect in tone, fabulous in content, great in appearance and price.  We cannot recommend it any more highly; we think it will be used in the lives of emerging adults at this key transition point in their lives.

Here is a simple video clip of Derek talking about the book, noting some initial feedback he has gotten from young readers, explaining just what he was hoping he would accomplish by providing a resource like this.  It is low-key and a great illustration of Derek’s clear, kind, and insightful style.  I hope you enjoy it.  And then I hope you buy a boat-load of the book.  From us, of course.  We told the publisher we would get behind this, and we look forward to promoting it anywhere we can.  Won’t you help us?  It sure beats the tie tacs.