The university world can be a confusing place, filled with many competing worldviews and perspectives. Beliefs and values are challenged at every turn. But Christians need not slip into the morass of easy relativism.
In Mind Your Faith: A Student’s Guide to Thinking and Living Well David Horner restores sanity to the collegiate experience with this guide to thinking and flourishing as a Christian. Carefully exploring how ideas work, he gives you essential tools for thinking contextually, thinking logically and thinking worldviewishly. Here Horner meets you where faith and reason intersect and explores how to handle doubts, with an eye toward not just thinking clearly but also living faithfully. This is the book every college freshman needs to read. Don’t leave home without it.
Editorial Reviews
Mind Your Faith is an excellent resource for any pastor or campus minister seeking to help their students understand why their faith is reasonable and can be trusted to guide their lives. Although written with the young Christian in mind, this book is applicable to any age, stage of life, or belief system. Wherever you stand, this book will have a profound impact on your understanding of faith and its impact on your life.
Lindy Tilus, Enrichment, Fall 2012
This book is a deep, scholarly discussion of the intellectual and moral challenges that colleges’ intellectual experiences pose to Christian faith.
Brian Simmons, The Christian Chronicle, May 2012
Mind Your Faith is a feast of insights about thinking, believing and living well. Page after page one finds warm, personable, intelligent reflections about how to flourish well in the contemporary milieu. Horner provides a unique combination of spiritual formation and Christian thought, and I know of no other book that does this so well. It should be read not only by college students but also by pastors and laypersons who want to flourish with a confident faith for our times.
J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University, and author of The God Question
Dr. Horner brings a wealth of experience to this wise and winsome operating manual for godly Christian engagement on the college campus. Colleges and universities shape culture more than any other contemporary institution, and souls are saved or lost there on a daily basis. This clear, incisive and enjoyable book will equip students to develop a Christian orientation to this challenging arena that will serve them not only as they pursue their degrees but also for a lifetime of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
Douglas Groothuis, professor, Denver Seminary, and author of Christian Apologetics
More than just enabling you to sidestep the many pitfalls awaiting young Christians who enter academia, Mind Your Faith will equip you to flourish at the university in your mind, faith, and character. The clarity with which David Horner envisions a thoughtful Christian presence in the university’s marketplace of ideas is what will make this an essential read for my four children before leaving high school.
Brent Cunningham, Teaching Pastor, Timberline Church, Fort Collins, CO
There are many excellent books on the subject of preparing students for college, but few written with the same passion, clarity and genuine concern for the life of the mind of a college student. David Horner’s Mind Your Faith helps us understand the delicate relationship between faith and reason; that behavior follows belief and doctrine informs duty. Parents, this is the best high school graduation gift you can give to your student. Student, this is a must-read because there’s simply too much at risk. Lose faith, lose your mind, and vice versa. Neither of which is good.
Harry Edwards, founder and director of Apologetics.com, Inc.
Many Christians heading off to college are simply unprepared for the intellectual, spiritual and moral challenges that await them. Confronted with new ideas, strong desires and relational pressures, it’s not surprising that so many drift away from their childhood faith. But it doesn’t have to be this way! In this timely book, David Horner offers students a compelling vision of what it means to follow Jesus Christ with a mature faith during the college years and beyond. High school graduates need to read this book!
Jonathan Morrow, author of Welcome to College and founder of www.thinkchristianly.org
This is the book I have been waiting for. Mind Your Faith is a much-needed resource to help young people flourish as followers of Jesus in the university. I wish I had this book before I went to college! I will be personally recommending this to the many students I get to work with every day.
Sean McDowell, educator, speaker and author of Ethix: Being Bold in a Whatever World
Secular universities have not only forfeited the mission of building students’ wisdom, faith and character, they often work in ways contrary to these goals. David Horner offers sage advice, drawn from personal and professional experience, about how Christian students can recognize and counter these challenges and emerge from the college experience as wise Christ-followers. Parents of university-bound students should buy two copies: one for their student and one for themselves.
Steve Wilkens, professor of philosophy, Azusa Pacific University, and author of Hidden Worldviews
Medieval cartographers, mapping the college years, might well have warned, ‘Here be dragons!’ David Horner knows the territory–and how to tame the dragons–and has offered us a wonderful guidebook. Based on his extensive experience as a minister to college students and as a college professor, Horner understands the challenges Christian students face as they enter college. But what sets his guidebook apart from many others is his unifying vision of what makes for genuine human flourishing. Mind, faith and character stand or fall together. Any student who follows Horner through these pages will have the tools to flourish in college and emerge with mind, faith and character greatly strengthened. I plan to give this book to several high schoolers I know, and I recommend you do the same.
Garrett J. DeWeese, author of Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult and Doing Philosophy as a Christian
How can the development of a faithful mind and a mindful faith lead to a virtuous character? This is not the first question Christian students are likely to ask their university to answer. But it should be. David Horner helps students–young and old–seek an answer that is based on sound reasoning and deep, faithful personal commitment to Christ. May this book live long and prosper, leading believers to thoughtful, faithful and virtuous lives.
James W. Sire, author, The Universe Next Door
The opportunities for a reflective Christian student in the university are nearly endless. Mind your Faith is a captivating resource that will help prospective and current students engage more carefully both with their faith and with the world of the university. Horner’s analysis and applications are crystal clear and are born out of decades of experience in the academy. Every Christian student and parent ought to reflect carefully on this book.
Gregory E. Ganssle, Rivendell Institute at Yale
