As Washington-area students report back to school, the stress seems enough from algebra and English, SATs, college essays and where to sit in the school cafeteria. Add to that their issues often hidden – the relationships, the peer pressures – and opportunities abound for dangerous behaviors. Shepherd Smith, 65, founded the Institute for Youth Development in 1996 to help youth combat those pressures, and choose healthy lifestyles. He spoke with The Washington Examiner about the faith that drives his desire to nurture tomorrow’s leaders.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I am a committed Christian. We come from the evangelical community, and it is what guides our lives. The ability to pray, and to seek guidance in all that we do is very reassuring. We’ve had plenty of ups and downs, and our faith has allowed us to keep an even keel. It is foundational to how we live.
Did anyone or any event especially influence your faith, or the path you’ve taken in life?
I didn’t accept Christ into my life until I was an adult – until I was about 35 years old. Prior to that I was interested in what I could achieve for myself. The great American dream of a high income and its accompanying things was really what drove me. In my mid-30s, I had a major crisis in my life that stemmed from some bad business decisions. My father, who had met the Lord some six or seven years earlier, dealing with a bout of cancer, had been after me about faith for some time. And when I hit bottom, I did turn to Christ, and that opened my eyes. It shows, I suppose, that one needs to give thanks for the bad times as well as the good times.
Is it dangerous to raise children without faith, or without a church community?
In a word, yes. Certainly faith and a church community help protect young people from harm.
What’s interesting is that going back to when we started in the mid-1990s, academic institutions were not studying the effects of faith, and there were few instances in the literature that would support its value. But in 1997, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health showed that faith was a protective factor for kids, and since then many more studies have been done. Clearly, faith is beneficial to kids’ wellbeing.
You can learn certain values in sports, or other organizations, about respecting others, and about being honest, and not cheating. But in none of those do you have a higher power with the authority that is found in God and in Scripture. That leaves a more indelible imprint on young people than can be found in other activities. Churches must involve their youth in the whole body of the church, and that’s more than having a place for them to worship while the adults attend the regular service. It means outreach to involve youth throughout the week, the month and the year. It means having more youth involved in church activities led by church leaders, and really paying attention to the young people as they grow in their faith.
Should governments take a larger role in promoting healthy behaviors among youth?
I think the most important thing is for the government to recognize the role of parents, and to act in ways supportive of two-parent families. Sometimes well-intentioned programs for kids may not be in the kids’ best interest it they’re taught values inconsistent with what parents would teach at home.
In addition, the adolescent health study showed that school size, rather than class size, is an important factor in youths’ outcomes. About 900 students in a school seemed ideal, and when schools grew larger than 1,200, there was very little school connectedness. Large schools simply are too big for many children to feel part of a community there, and as a result the benefits of community are lost. The government could do a lot in that area.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
At my core is Christ. It’s trying to understand what Scripture says, and using that to guide how I live. – Leah Fabel
