Anonymous wrote:I'm a conservative Christian, I went to Young Life events 2 or 3 times with a girlfriend (20 years ago), and I know the Young Life leadership in my town. Don't bother with it. It's thin soup at best.
My brother and were national class athletes in high school. Someone at YL figured it was a good thing to kidnap us to go to a Young Life meeting. We weren't really kidnapped as we knew what was going on and we liked the girl who brought us, a future doctor. She lost her older sister to cancer so my brother and I went out the way to treat her well. Couldn't pierce the sadness.
The YL meeting itself was boring. Despite having a dreadful home life, we were excellent students and were used to inductive thinking. There was none of that taking place. Can't say whether it was a cult because we didn't stay long enough. Plus we were mentally tough kids and this crowd didn't fit that mold. My single mother insisted we treat our peers well though. No hard feelings as we left but we still felt concerned over the girl who lost her sister.
My brother went to a D1 athletics powerhouse where he was an All American and 4.0 student. The women's team had a full complement of scholarships. To a one all of them were members of FCA. It was necessary to survive socially. None of them performed at a Power 4 level, and while there are people of faith who are top athletes, he believed FCA was at his school was a cult, and that cult inhibited performance. Significantly, the coach never addressed it. I saw these women at competitions and they were mostly attractive and nice, but their attraction to the cult made them undatable. When God excuses any outcome it doesn't work. An All American athlete from another nearby school liked my brother, in part because she could see his future as an excellent student. She was an ordinary church goer though and it scared my brother away. I think he shouldn't have dismissed her. Facts and behavior matter.