Trace Hamiter had been watching it happen for years. Students would graduate high school, leave their churches, and arrive at Auburn University. Within months, they drifted. Not because they renounced their faith, but because no one had helped them find their footing before the drift began.
Hamiter served as College Pastor at First Baptist Church Opelika in 2012 when he decided to confront this college faith crisis. Working with local churches and campus ministries across the Auburn area, he launched The Oaks Retreat. The Oaks Retreat offered a collaborative, multi-church weekend designed to connect incoming freshmen and transfer students to Christ-centered community.
The immediate results were more than he expected.
“Unity deepened within the body of Christ and, most importantly, incoming students quickly found Christ-centered community, decreasing the likelihood of them falling away from their faith during college,” Hamiter said. “We also saw growing numbers of students come to know Christ through the retreat and enter into natural discipleship relationships with the upperclassmen serving as counselors.”
Engaging students with deep community reversed the drift. As the retreat grew, Hamiter began to wonder whether it could work on other campuses. He decided to give his full attention to the retreat and to the question of what it might look like to plant similar efforts on campuses across the country.
A quote from Dawson Trotman, evangelist and founder of The Navigators, gave language to what Hamiter sensed. Trotman challenged people to ask: what are you doing that someone else could do, and what is no one doing that you could do for the glory of God?
“It’s not that no one else could do this on other campuses,” Hamiter said. “It’s that no one else was doing it, and I wanted to help provide it wherever the Lord opened doors.”
Hamiter credits Southern Seminary, where he earned his Master of Divinity in Great Commission Studies in 2010, with forming the kind of thinking that made that leap imaginable.
“Southern is a launching pad for leaders,” he said. “There is a culture of mission and Kingdom-minded strategic thinking. Southern challenges you not only to think about where you can serve in ministry, but also to dream about what is possible and what you can do to further the mission of God in our nation and around the world.”
That vision now has a name and a footprint. The Oaks Collaborative has grown from one retreat at Auburn to 25 retreats across the eastern half of the United States. Now the Oaks Collaborative continues the work of spreading awareness to graduating high school seniors who need to know these retreats exist before they pack up and leave home.
The statistic Hamiter keeps returning to is the one that first troubled him: nearly seven out of ten students who were actively involved in church during high school fall away from their faith in college.
“Our audacious goal is not only to change that statistic, but also to reshape the narrative surrounding the college experience,” he said. “We want college campuses across the nation to become places of Kingdom expansion and spiritual vibrancy rather than environments defined by sin and spiritual neglect.”
Six years ago, Hamiter said he could not have imagined 25 retreats. He is careful not to predict where the next six years lead. But the direction is clear.
“The Lord has given us a vision to continue expanding these retreats across the country,” he said. “We carry the hope of seeing tangible spiritual change on college campuses nationwide.”
Youth leaders can learn more about connecting graduating seniors to Christ-centered community at theoakscollaborative.com/youthleaders.