It’s 12:45 on Sunday afternoon, and I’m rushing to get to my 12:30 Sunday School class. As I gather kids on my way to the classroom, I see one of my older “kids” just standing around. “Why aren’t you upstairs in the adult discipleship class?”
“I don’t know.” Or at least those were the words I’d say his grunt translated to. “I just can’t relate to the stuff they talk about.”
“Wanna come to the teen class?”
“I’m 20 years old.”
“I know how old you are. You can help me teach.”
He doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t want to teach and ask questions. He wants to explore his own questions, but he feels he has nowhere to go. Can I blame him? Can I really expect him to make the jump from teen classes to adult classes? Can young adults really play “smell-my-feet” one week then discuss the role free will plays in predestination the next—all because they had a birthday or graduated from high school?
My first inclination is to fix the problem by getting all the young adults his age into a small group, and voila! Problem solved. But that doesn’t take into account all of the issues surrounding the college-age students who don’t go away to college or don’t go to college at all.
Feeling Left Behind
It’s tough on those who aren’t going away to college. They celebrate with their peers at graduation celebrations. They listen to people such as myself encourage them to write letters and send things to their friends away from home. They listen as their peers return for breaks and share their new experiences. They attend age-appropriate recreational activities organized during breaks, because, after all, that’s when all the college kids are home. Again and again, they listen to the favorite phrase of a first-year college student: “It’s different when you’re away at college.”
No wonder they feel left behind, like they’re not as good as those who went away to college. A student epitomized this when she said, “I listen to all these stories from people in college, and I’m happy for them; but it makes me feel like I’m not smart enough to hang out with them.” It didn’t matter that she was in college, too. To her, if you don’t leave home, it doesn’t count.
I want to affirm those who made the decision to stay local, but often my actions fall short. I say there are other options besides college, but then I show them all the college catalogs in our library with no real talk about alternatives. I say that some students may thrive better if they stay local and have the support of their families, but there’s little we provide for their spiritual growth here. So, while the returning students can talk about their new experiences and their campus ministries, the ones who were “left behind” have been attending the same meetings and doing the same activities, often feeling they have nothing new to share.
Not Fitting In
Students who stay home soon realize they can’t fit in the way they once did. If a student goes away, experiences new things, and returns a changed person, she can understand why she doesn’t fit. It isn’t any less frustrating, but she understands it. She has to play a new role and bunk with her little sister, because her room is now a home office. She can understand why her next older brother is upset, because big sister is back and he’s not the oldest anymore.
It doesn’t make as much sense when the student doesn’t physically go anywhere, but the struggle is the same.
If a student has been going to a church for a long time and feels at home there, it’s disconcerting when suddenly he or she feels like a misfit. It’s much like leaving your room in the morning and returning to find it has been remodeled for a different purpose.
One student said he felt guilty being in the teen class, but that’s where he’s most comfortable. He realized he had questions that just confused the younger teens, but the adults’ questions confused him. As a teacher, the challenge is frustrating. A class with freshmen and seniors has maturity level problems of its own. It gets insane when a graduate joins the mix.
Although the young adult group is comprised of people only a few years older, their circumstances may as well be centuries apart. What do you do with kids who’ve outgrown the youth group but aren’t yet ready for the young adult class? When there are new questions and desires but no new activity, the result is spiritual stagnation. If a student remains in this state, stagnation may turn into indifference.
A Spiritual Transition
College-aged students crave something new to share, and this craving leaves them open to new worship experiences. The traditional church needs to be ready to accommodate this thirst for something new. This age group has outgrown teen ministry but may not be mature enough for the young adult/adult ministry. So how do we serve an age group that’s thirsting for the knowledge presented in adult classes but isn’t comfortable sharing with the “old” people?
Consider the experiences of the students who go away to college. They’re in a new experience with every other first-year student. They enter a group that’s meant to be transitional—a group that’s comfortable because it reminds them of their high school group, but is exciting because it’s different. The activities are new, and they’re challenged to think more deeply and grapple with ideas first presented in youth group but are just hitting home now. This testing of the faith can be a needed step for the firming of their faith.
This testing of faith also needs to happen for the student who stays home, but it doesn’t happen as naturally. Students who don’t go away haven’t been forced to fly and may feel more comfortable in the nest even though they’re frustrated and stagnant. An extra effort is necessary to create a feeling of newness for that group. I find it interesting that a college campus can have a strong campus ministry while the traditional churches across the street from the campus see little increase in attendance. What can the traditional church learn from the campus ministries?
18-Year-Old ‘Adults’
Why are 18-year-olds so reluctant to join the adult ministries? I can understand the reluctance of an 18-year-old who’s glad his or her parents no longer force attendance at youth group; but if a person is looking forward to doing adult things and is serious about discipleship and spiritual growth, I’d think that adult study would be enticing. And sometimes it is…for about a month. So, what’s the problem? Maybe it’s healthy rebellion. Again, I look at the away-from-home counterparts. They’re still allowed to work through the healthy rebellion that takes place when trying to find themselves. If they’re trying to find a worship style that fits them and not necessarily their parents, why would they want to study with their parents?
Another area of discomfort is the need to be around one’s peers. I look at where I’ve stuck this age group in the past and chuckle. First, it was the 16- 20-something grouping. “I failed my Algebra test” and “I’ve gotten myself in serious debt” happened within the same two minutes. Then I tried the 18- 35 grouping, and that was even worse. I avoided the 18-21 grouping, because I didn’t want to segregate them from the adults so much that adults felt like the enemy—many youth groups deal with enough of that.
I don’t think they should be completely ripped from what’s comfortable. They should be allowed to have the healthy rebellion and a sense of home at the same time. They should have a different spiritual experience so they don’t feel like they’re in another high school youth group. The key word is transition.
The challenge is to provide an environment that’ll create a smooth but not-too-easy transition. For many, college provides the rite of passage ritual that mainstream American culture lacks. Somehow, traditional churches need to create that experience for those who remain at home. During this time, they may never see adults as peers, and the adults may never see them as peers; that may not be a bad thing. I’m excited when a student gets to the point of being able to recognize the value of being mentored in a discipleship class. The question is: How do we help him or her get there?
Maybe it’s another age grouping that works in conjunction with the young adult ministry. Maybe it’s a seasonal ministry that’s temporary for the participants and serves as that rite of passage. Maybe it’s re-working the whole system so teens feel like insiders from an earlier age and throughout this phase.
Whatever the case, we must work harder to guide these students through this transition toward adulthood and spiritual maturity.
