Maybe it’s not wise to quote pop stars when discussing issues of cultural and social development among young people. But in this case, singer-songwriter John Mayer said it best in his song “Why Georgia”:
It might be a quarter-life crisis
Or just the stirring in my soul
Either way

Mayer captures some of the angst typical among a cultural and developmental category of young people in America that over the last half-century has come to be called “emerging adulthood.”

Scholars in human development describe emerging adulthood as the period of life between the ages of 18 and 30 when young people become independent and autonomous. What makes it a modern phenomenon are its unique characteristics: the postponing of marriage and parenthood, increased time spent in pursuit of higher education, frequent job changes, and an extension of financial support from parents. For Christian young adults—and the youth ministry workers who nurture them—the trend holds its own unique challenges.

Freedom and Career Development
There are several factors contributing to the rise of emerging adulthood as a developmental stage.

The first is the trend over the last few decades to delay marriage. Unlike the generations before them, the majority of young people today aren’t in a rush to find a spouse. They view their 20s as a time for self-exploration and freedom.

Where young men once held on to idealized plans of settling down to start a family and take over the family business from Dad, they now cannot wait to graduate from college and gallivant around the French Riviera. Where young women once envisioned a dream wedding with their high school sweetheart, 2.5 kids and a white picket fence, they now hope to climb the corporate ladder and become financially independent.

A second factor is the growth of higher education. Christian Smith, who directs the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University Of Notre Dame, writes in the November/December 2007 issue of Books Culture that a huge proportion of American youth are no longer stopping school and beginning stable careers at age 18, but are extending their formal schooling well into their 20s. Those who are aiming to join America’s professional and knowledge classes — those who most powerfully shape our culture and society — are continuing in graduate and professional school programs often up until their 30s.

A college degree is basic these days. Young people need postgraduate studies and a wider range of skills to set themselves apart and remain competitive.

In addition, lifelong careers or trades—common in the mid-1900s—are being replaced with “careers of lower security, more frequent job changes, and an ongoing need for new training and education,” writes Smith.

Insecurity and Immaturity
Wherein lies the dilemma? It’s true this period can be advantageous for someone who values self-exploration and limitless possibilities. It can be empowering for those who see the world as their oyster, acknowledging that they have the ambition, knowledge and freedom to do anything they imagine. For a good majority of others, this independence can also be rife with uncertainty and instability.

Brian Raison has been working with youth in ministry for more than 20 years. He has spent the last 12 at Ohio State University, serving in the Department of Extension. He recently published a study on college freshman preparedness that found that 26 percent of first-year students do not return to school the following year. Raison is familiar with the pressures that students face while dealing with emerging adulthood.

“During those times of self-exploration, there are some traps and pitfalls that can really hit young people pretty hard,” said Raison. “As teens leave high school and go off to college, they are still adolescents but they are facing adult decisions that could affect the rest of their lives.”

These young people are teetering on the fence between adolescence and full-blown adulthood. They must try not to lose their balance and fall on one side or the other.

What hangs in the balance? Grow up too early, and they are confronted with the blunt reality of adult decisions without having the proper knowledge or experience to deal with them. Extend the adolescent period, and they fall behind in this generation’s ultra-competitive “me-first” culture.

The struggle extends even beyond the day they graduate college.

“We are seeing people act in their mid- to late-20s the way they did in college,” said Evan Hunter, director of the Ivy Jungle Network, an association for those who minister to collegians. “We don’t know how to magically make adulthood happen once you get your degree.”

Losing Their Religion
Emerging adults who are Christians can have an extra difficult time during this period of life, holding on to their faith, maintaining sexual purity, and finding their sense of vocation.

Studies have shown religious participation often declines after young people leave home. Their religious training doesn’t hold up after being exposed to the harsh realities of the real world. Their faith fails.

Jeffrey Schadt, executive director of Youth Transition Network, believes a lack of proper preparation for adulthood is one of the main causes of young people abandoning their faith.

“Parents haven’t thought about the spiritual transition their children will face once they leave home,” he said. Parents “are helping with everything else—picking the right school, studying for SATs, buying things for dorm rooms—not about teaching kids how to budget their money, or the party scene, or living with a roommate. In the church, a lot of times we want to turn a blind eye to the bad things. Parents have no clue what the kids are facing during their freshman years. It’s much worse than when they were in school.”

Schadt says young adults get caught up in a “triangle of discouragement.” In this triangle, young people experience pressure from their parents to be obedient children; they feel pressure from the church to be perfect Christians; and they feel pressure from their peers to adhere to social cultural norms, which are often negative.

“It creates a situation where young people are living an intentionally-deceptive dual life,” Schadt said. “We need to prepare them for adulthood by giving them the freedom to make tough decisions in high school. We’re not allowing the Holy Spirit to do His job in convicting our kids in their lives—we as parents are doing it. Instead, we believe if we have our rules and our consequences, we will raise them up in the Lord. A lot of times, that’s just not the case.”

Purity and Vocation
Raison contends one practical way to help young people stay connected with their faith is to encourage them to get involved in volunteering or ministry on their campus. He says that during this time of emerging adulthood, there is a huge opportunity of growth that needs to be capitalized upon.

“Young people need to try to engage in a meaningful activity,” said Raison, who heads up the 4-H Youth and Community Development program at OSU. “In doing that, they can attain growth and progress through their volunteering. We are effectively equipping them with first hand experiential knowledge of the value of serving others, and hopefully moving them into this whole mindset of servant leadership.”

Raison adds that young people are the ideal candidates for volunteer work, as they are physically able, they don’t have too many time commitments, and they have disposable income.

Hunter says that it’s part of the church’s responsibility to engrain in young people an idea of unconditional servanthood.

“Another piece of the transition is to see how to serve God in all areas of life. There’s the sense that many young adults don’t really know what they’re going to do, and they’ll serve God when they find out what that is,” Hunter said. “We need to try to create an understanding that your entire life is to be under the reign of Christ.”

Added Raison: “If we don’t get a hold of them, we have seen what the alternative is,” he said. “We know what else they’re going to be doing on a Friday night. It’s not very productive; it doesn’t take them anywhere.”

The pull toward living a deceptive life that Schadt mentioned can show up most powerfully in the area of purity. Because of the delay in marriage, one of the primary struggles Christian emerging adults face—if not the primary one—is sex and abstinence.

“The minority of emerging adults who may believe in sexual chastity before marriage and want to resist the lure of sexual adventuring face a very difficult peer culture in which to live,” wrote Smith. He also notes that the rise in varied forms of birth control over the last half century have made it increasingly difficult for young adults to remain sexually pure, even more so in the isolated, insulated college setting.

“College tends to reinforce this hookup culture and the ‘friends with benefits’ kind of relationships.” Hunter said. “The college campus is where that’s developed and becomes part of [emerging adults] life and culture.”

Church as a Safe Place
Examining the phenomenon of emerging adulthood should raise many questions among youth ministers, parents, and young people themselves. The experts seem to agree that if youth are given the freedom and responsibility to make difficult decisions at an earlier age, they will be better prepared to do so in the future.

Said Schadt, “We’ve got to somehow deal with the community of the church where it can become a safe place where sin is not feared and [young people] can bring it into the light and find encouragement and help.”

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett and Jennifer Lynn Tanner, eds., Emerging Adults in America: Coming of Age in the 21st Century (American Psychological Association, 2006).
The Ivy Jungle Network is a loose association of men and women who minister to collegians. It exists to serve church-based college ministers, parachurch campus workers and college and university chaplains.
Youth Transition Network is a coalition of youth, college and military ministries that are working together to prepare, motivate and transition our youth into the next phase of their Christian walk, so that they continue as a vital part of the Body of Christ.
Live Above began as Ministry Edge in Arizona when a visionary idea was formed by a group of college ministries at Arizona State University. It provides students a way to explore ministries and connect with college students and military personnel who have discovered the value of their faith and are working to make it real in their lives.
The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, founded by YWJ columnist Walter Mueller, is a nonprofit organization committed to building strong families by serving to bridge the cultural-generational gap between parents and teenagers.