Having done some extended research in the area of Faith Development and Young Adult Ministry for my senior thesis at Ashland University, I find this interview to be very interesting – it’s worth the time to listen to the whole thing.
Kara Powell interviews Chuck Bomar on “College Transition and Identity Development”. You can listen to the interview here. The accompanying article, Riding the Highs and Lows of Teenage Faith Development by: Kara Powell & Meredith Miller summarizes well the research that is referred to in the interview.
Chuck has some really interesting thoughts on the transition in faith development that occurs when students graduate from high school and move on to college. He talks about youth ministers automatically teaching youth from our own “conclusions” rather than teaching them how to come to their own conclusions.
“There’s a danger in that we are teaching Christianity as behavior management, not necessarily a faith – and by teaching conclusions we are keeping it there” (Chuck Bomar)
I think this is a huge contributor to the dropoff that the church experiences after high school. Are we teaching our youth a wrong view of Christianity? What do you think?
Children often become their parents to a certain extent. Their core values, belief system and behavior parallel those which gave them security, nourishment and guidance their whole lives. Once they are out on their own, they are not saturated with their parent’s involvement on a daily basis anymore. This, I believe, gives young adults a spiritual and emotional void that needs to be filled with something substantial that will be the foundation of their adult lives and how they carry out the commitment to the actions of their faith. Even those who don’t go to college find themselves in the “real” world where they must navigate through many new relationships, alliances and other’s opinions and beliefs that they must sort through to find their own core truth to which they will cling. By the time a young adult enters college, or the “real” world, they already have formed an identity. It is this identity that is the seedling of who they will be as an adult. Just like any other young, growing thing, their physical, emotional and spiritual health will depend on the nourishment and optimum conditions for growth that will be provided for them. Life is a transition filled with smaller transitions that connect who we are with God and the world as a living planet. Any one of life’s smaller transitions not bearing fruit will result in the next transition going in the wrong direction reducing the potential for a favorable outcome.
Great thoughts, Journeyman! Thanks for your insight. I agree that we often limit our research or understanding on the young adult years to those who are in college which lends itself to a false understanding (or rather an incomplete understanding) of what goes on in those years.