Resolve to tackle overcommitment this New Year

Overcommitment is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges for College students during their "first year out" of High School. It's also the biggest obstacle to spiritual growth. Sociologist Tim Clydesdale observes,

Outgoing, active teens who attended four-year residential colleges seemed to have the most difficult adjustment. These teens discovered college offers an exponential increase in activities, and they found it hard to resist the many possibilities. Only after they received their first-semester grades did many of these teens realize they had overcommitted themselves.

Overcommitment shouldn't be a surprising problem for College students as very few have experience managing big blocks of free time. American High School students live very structured lives with about seven hours spent in school each day and then several more spent in after school activities.

In College the number of class hours per day are nearly cut in half, but much more out of class work is expected. Add to that the many new opportunities for extracurricular involvement and increased academic rigor, and it's no surprise that being busy is a problem.

For most students faith becomes one more extracurricular option among many. A small group will decide that their spiritual lives are something they want to prioritize in College, but the vast majority don't think about it all that much. Faith is something to think about after College when there will be "more time". Unfortunately that additional time doesn't seem to materialize even after graduation.

During Christmas break students finally have a golden opportunity to reassess their commitments and decide what they really want to do with their time. The fact that it ends with the annual custom of making New Year's resolutions is even better!

Right now is a good time to ask questions like what are my priorities for the new semester/year? Am I involved in activities that really enhance my College experience or am I just busy? Where does God fit into the picture? Do I take time to reflect on what I'm experiencing or am I too busy to do that?

Spirituality is one of the most important and underutilized assets for College students. It offers space for reflection and an opportunity to process. Students who get reconnected with their faith during College often say they didn't realize how important such opportunities were until they began to focus on them once again.

But spirituality doesn't just enhance the College years. Paying attention to one's spiritual life is critically important for navigating the ups and downs of life after College. Congregations are wonderfully positioned to support young adults in this process but few are intentional about doing so. It's a golden opportunity for the Church to reconnect with a group (young adults) that are largely absent.

Understanding "The First Year Out"...and beyond

I've been reading an excellent book called "The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School", a sociological study of teenagers in their first year after High School graduation. In the book author Tim Clydesdale shares a number of interesting insights about young adults that are helpful for those in ministry, higher education, and related fields.

In particular Clydesdale challenges the idealistic belief of many in Higher Education that students enter their first year of College ready for life altering experiences. He writes,

The first year out, rather than being a time when behavior patterns and life priorities are reexamined and altered, is actually a time when prior patterns and priorities become more deeply habituated. What the vast majority of teens focus on during their first year out is daily life management: they manage the semiadult relationships that now characterize their social interactions; they manage their adult freedoms to use substances and be sexually active; and they manage expanded responsibilities for their daily life, including money, food, and clothes.

This resonates with my own experiences with first year College students. Learning to live on your own is an incredibly time consuming experience and is exacerbated by the proliferation of choices for young adults. Although first year College students tend to come in with somewhat idealistic expectations about examining their lives it doesn't take long for the pressures of "daily life management" to become the priority.

Each year Campus ministry and other other co curricular groups on our campus begin with large numbers of participants. By about the third week of classes we see a precipitous drop off in student engagement as they become busier.

The things that take priority are those that are required for daily life management...classes, friends, work, and extracurricular activities like music and sports that can require participation. That leaves participation in voluntary student activities like religious groups and other organizations at a disadvantage. Although there are always a committed core of students involved with these groups, getting more than casual participation from the broader student population is difficult.

The main way that we've worked to address this challenge in our ministry is to make place for both groups of people. With the relatively small minority of students that are determined to be involved we do more intensive sorts of discipling and leadership development.

We hope that this formation process helps them to think missionally, recognizing where God is already at work on campus and joining in that work. But we also have to make space for the larger majority who are either casual participants or uninterested in engagement.

I'll admit that accepting this reality is one of the hardest things about my job as a Campus Pastor. I of course want everyone to be involved, and when that doesn't happen I can tend to take it personally. Reading books like "The First Year Out" have really helped me better understand the many challenges that our students face and make space for them to be who they are.

Even though it's hard to be patient, I really do believe it's my job as Campus Pastor to love and accept all of our students unconditionally....or should I say incarnationally.

I've actually developed a mantra to remind myself of that. It's borrowed from theologian Andy Root who says "It's hard to have a relationship with someone if you're always trying to change them". That's such an important reminder for doing ministry with people their "first year out"...or at any age.

Sitting here in limbo: The manifesto

My College roommate and I were sitting around one night years ago talking about the meaning of life. As we talked the song "Sitting Here in Limbo" by Jimmy Cliff came on. He turned to me and said, "If I were to write a book about my life right now that would be the title, "Sitting here in limbo". I knew immediately what he meant, and so do most college students and young adults.

The years after High School and well beyond are a time of uncertainty and disorientation for young people in our culture. Suspended between childhood and adulthood these are the quintessential "best of times and worst of times".

Finally free to determine their own future young people begin to navigate life on their own. Along with this new freedom come exciting possibilities but also fear and anxiety. Despite the romanticized depictions of young adulthood in movies and on tv this is not a carefree time. Young adults struggle with a dizzying number of choices about careers, relationships, money, and family. 

And yet precisely when they are most in need of guidance and support young adults are essentially left to their own devices, or forced to give up their newfound freedom for the lives their families choose for them. Those who attend College find more of a support system than those who don't but that only lasts for four years. 

This is an odd departure from the social safety net that surrounds young people before they reach adulthood. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow points out, "We provide day care centers, schools, welfare programs, family counseling, colleges, job training programs, and even detention centers as a kind of institutional surround-sound until young adults reach age 21, and then we provide nothing."  (After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow)

If only there were some group that would step forward to provide support, acceptance, and love to young adults when they most need it. It would be even better if that group was desperately in need of the passion and gifts that young adults need. 

Hey, that sounds kind of like the Church doesn't it?

If any group can understand the state of limbo young adults find themselves in it is the Church...a group of people suspended between what we once were and what we are becoming...a group struggling to understand its purpose in a world that no longer looks like it did back in the good old days.

And yet inexplicably there are very few connections between young adults and the Church. This blog is a conversation about why these two groups, who have so much to offer one another, are almost complete strangers. Hopefully it is an opportunity for the Church to better understand young adults, and for young adults to better understand the Church.

I'm of the opinion that these commonalities between young adults and the Church are more than mere coincidence. I think God is up to something here. Limbo can be a disorienting and frightening place or an opportunity for transformation. I hope the conversation here can nudge us toward understanding, meaning, and hope.